cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Something Retarded to do with a Lawnmower Engine My birthday is in 6 days. My side of the family is doing a consolidated birthday event/party/whatever tomorrow for me, my brother (fraternal twin, same birthday) and my mother (birthday a week before mine). That makes it *not* my very own special day. Mnemosynea is coming here for a few days in September! That will be fun. She and Trish have never actually met before. I got a check today reimbursing me for mileage using my own car on a business trip yesterday. So I used it to order myself a birthday present, that being a 'no-gunsmithing' scout-style scope mount with rings for my Mausers, plus a BSA pistol scope to use with it. That stuff should be here in time for my birthday. I get that day off from work and I believe that I will spend the morning installing the mount, zeroing the scope and plinking away. I have oodles of surplus 8mm ammo that really needs using. If I get either wood or lumber yard gift certificates for my birthday then I will be focusing on finishing a real roof and siding for the workshop over the next month or so. However, if that does not come through, I have in my mind to build a generator out of an old Biggs and Stratton lawnmower engine. I could use a generator for all sorts of things, including production of more power for the workshop. When we moved into our last house, the dipshits we bought it from left a broken push lawnmower behind in the shed. I have a working push mower so there was never any reason to do anything with it. It just kind of sat there. Then when we sold that house, I wasn't about to leave junk behind. There wasn't time to take it to the dump, so it ended up on the truck coming with us to the new house. There is has sat behind the cowhouse, doing nothing. However, the engine is probably fine. It turns over. Probably it needs a new oil filter, spark plus, fuel filter and a general disassembling and cleaning. I bet I can get it running with $20 worth of stuff from Tractor Supply. The idea is to take the 3.5 HP engine off of the mower and hook it up to some old GM alternator. $25 at a junkyard, or maybe I can find someone with an old car I can pull it out of. The engine runs a pulley wheel that is connected to the old alternator. The alternator in a car is basically a little device that takes mechanical energy provided by a belt turning a wheel and turns that into electricity. Then I take a couple of wires frm a set of jumper cables or whatever and connect the alternator to a bank of car batteries, which is exactly what a car's alternator is already designed to charge. Then I've got energy being stored. I can get a DC to AC converter box (like people use to run AC devices from the cigarette lighter in a car) and hook that up to the batter bank. And there I will have a complete little power station for the price of less than $100. If I find that I care enough, I can save the cost of gasoline to run it by converting the engine to run on propane, which is usually cheaper. That would be enough juice to run a few lights and a laptop or whatever. I'd make it portable so that I can use it to run my power tools while building the new house. Again, I'm only going to start on this project if I don't have the resources for wood and roofing for the workshop. I haven't had a project to work on lately and I don't like that. I need something to build pretty much at all times. 12:17 p.m. - 2008-07-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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