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Other Uses for Lawnmower Engines?
heliocentric asks: "I recently cleaned out the garage, and discovered that I am the proud owner of 4 working lawnmower engines. Considering I neither have kids, nor am I one myself, the Go Cart idea which was quick to come to mind, left just as quickly. I'm wondering if the Slashdot community might have some good plans for some spare 5HP lawnmower engines (preferably links to plans as well as ideas)? I am a fan of the junkyard wars as well as BattleBots and all those like them as well I consider myself decent with the welder etc.. But I don't want to make something to harvest hay nor is there local Battlebot group so I am open to other ideas. Think big, think small, but please keep it legal."
I wasn't sure whether it was a joke or not, but there is was in the lobby of Unisys. I guess it's real?
Much like the bass boat's 2nd motor, why not outfit your 5hp to your SUV?
Well, if you're looking for something a little out of the ordinary, you could consider building a hovercraft. Or if you'd actually like to get rid of the motors, you could probably find a hovercraft lover who'd be delighted to take them off your hands. There's an astonishingly large community of people Out There who are real hovercraft fanciers. They build these things out of all kinds of junk in all kinds of configurations. It's surprising how well the vehicles function. (You may remember the hovercraft episode on "Junkyard Wars.") Run a search on "hoverlovers" and you'll find at least one very active group. With names like "Dumpster Diver," they can probably also tell you how to use the rest of your garage treasures. Have fun.
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
The typical lawnmower has a motor with a vertical shaft, great for a mower, but terrible for much of anything else.
You also need to add a flywheel, since the blade serves as rotating mass.
Outfitting the motor with a pulley, and a used automobile alternator will give a couple of hundred watts of electric power, which may be used as alternative or backup power.
Buts that about the best you can do with it.
You could build a honda civic. :)
The civic doesn't have more that one lawnmower engine in it.
I should know, I drive one
How about a backup generator?
With a junkyard alternator, you should be
able to generate 12 volts to recharge your
UPS batteries. I'm not sure how efficient the
process would be but it would be fun to try.
InitZero
Essentially, you're taking a lawnmower engine and hooking it up to an alternator extracted from a car. The article suggests using a GM alternator which features a built-in voltage regulator. The output of the alternator is about 14v, and you'll hook this up to one of those cigarette-ligher based 12v->120v voltage inverters. Better yet, charge up some batteries and save the excess power for later.
For more info on running your life on 12 volts, check out Home Power magazine, where you can freely download the entire current issue as a PDF.
Stick one each up the asses of:
;^)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
-Drive alternators with AC power inverter as a generator -Drive alternators to charge batteries in electric car -Drive compressor motor into scuba or other air tank for a portable compressor -Drive water pump for pressure washer -Multiple combinations for a hydralic pump/ram, car lift, log splitter, Heavy duty trash/yard waste compactor -Gas powered Auger
It's actually remarkable how little power is needed to get a very light aircraft into the air. There certainly have been microlight aircraft powered by lawnmower engines. Similarly, not a lot of power is needed to get a hovercraft up - and the vertical shaft axis will actually help with that. If it hasn't enough power to get something up, would it push something when it was up? Build your own blimp!
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Combine some of the suggestions here and build a hovercraft riding mower.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Anywhere you need motive power, a lawnmower engine is just what you need. First, I word to the wise.
You're not going to find plans for the interesting stuff. Most of these machines are REALLY simple, and really require very little in the way of design to make one that works. Plans are for the uncreative. If you're stuck, go to howthingswork.com and look it up. From there, apply the rule of Farmer's engineering: If one inch in diameter is good, two inches is better. Build it good and heavy.
I also wonder, since when is it illegal for an adult to build and operate a go-kart for himself? ATVs are basically souped-up go-karts, you know. Remember, used bicycles usually sell for $20 and are a great source of drive and steering components. One thing I should also mention, a previous poster mentioned using an alternator to build a generator. One problem: Alternators need a DC voltage present to produce a field inside them. If you just run the alternator with a load and no other source of power attached, it won't work.
Next, you have make sure the engines run. I'm going to assume they're Briggs and Stratton vertical shaft engines. You need a mount for safety reasons. Get a piece of plywood, a jigsaw, drill, and some bolts(I think something 3/8" will fit in a B&S base). First you need to make a hole in the plywood that's about three inches in diameter. Drill and jigsaw it out. Now, center the engine over the hole and drill holes for the mounting bolts using the holes in the engine base as a guide for the drill. Bolt the engine to the plywood, and screw the plywood down good and tight to the work bench, or secure it through some other suitable means. Put some gas in the gas tank and take the air filter off. There's a 1" opening underneath. You need to manually choke the engine to make sure the gas is sucked into the carburetor. Hold you hand over the opening while you crank the engine. It should now start, once it has take your hand off the air intake and let it run for a little while before you kill it. If they all run, great, you can get on to building something.
If not, smell the hand that was over the air intake. Does it smell like gasoline? If not, it's likely that the gas line coming into the carb is plugged and you'll need to clean it. Some turpentine should clear out any deposits. If your hand does smell like gasoline, take the spark plug out of the engine. Smell the end of it. Does it smell like gasoline? If not, you need to remove the carburetor and clean it. If so, you need to examine the spark plug. Is the end encrusted with crud? Are the electrodes dirty? If so, clean them up with a wire brush and some emery cloth. Now you're ready to check for spark. Keep the spark plug wire connected to the plug, and hold the plug's metal base against the body of the engine while cranking. You should see a spark. Make sure that you have good electrical contact with the base. If you haven't got any spark, it's best to go buy a good book on small engine repair as you will probably have to remove the flywheel to fix the problem.
Okay, now that you have the engines all running. You can build something. Bicycles, motorcycles and old photocopiers are great sources of drive components. Motorcycles use good and stout drive chains and sprockets, if your local scrappie gets motorcycles, they are deffinitely worth scavenging.
Right now, the only thing that limits the possibilities is creativity. You know, when I was helping to teach a machine shop class I used to tell people something that would really stun them. If you can work machine tools, weld and have a good knowledge of electronics, you can build just about anything you can imagine.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
Blender (not only has it been done, you can buy them commercially - 5hp B&H I think)
Go look at what Moller is doing. Other people have suggested hovercraft, but you have four engines. Moller is using them with a ducted fan to make something that hovers and flys about at higher altitudes.
Hovercraft (not much to that)
Lawnmower - Think I'm silly? You're making it, do it the geek way. How about creating some sort of generator, putting an old motherboard in there, add some electric motors and make the whole thing robotic?
I think a lawnmower engine is a little poorly suited, but the Wheelman is too cool, and begs to be copied.
The world's most nausiating Sit 'n' Spin.
Van De Graff generator
Bicycle motor. Just add a rear bike rack. Attach the motor to the rack, and attach a small wheel to the shaft of the motor (actually, some kind of gear reduction box is probably needed) allow the small wheel to engage the rear tire of the bike.
Launcher. Like a scaled up version of a tennis ball server. You could fire nerf footballs or something... Good luck, and be safe!
And see how many horsepower you can get out of that humble lawnmower engine.
Experiment with alternative fuels and see if you can run your lawnmower engine off the methane produced from your housegold garbage or something.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
My great uncle used to make tractors from scratch. He once took a model T engine, made it run backwards (someone told him a model T engine could not be made to run backwards so he called it a challange and did it), decided it was too big and cut it in half, then built a tractor around it.
I can think of many other things to do with an engine, but in the end, when inspiration strikes enough to do something, that is what i'd do with them, so follow your own insperation.
If any of them are 4-cycle, consider a propane or butane conversion. Have a low-emission lawnmower. Then get a really good muffler and get the noise level down.
After seeing all these responses, I'm really curious to hear what you as the original poster think of them. Are you gonna go for the hovercraft, or will it be the low emission high power tennisball blender?
Let us know!!
A little planning goes a long way...
The only thing that I would add to this is to check the gas tank for crap -- if you have rust flakes and so on in there or water, pull it off and clean it out or replace it. And, it would not hurt to add some normal fuel flush (just a little) to the first tank of gasoline to clean out the wax a little bit. Make sure that the spark plug wire is not too cracked. And I would refill the oil sump with a 15W-40 deisel oil (Chevron DELO 400, Texaco Ursa, or something like that) and change it at 20 hours to get the sludge out of the crankcase. If it will then hold it (without leaking past the rings), I would use something like Mobil1 15W-50 and change it once every 75 hours or so, checking for usage each time for a while. It sounds funny, but I have kept a riding mower alive for close to 20 years (Briggs and Stratton 5 bhp engine) mowing grass in the San Antonio heat by using synthetics. Normally engines don't last that long here because of the 100 degree heat -- it cooks (cokes) the oil up fast, especially if you use the recommended El-Cheapo 30 weight oil. And I would use anti-seize on the spark plug threads. You don't change th eplugs that frequently and they can get pretty nasty and pretty tight.
Actually (sorry -- I should have added this above) ... if they all run, and you want to keep them, it would be an excellent time to do a tear-down (if you can work on small engines). Clean them up, get the rusty stuff sandblasted for a few bucks, prime and pain, replace the pull cords, and so on. Of course you would probably want to use them for something before you did this, unless you want to teach yourself small engine repair.