A family owned and operated business since 1969, Cunningham Electric began doing starter, alternator, and magneto repairs for irrigation, agricultural and industrial needs. In 1997, irrigation engine sales and repair service was added to compliment a declining demand for ignition repairs. Since that time, we have grown into a multi-faceted business with connections to new and developing technologies required to make the natural gas irrigation engine a viable and affordable tool for the future of agricultural irrigation.
Groundbreaking Technology
In the summer of 2003 we were fortunate enough to participate in a test program involving the 8.1 Chevrolet Engine with modifications to the Electronic Control Module (ECM), valves, seats, and carbureation designed to bring this engine to a level of fuel efficiency never before seen in the industry. Behind this test program are companies, not only in the procurement of engines, but in test and evaluation as well. These companies are committed to bringing these new technologies of the 21st century into the irrigation engine business. Currently as the sole operator of these test engines, Cunningham Electric test sites have logged over 10,000 hours of run time . In these tests, we have seen results that lead us to believe this technology has significantly increased fuel efficiency without curtailing the projected life of the engines. One of the test engines has been in the field fifteen months without a single failure. It never shut down even in the forty-plus inches of rain we received this year. 2005 will be the third season for this particular engine and Valve recession is still insignificant. We expected this, but it is always nice to have your expectations verified.
Full production began on the 8.1 closed-loop system in June 2004. We sold ten of these engines in the Texas Panhandle and to date have had very few problems. The engines have not had any internal failures. . With our rain-shortened season we logged about fourteen thousand cummulative hours on these ten engines. Retrofit kits for the 8.1 are now available. We can take your existing 8.1 and change it into our closed loop 8.1 with a significant reduction in price over the cost of a new engine. We also offer remote filtration systems that can increase the oil change interval to 1000 hours. We are now well into the 2006 season with over one hundred fifty engines in the field.Full production of 4.3, 5.7, and 8.1s is now ongoing. The 5.7, in both the regular and high output versions, have exceeded all our expectations. We are seeing ten to 20 percent savings on the 4.3 versus a non-controlled 5.7, so we are very pleased with this engine as well. The 3.0 should be available sometime in July of 2006..
The price of natural gas has dictated the need for reevaluating the way we water the crops in our area. Since we can't control the price of natural gas wouldn't it be nice to have some control over the amount that we use to produce a crop. We believe our engines will play a signiicant role in reducing the cost of irrigation.
We now have four dealers in strategic irrigation areas of Texas, Kansas, and eastern Colorado to meet your irrigation needs. Goodland Machine & Automotive has been with us now for two years,and Hartley County Implement for three years. Our newest two dealers just starting their first season are Deen's Automotive in Springfield, Colorado and Johnson Irrigation Engine Service in Copeland, Kansas. Take a look at our test sites page and see if these figures peak your interest. We can put you in contact with the people in the field who are now running the test engines as well as the production engines. Give us or one of our dealers a call or come by to discuss pricing and availability.
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