Interesting read on cylinder wall honing

[Wild one]

How Engine Oil Helps Piston Ring Seal

The next time you're building an engine, think about the “gasket” that you pour into it.

www.motortrend.com

 

[Daw14]

How Engine Oil Helps Piston Ring Seal

The next time you're building an engine, think about the “gasket” that you pour into it.

www.motortrend.com

I’m hooked on that show also, it’s nice they feature lots of Mopar information.

 

[Travelin Ram]

Good article. Also illustrates one of the reasons modern engines have different oil specs than previous generations.

 

[HEMIMANN]

How Engine Oil Helps Piston Ring Seal

The next time you're building an engine, think about the “gasket” that you pour into it.

www.motortrend.com

Precision, two-step bore honing?
I got so excited I near pissed myself!

Thanks for sharing this good stuff. Motortrend rocks.

Which, of course, also sparks an old fart story. Onan generator product plan called for an increase into Caterpillar high horsepower territory, 2 megawatt generators. Yours truly was Technical Project Leader. Cummins developed a new 3,000 hp engine, QSK60, based off KTA50, completely new block, heads. Only bore spacing remained.
In the spirit of design-build for fastest development, we got a prototype engine that wasn't quite, um, developed.
We built it into a test generator and started it. We ran various light tests, not trusting the thing as they kept swapping parts on it.

One day it suddenly lost power and puked oil out the breather. Had to e-stop it.
Tear down revealed bore polishing all 18 cylinders after only 200 hours of mild test running. Oil analysis showed casting sand contamination. The sandy oil lapped the cylinders to a mirror finish in only 200 hours run time.

Engine had 1st steel pistons in Cummins history (1997). Federal-Mogul shipped to Cummins but forget to clean casting sand out. Cummins saw it but shipped to us anyway, since they took us over, they didn't care and didn't tell us either.
Then they took the cost of the rebuild of their mistake out of our budget. Our President came down from the tower to rant and rave at us, about had a stroke. They fired him a year later.

Excerpt from: "My Life in Corporate Hell"

 

[EdGs]

So, they saw the casting sand, but still gave it the go-ahead?

How was it even assembled like that?

What did they think would happen?

 

[HEMIMANN]

So, they saw the casting sand, but still gave it the go-ahead?

How was it even assembled like that?

What did they think would happen?

Yep? Wanna know more?
You know it's common to take orders ahead of production for major capital products, like vehicles. Generators are no exception.
They approved development level production to meet their too aggressive profit plan.
Every genset had built-in recalls, and they hoped.most of the sandy piston engines went into low hour standby power applications so they didn't have to rebuild every one.

But wait! There's more! Their market demand team totally failed too. They forecast sale of 5 gensets year 1, ramping up to 60 gensets by year 5. Instead, they took orders for 110 year 1, 250 year 2, and 400 year 3, without parts to support undeveloped product. They AIR SHIPPED these 16,000 pound engines! We were making engine parts in our prototype shop. They stopped all new product development to support all the unforecasted orders they took. They lost money on every sale just to brag about sales vs. Caterpillar.

That was 25 years ago. Corporate America has gotten even worse since, as you've seen.

Sure you wanna work in corporate America?

 

[EdGs]

So much fo QC and ISO system, I guess. That is just unreal. With just a small bit of foresight, they could've made a killing, and had a large market share.

 

[HEMIMANN]

This is where I experienced executive narcissists 1st hand, I moved to 3 different positions in 10 years thinking we might outlast the owners like the last 2 owners, but they tripled down and got rid of the last of us originals. When we were canned they had managed to cut sales in half. They openly used our salaries to buy back more stock to prop up the price despite loss of market share so executives still got bonuses.
The destruction of American production for greedy idiots.

 

[CanuckRam1313]

I'm a generator service and sales guy myself. Now involved in full turnkey designs and project management. I was at Cummins Eastern Canada many moons ago and know exactly what you're saying!

I then migrated to Detroit Diesel where they had the DDC/MTU line and had a large prime power aggregate demand supply project in Ontario where 4 x 2.75MW Series 4000 monsters were paralleled together to provide 4 x 2.5MW, so 10MW total prime power output, and the issues experienced were epic.

Interesting story on this project. So, we were in Unit #2 (all four units were side by each in their own enclosures) and commissioning the units one by one with 4-hour full load tests each unit. As this unit starts to wind up the vacuum inside the room is increasing at an unusual rate. The louvers (intake and discharge) got stuck closed as there was a communication issue to have them open on start up in the logic programming (as we diagnosed after the fact).

Didn't the enclosure start to suck itself in like a can sinking into deep ocean water with 6 of us in there, and I ******* you not when I say we smashed that E-Stop really quickly but the emergency shut down wasn't set properly at the factory and it continued to run.

Our lead tech had to do some wire crossing (thankfully the controller was open and all wiring exposed) really quickly and got the unit to shut down. All of us a a little tickle in the drawers on that one afterwards...lol

 

[HEMIMANN]

I'm a generator service and sales guy myself. Now involved in full turnkey designs and project management. I was at Cummins Eastern Canada many moons ago and know exactly what you're saying!

I then migrated to Detroit Diesel where they had the DDC/MTU line and had a large prime power aggregate demand supply project in Ontario where 4 x 2.75MW Series 4000 monsters were paralleled together to provide 4 x 2.5MW, so 10MW total prime power output, and the issues experienced were epic.

Interesting story on this project. So, we were in Unit #2 (all four units were side by each in their own enclosures) and commissioning the units one by one with 4-hour full load tests each unit. As this unit starts to wind up the vacuum inside the room is increasing at an unusual rate. The louvers (intake and discharge) got stuck closed as there was a communication issue to have them open on start up in the logic programming (as we diagnosed after the fact).

Didn't the enclosure start to suck itself in like a can sinking into deep ocean water with 6 of us in there, and I ******* you not when I say we smashed that E-Stop really quickly but the emergency shut down wasn't set properly at the factory and it continued to run.

Our lead tech had to do some wire crossing (thankfully the controller was open and all wiring exposed) really quickly and got the unit to shut down. All of us a a little tickle in the drawers on that one afterwards...lol

Great story!

Did you know Benoit Parent @ CEC?

 

[CanuckRam1313]

Great story!

Did you know Benoit Parent @ CEC?

It was a real eye opener being in a can with a 20V4000 ramping up and imploding the enclosure from vacuum.

I did not know Benoit Parent, but I worked with Ben Macaro of CEC in Mississauga, Ontario. That man is a brilliant technical senior director/DFSE, and a decades long member of Cummins.

 

[EdGs]

Man, that's crazy. 2.5 million watts each?

You know those films where you see the people get too close to the jet engine intake?

The pressure must've been something else.

 

[CanuckRam1313]

Man, that's crazy. 2.5 million watts each?

You know those films where you see the people get too close to the jet engine intake?

The pressure must've been something else.

Incredible pressure! I was nervous, to say the least!


So, another generator story for y'all!

One of my techs was doing an annual service on a 16V92 Series engine (one of the best damn diesel engines ever made, but potential for danger is real with these ones...lol).

After he changes the oil and filters, does his checks, he fires it up to run it in preparation for the full load test, but he forgot to remove the piping for the turbo inlet (this is a must in preparation for IF something happens as anyone who knows these engines, knows you cover the turbo inlet to choke the engine of air to shut it down - it's the E-Stop, if you will).

Soooooo..... doesn't this engine go into mexican overdrive and take off (the Barber-Colman governors were known to be issues on these engines), with no way to stuff the engine to choke it, it starts singing, and these 2-stroke diesels can sing when oversped!

My tech RUNS out of the room (room configured in such a way that one has to go past the unit/engine to get to the generator room door to get in/out), and no sooner does he get to the door... BANG!!!!!!!! right out the side of the block came the engine guts... smashed into the cinderblock wall and took out an entire section of the wall, hot oil everywhere, smoke, and then a fire started....

Anyhooooo..... the fire was under control right away from the fire suppression system, but what a friggin mess, and that generator unit was done. Most importantly though is that my tech was okay! Although I believe his drawers were full, and for good reason!

The generator service industry is a dangerous one. You've got both mechanical and electrical dangers present, and one wrong move could cost a tech a lot.

 

[HEMIMANN]

Incredible pressure! I was nervous, to say the least!


So, another generator story for y'all!

One of my techs was doing an annual service on a 16V92 Series engine (one of the best damn diesel engines ever made, but potential for danger is real with these ones...lol).

After he changes the oil and filters, does his checks, he fires it up to run it in preparation for the full load test, but he forgot to remove the piping for the turbo inlet (this is a must in preparation for IF something happens as anyone who knows these engines, knows you cover the turbo inlet to choke the engine of air to shut it down - it's the E-Stop, if you will).

Soooooo..... doesn't this engine go into mexican overdrive and take off (the Barber-Colman governors were known to be issues on these engines), with no way to stuff the engine to choke it, it starts singing, and these 2-stroke diesels can sing when oversped!

My tech RUNS out of the room (room configured in such a way that one has to go past the unit/engine to get to the generator room door to get in/out), and no sooner does he get to the door... BANG!!!!!!!! right out the side of the block came the engine guts... smashed into the cinderblock wall and took out an entire section of the wall, hot oil everywhere, smoke, and then a fire started....

Anyhooooo..... the fire was under control right away from the fire suppression system, but what a friggin mess, and that generator unit was done. Most importantly though is that my tech was okay! Although I believe his drawers were full, and for good reason!

The generator service industry is a dangerous one. You've got both mechanical and electrical dangers present, and one wrong move could cost a tech a lot.

As well as chemical and thermal hazards!
Everything but nuclear, I used to say.

 

[DaveSharp]

You were lucky. Good thing the lead tech had tools instead of a clip board in hand.

 

[Hardracer]

These are the stories I like to hear/about about...real life happenings...glad everyone came out ok on those stories.