Gas-powered Thunderbolt blower

[murrfarms]

Here's a quick little video I made this afternoon showing how I currently have my Thunderbolt 1000T's blower set up to run with a small gas engine. It's definitely not a solid setup, but it does work for what I want it to do. I had an old walk-behind lawn edger that was broken with a good engine, so I took the 4-horsepower Tecumseh engine off and sort-of rigged it onto the existing electric motor mounts on the Thunderbolt's blower frame. The belt is a little sloppy at the moment, but I do plan to get a better-fitting one before this Saturday's test so I can eliminate any slipping.

Pardon the audio when I was explaining it in the first part, my camera seems to like to muffle anyone's voice pretty bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIWb5yAx4E

Photos (cell phone "quality"):

[TimeAttack]

Good idea Ian!

Any idea on what the RPM that lil motor can run?

[Nelso90]

Most little guys like that are governed at 3600 r/min.

[murrfarms]

Most little guys like that are governed at 3600 r/min.

For some reason I think this guy may be governed even slower than that, because it definitely doesn't sound like it's running that fast compared to my two transfer pumps with B&S motors, which do turn at about 3550-3600rpm. Maybe they were governed slower for use on lawn edgers? Whatever the reason, I need to tinker with the governor settings and see if I can get it to run any faster without grenading itself, so that maybe I can get a little bit more airflow out of that blower setup.

[1000Bthunderbolt]

I am in the process of finishing my gas powered blower set up. I have an 8 HP briggs & station engine with electric start. I have to just get a pulley. From what I have found out with dealing with small engines, if you are putting a big load on an engine you need more power. I found this out when I was building my custom air compressor. I started withe a 3 HP, then went to an 8 HP. The 8 HP bogged right down at 120 psi, and my goal was to maintain 200 psi in the tank while running. I then put a 16 HP on it and it did the trick. With the thunderbolt blower we are just pumping air and not building pressure in a tank. An 8 HP should be more than enough power to get the blower to spin full power and full engine rpm right to the governor.