I had a dream...3 point generator

[Cutty]

Woke up this morning with an idea. I have an old portable Coleman generator that was given to me about 20 years ago and its always been a piece of crap. It always ran lousy, fuel tank leaked, sucked gas, vibrated parts off of itself. It's a 5500 watt unit. When I could keep it running the generator unit itself always worked fine. was thinking (in my sleep!) that I could trash the motor, mount the whole unit on the generic 3 point frame I saw for sale at Tractor Supply and fab up some kind of adapter plate to the generator and run it off my pto. Anybody ever done this?

 

[wwildhorse2k]

Hi Cutty,

The big trick in getting it to get the pto to turn the generator fast enough to get the 60 cycle power. The ones that Ive seen have a gearing system to take the speed of the pto to 1800 or 3600 RPM at the Generator. Plenty of HP available though. Have fun!!!

 

[Ken(Ark)]

(quoted from post at 06:21:10 02/26/10) Hi Cutty,

The big trick in getting it to get the pto to turn the generator fast enough to get the 60 cycle power. The ones that Ive seen have a gearing system to take the speed of the pto to 1800 or 3600 RPM at the Generator. Plenty of HP available though. Have fun!!!

Might be able to incorporate a three speed tranny backwards .

Make room for an air compressor while your tinkering , portable air is nice too .

 

[Lumpy]

To bad the tractor you had in mind didn't have a over drive trans. That would almost double your pto speed.

 

[Cutty]

hmmm...I didn't dream about rpm requirements. Maybe I need to go back to bed! I'd go out to the barn and look at that thing but it's 21 degrees out right now. What if I put some kind of gear reduction unit between the pto and the genny? Is there some reasonable sized and priced unit out there?

 

[Cutty]

How does PTO rpm compare to engine rpm anyway?

 

[TheOldHokie]

(quoted from post at 09:42:18 02/26/10) How does PTO rpm compare to engine rpm anyway?

The PTO is roughly 2.8:1 (1500/540) reduction off the crankshaft.

TOH

 

[old-9]

Run PTO shaft to a shaft and use V belt pulleys to get the speed you need. I would put a good voltage meter to monitor output voltage.
Lots of luck, joe

 

[Bruce (VA)]

Rule of thumb is 3/4 throttle gets you 540 PTO RPM. Or, you can do the math. PTO RPM = Engine RPM divided by 2.75. Max engine speed is supposed to be 2200 RPM. 3/4's of 2200 RPM is 1650 RPM. 1650 divided by 2.25 = 600 RPM. Close enough for government work.
50 Tips

 

[Bruce (VA)]

A close friend grew up on a tobacco farm in southside VA. As the youngest kid, one of his jobs was to sit in the tractor seat all night & watch the oil pressure & water temp gauges when the PTO driven water pump was used to irrigate tobacco. I doubt you could get away w/ that today, so if you get the generator working on the 3-point, check into a low oil pressure and high temp cut-off sensor units for the tractor.
50 Tips

 

[JMOR]

(quoted from post at 08:55:19 02/26/10) Woke up this morning with an idea. I have an old portable Coleman generator that was given to me about 20 years ago and its always been a piece of crap. It always ran lousy, fuel tank leaked, sucked gas, vibrated parts off of itself. It's a 5500 watt unit. When I could keep it running the generator unit itself always worked fine. was thinking (in my sleep!) that I could trash the motor, mount the whole unit on the generic 3 point frame I saw for sale at Tractor Supply and fab up some kind of adapter plate to the generator and run it off my pto. Anybody ever done this?

And, someone with similar dream recently mentioned that many such generators have no armature bearing on the engine side, instead, relying on the engine bearing to support that end of armature.

 

[Cutty]

Wow thanks for all the replies. Was thinking about it and pulled out an old Northern Tool catalog and found that they have PTO generators but they ain't cheap! They have a gearbox on them that is geared 6 to 1. They don't have the gearbox listed separately though so I gave them a call. I can get that gearbox for only $440! I really like the v-belt and pulley remedy. I should have thought of that myself. Bet I can get everything I need for less than $100 at TSC and Lowe's. I wouldn't be running it overnight or even unattended, I would probably only use it occasionally to run power tools in the field. I just have been thinking of that old generator sitting out there lately and thought about getting a new modern motor to replace that old Briggs, but I like the PTO idea.

 

[TheOldHokie]

(quoted from post at 11:05:05 02/26/10) Wow thanks for all the replies. Was thinking about it and pulled out an old Northern Tool catalog and found that they have PTO generators but they ain't cheap! They have a gearbox on them that is geared 6 to 1. They don't have the gearbox listed separately though so I gave them a call. I can get that gearbox for only $440! I really like the v-belt and pulley remedy. I should have thought of that myself. Bet I can get everything I need for less than $100 at TSC and Lowe's..

Bet you can't:

1) Your PTO shaft is 1-3/8"
2) Assuming a 2.5" PTO pulley you need a 15" pulley for 6:1 speed-up
3) How many belts do you need for a 10HP v-belt drive?
4) You will need a several 3000 RPM pillow blocks for supporting the shafting.

Add all that up and I suspect an off-the-shelf gearbox like this starts looking very cost effective:

[u:7dd1eb975f]Speed Reducers at Surplus Center[/u:7dd1eb975f]

And make sure you can run it backwards - many of these are worm drives and you can't

TOH

 

[old]

Ya you might be able to make it work but you would most likely have more $$ tied up in it then you would if you got say a 6.5KW PTO drive one. Oh that is by the way figuring your time is worth at least $10 and hour Plus that coleman set up is probably set up to run at X rpm to have the correct out put and so you would have to find that out and then figure out how to get your PTO speed up to that and have it sit at that set speed pretty much all the time for the correct out put.
I have at times toyed with the idea of doing that with my portable welder but figure it would be to much trouble and would be easier to rig up an electirc start on it instead

 

[wwildhorse2k]

There are alot of engines available for those generators for low bucks They have a strange shaft usually

This is where I got my temporary gas tank

http://www.smallenginedistributors.net/guide.html
KC Small engines

 

[Jubilee85 (VA)]

Cutty,

I have not read the whole thread, but anything is possible - throw enough money at it. One thing that will always be in your way - gas .....four pistons moving will cost a lot more than 1 10 horse+ engine. Unless you are going to use this on a short run basis, you will be making some expensive Kilowatts. But it is a neat idea.

 

[Too Tall]

My Father gave me a box of stuff for Christmas - He is cleaning out his shop in proparation to move to his retirement house...
Anyway, one of the treasures was a 5 kW generator designed to be turned at 540 RPM. I assume this was designed to be run off a tractor??? I plan to try to mount it in some sort of Cary All or trailer. I'd like to add an Air tank and compressor too so I can have power and air and maybe some storage space behind my N.
Has anyone seen or heard of this sort of generator before?
I found these: http://www.wikco.com/generator.html however, they are all much larger than mine...

 

[jon]

I just have been thinking of that old generator sitting out there lately and thought about getting a new modern motor to replace that old Briggs

Would this 6.5hp motor not run the Genny?
About as cheap as you'll find I guess.

 

[lha]

Lumpy kind of got the jump on me in that a tractor like mine w/od sherman,you could run 750-800 rpm&get the pto speed you want.I've tried it with bush hog on& it shook,so I did'nt speed up.---lha

 

[Cutty]

Thanks all for all the replies, I think I will pick up a replacement motor for my genny! I guess the moral of the story is: It's alright to dream, just don't slobber on the pillow!

 

[ZANE]

I have two new two cylinder Onan engines built for RV generators that I'd sell cheap. Never been run. The only thing that is a problem is the generator has to be the starter too. The engines have no set up for a starter or a flywheel. The generator has to be both.

Zane