I have a 5500 watt Westinghouse generator and was wondering if anyone can tell me who made the engine. It is only about 8 years old and have been told that parts are no longer available for it. Hope someone out there can help. Thanks
Bruce
#2
StarTech
well we will need more info. So far all we got is that it is a Westinghouse 5500 watt generator. No model number to even to start research. From what I see so far (WGen5500) that going be a cloned engine sold under the Westinghouse name so that is not a good starting point if parts are needed.
I know better than to just ask a question without anything to go on. It was just an instant thought when I asked the question so I will get as much info as I can find and let you know. Thank you.
OK, now that Christmas is behind us, Model number on the Westinghouse generator is WH5500, serial number is 10520A0113100207, part number is 10520. A little story about my project. This generator belongs to a guy that I know, not well enough to call him a friend yet but he told me he took it to a repair shop to be fixed. He was charged $70 and was told they couldn't fix it because no parts were available anymore. I told him to bring it to me and I would look at it. Since I wrote last I have cleaned the carb and fixed his gas leak. Didn't have a kit for the carb but can get one if I have any problems. The carb is made by Huayi in Japan. That carb I found out is also used on some Honda equipment. What this guy would like for me to do is set it up to run on propane. Can you give me some info on a kit to do that. Want something of some quality insead of the cheapest stuff you can buy. Thank you.
Bruce
#5
StarTech
Parts go to the following site. This one of those Chinese dump on America generators. No real IPL available.
Rivets
I found a kit on Amazon that is a carb and regulator for LPG or NG but gasoline is not part of it. Sent the manufacturer a question about a kit to work with this carb that would add LPG to it. If I get a positive response I will post it. I know the carb was made in Japan. I have a little more respect for teachers than that. I had a couple of darn good ones when I was a kid. That was a long time ago.
Please don’t trust Amazon when trying to do what you want to accomplish. I’m sure that many other techs on this site will agree. To often what Amazon says is not what they deliver. It’s your money you can do as you please, but if you still want to attempt, only get your parts from the engine manufacturer who tells you “THESE PARTS WILL DO THE JOB FOR YOU” and offers some sort of return policy. Good Luck
There is more to it than just changing the carb and IMHO to do this would be akin to throwing a rope around big tree , tieing a noose then putting your head in it .
Small propane engines need a different cam to work properly and by prefference one without any valve overlap as the combustable air : fuel ratio for propane is a lot wider than for petrol:air
So there will be a high chance of ending up with a nasty fire in your "not quite a friend's" basement / garage or where ever they run it .
If he wants a gas powered generator tell him for safety sake to buy a proper gas engine.
On top of that a converted engine will be lucky to put out 80% of its rated power and use 30% more fuel doing it .
I ran a fleet of LPG powered delivery vans and when ever possible we fitted fork lift engines into them .
On those you would not notice the fact they were LPG powered
The vans with venturi rings on the carb used near double the fuel for substantially less performance
The ones with a computer controlled variable rate feed venturi rings ran substantially better but still used a lot of fuel, even on the EFI engines.
The 2 we had that had direct LPG injection were head & shoulders better , used a lot less fuel & had substantially more power.
Of those one was a 2 lite tow motor engine ( genuine gas engine ) which had noticeably more power and used less fuel than the 2.4L converted to LPG engine
I drove that one most of the time , 15km/L the diesel van ( same body ) only got 11 km/L .
Right now I am looking for Taxi Pack gas powered wreck to pinch the genuine LPG engine out of it for the current van .
Going full gas in vehicles would cut the CO2 by 10% to 30% and makes more sense than going to EV's
Seems like a lot of effort to fix up what amounts to a poor quality generator in the first place. I'm not sure a different camshaft is needed to change lift and duration, considering there are many gasoline automobiles which are converted to LPG without swapping cams. Running propane also means running more of it - propane engines get the worst fuel economy. On the upside, propane never goes bad. If I really wanted propane, I'd get a generator designed to run on it from the start.
propane gets poor economy in cars converted to run on propane from petrol because the engine is not designed to burn propane .
I have driven propane vehicles with genuine propane engines that run substantially better than their petrol equivalents
They can get better MPG as petrol engines city use particularly as their idle speed is about 1/2 that of a petrol engine
On highway use that drops off a bit because the energy of propane per litre is lower than the energy content of petrol but ALL of the propane burns in a full propane engine where as a quite a bit of petrol goes in the cylinder and strait out the exhaust due to valve overlap which is one reason why modern cars have to be fitted with afterburners on the exhaust system ( called catalytic converters to hide the fact that a lot of what you pay for goes strait out the tailpipe ) .
Propane engine have no valve overlap and by prefference a resonant exhaust and a higher compression ratio
#12
Hammermechanicman
Years ago briggs sold kits to convert engines to propane. I installed one. No cam change. It basically adds what amounts to a scuba regulator and a venturi. Intake stroke activates a diaphragm to let the propane in and a needle valve on the diaphragm assy regulates the mixture. You really could not tell the difference between gas or propane. It was on a constant speed generator.
It is simple. It when one valve starts to open before the other fully closes allowing pressure from, in this case, the exhaust port to enter the intake port. This reduces the intake vacuum also pushing fuel mix by toward the carburetor and air cleaner. With wasted spark system which nearly all lawnmower engines use the chance of accidental ignition of this raw fuel being ignited depending on how much of an overlap occurs. Also the larger the overlap the more hot exhaust gases can enter the intake.
As Star stated
The theory of it is the inlet opens before the exhaust closes and the incoming air:fuel mix scours all of the old burned gasses out of the cylinder.
Fine on a car with a distributor because they only spark on the compression stroke
But a standard flywheel magneto fires every time the magnets pass the coil which is every time the piston comes to the top of the cylinder
So you gat a spark while the inlet valve is open and propane is coming into the cylinder
When running on petrol this is not a big problem because it takes quite a bit of time for the fuel to be atomised and even more time for those droplets to evaporate & become gasseous so they can burn
However propane is a gas to start with so is ready to burn way before petrol would be thus you risk the propane initing and back burning through the carburettor to the evaporator .
Add to that propane burns slower than petrol so a designed to run propane engine will be a long stroke engine ( stroke is substantially longer than the bore )
And because it burns slower you generally use more advance than you would on a petrol engine up to around 3000 rpm
This is why converted engines always run poorly , use a lot of gas & produce less power .
Timing is a big problem on gas powered engines
To get the beast out of LPG for instance you need to advance the carb about 5 to 10 degrees at idle
However this leads to burning of the valves
This is why you are always better tobuy a genuine propane engine than to convert a petrol engine to burn propane
#17
Hammermechanicman
To over simplify it overlap it needed because of inertia of gasses. As engine RPM goes up the exhaust closes later and the intake opens earlier to get more power. OPE engines operate at a relatively low RPM and the valve overlap is fairly small. As you increase valve duration and overlap the first thing you will notice is poor idle and poor low RPM performance.
