Familiar with military engines?
 

I've been looking for a small-ish 4 cylinder diesel, cheap, for a project I've been working on, and came across an Onan, 140 CI, air cooled Mep-003A. It's what's used in gen sets I guess, but this is just the engine.

I've had a small gas military air cooled engine in the past, a Teledyne, and I was a little skeptical of it at first, but it turned out to be a great little motor. The thing about military stuff is it is so under-rated. That gas motor was rated at 20HP, but it easily put out twice that.

I was wondering what the diesel ACTUALLY puts out because they're rating it at 16HP. It's 140 cubic inches, it HAS to put out more than 16HP, but does anyone know HOW much more? My little Perkins 4 cylinder in my JCB isn't much bigger than 140 CI and it's rated at 72HP. And a Volkswagon diesel is only 1.6 liters or so and I can't believe it's anywhere near as low as 16HP. You'd have to get out and push it up hills!

Hey Scot, after a short research on the engine the only thing I could find was that it's rated for 24.1 hp. Still seems a bit low to me though. I'll see if I can come up with anything else for ya.

Couple things have me doubting more then 20 ish hp...air cooled, stationary, generator motor, indirect injection....I don't know how much reliablility would be lost if you pushed it past that point.

Found all the "technical specs" and it's rated at 18hp at 2k rpm, 16 at 1800...so if you could bump up rpms then yes you could get more power, grind down governor weights etc. Those numbers were for 0-5000' above sea level. I don't know what you're gonna use it for but it probably would take a lot of load to actually slow it down. There's always nitrous too. [laugh]

Thanks!

My hydraulic pump will suck up 45HP and eventually I'll either add another one or get a bigger pump. I'm building a firewood processor. Thanks for looking that up!

How about a 2.4 Mercedes 4 cylinder. They are bulletproof, reliable, will run on just about anything and shouldn't be too hard to find for cheap....

Just a thought.

I'd take anything at this point!

The Mep-003a was powered by an Onan DJC 4-cylinder air cooled diesel engine.

Strong, LOUD and very overkill, my Mep-003a 10kw genset weighed over 1200 pounds

140 CI
19:1 compression ratio
16 hp @ 1800 RPM
18 hp @ 2000 RPM
5.5 quarts oil
Governor: Internal Flyball Externally adjustable.
Starter: 24 VDC

If you do get ANY Onan I have all of the TM's for the gensets with all of the operation, tear down and repair of the engine.

Saturn Surplus has Teledyne engines for.
http://www.saturnsurplus.com/
20 hp Teledyne.
http://saturnsurplus.com/engines/10kengnew.htm

There is also a DJC civilian version used on many small tractors and gensets, they will have 12-volt systems instead of 24-volt.

How about a screaming 2-71 Detroit?
They powered 3 phase generators tucked under rail cars nonstop for years and years.

Model Displacement Engine configuration Horsepower
1-71 1.2L (71ci) *****Single-cylinder **10
2-71 2.3L (142ci) ****** I-2** 68
3-71 3.5L (213ci) ****** I-3** 113

Jim

It amazes me how 140CI can only produce less than 20HP. Those Teledyne's you spoke of make WAY more than the 20 they claim. I had one, great motor! And I'd bet it was pushing at least 40 HP. It was running a 40gpm hydraulic pump at 2800psi and it never grunted at all.


Thanks Jim! That may come in handy in the future.

An NO, I wouldn't care for a Detroit ANYTHING! [laugh]