Jim,

Sorry, but changing the mode of cooling for an engine without proper
engineering *is* jury rigging. Not at all the same as just using a
water-to-water heat exchanger. If you're worried about "salt" air, and
you're running in cold water, put a de-mister coil in the air duct and
pipe sea water through it chill it and pull the moisture out of the air.
Now that's a Rube'd device that would actually work. Bear in mind
though that by the time you buy all the required equipment to make the
aircooled unit functional and long-lived, you'll have a bunch more into
it than the $1K, and you'll have a less fuel-efficient unit.

Keith Hughes

jim.isbell wrote:
No, not a troll. And NO, I dont want to "jurry rig."

I want to do it right the first time. I see no reason why ducting air
to an air cooled device is jurry rigging. After all we duct sea water
to a fresh water cooled engine to cool the fresh water and we dont call
that "jurry rigged". If any thing is a Rube Goldperg design, fresh
water cooled engines are!!!

Sure, if one does not prepare for all the challanges, it would be jurry
rigged. With propper sensing on engines we prevent destructive
failures. Why cant we assume the same for an air cooled system? I
would use temperature sensing to make sure there was no fire hazard
etc.

Dave W wrote:

You don't want gasoline because it is too dangerous....and you want to jury
rig cooling of a stay ashore generator???? Must be a troll.
"jim.isbell" wrote in message
groups.com...

I just joined this group and have a dilema to present:

My boat has a large engine room and I want to add a genset to it. BUT
it must be diesel as I dont want any gasoline aboard. I can buy a new
marine diesel gen set with warer cooling for $7,000 or so. I dont have
that kind of money to spend. But I can buy a new diesel, AIR COOLED,
getset for under $1000. With the gen set in the engine room I will
either have to supply a MINIMUM (probably more) of 1000 CFM of cool air
and exhaust it as well. This is not altogether too dificult, BUT that
air I am supplying will be SALT air and will promote corrosion in the
new gen set, I am sure.

So I am wondering about the possibility of converting the air cooled
diesel to a water cooled diesel with a salt to fresh water heat
exchanger. I read somewhere once that someone did this by coiling
copper pipe around the head of the engine for the fresh water part and
used a wet exhaust to cool the exhaust. But with no details of how the
fresh water cooling was actually constructed on the engine, and my
limited imagination in this area, I dont see how it could work. I
think it would take more than cooling the head alone.

Does anyone have any ideas along these lines??