Another wrecked engine

[Morrisman]

There's a knackered 404d-22 in a 20yo JCB Teletruk where I'm working.
It was working but to my ear rather clattery & rough when I started there back in the summer, slow to rev up & I thought it had a bit of blue smoke.
Hydraulics were slow, it picked up revs slowly & basically ran like a bag of carp. It was also "breathing" quite a bit, pushing oil mist out the oil filler cap.

Owner insisted it was fine, & asked me to service it (Saying he'd paid 2k not that long hence to have the engine "overhauled" - well I looked online for the price of the overhaul kit parts & they were 1.8k alone - so that told me all I needed to know).
I reckoned it was clapped & low compression - but he wouldn't have it (he's ex REME as well).

I changes oil, filters, cleaned out the hydraulic system & replaced the oil & filter, adjusted the valve clearances. It ran better, but not that much better.
In a matter of maybe 2-months it got progressively worse, more smoky & clattery, harder to start.... but he insisted the smoke & rough running was just due to an injector, & the poor starting down to glow plugs.
(I tested the GP's & all 4 were OK, & it was breathjng so hard it was blasting smoke & oil from the filler, remove the dipstick on idle amd it blew smoke & oil drops out, & using oil excessively now).
l told him again IMO him it was forked - but he kept using it.

It's now been sitting dead as a boat anchor I the yard for the last 3-months..

I remember when I worked on a Russian built cold war era seismic vessel years ago. I was 'supervising' 2 Russian mechanics looking after 2000psi 1800cfm LMS air compressors. My company had nowhere else to put me, the industry was on a down turn, so I was essentially a spare body. I even slept in the ships hospital as there was no spare cabin for me.

The compressor engines ran a bit rough, and one would not pull full operating rpm properly. I asked about maintenance procedures and records, and was assured these Russian guys knew what they were doing, and I was basically told to keep my nose out.

My company eventually had a team of guys come out to the ship in Singapore, and they did a full rebuild on the one 12v/71 that wouldn't rev properly. After a weeks work and a $100,000 bill it was run up, warmed up for a while, then put under load..... and still wouldn't pull full rpm.

I put my foot down and got the engine overhaul guys to shut it down and pull the air filters off. When it was fired up it sound different, and surprise surprise, it pulled full rpm with glee!

I had been secretly digging through the spares store, of which there was very little, and found two boxed up air filters, both were used and dirty. Their idea of changing air filters was to blow them out with an airline and put the used ones back in the stores, and get the other two out. How long that had been going on is anybody's guess.

The Russian guys, nice enough chaps, both from Azerbaijan, would throw nothing away, all used spares were kept, old gaskets, broken parts, stripped bolts, everything was stashed away somewhere. I guess years of 'austerity' in the collapsed USSR had done that to them.

 

[slim_boy_fat]

There's a knackered 404d-22 in a 20yo JCB Teletruk where I'm working.
It was working but to my ear rather clattery & rough when I started there back in the summer, slow to rev up & I thought it had a bit of blue smoke.
Hydraulics were slow, it picked up revs slowly & basically ran like a bag of carp. It was also "breathing" quite a bit, pushing oil mist out the oil filler cap.

Owner insisted it was fine, & asked me to service it (Saying he'd paid 2k not that long hence to have the engine "overhauled" - well I looked online for the price of the overhaul kit parts & they were 1.8k alone - so that told me all I needed to know).
I reckoned it was clapped & low compression - but he wouldn't have it (he's ex REME as well).

I changes oil, filters, cleaned out the hydraulic system & replaced the oil & filter, adjusted the valve clearances. It ran better, but not that much better.
In a matter of maybe 2-months it got progressively worse, more smoky & clattery, harder to start.... but he insisted the smoke & rough running was just due to an injector, & the poor starting down to glow plugs.
(I tested the GP's & all 4 were OK, & it was breathjng so hard it was blasting smoke & oil from the filler, remove the dipstick on idle amd it blew smoke & oil drops out, & using oil excessively now).
l told him again IMO him it was forked - but he kept using it.

It's now been sitting dead as a boat anchor I the yard for the last 3-months..

Just be careful it doesn't somehow turn out to be your fault, as "it was fine before he worked on it"....

 

[Norsk]

Unfortunately there isn't a common sense or mechanical sympathy app.

Bob

One of the biggest reasons behind me not having employees any longer,was their abuse and misuse of gear.

Like alot of us,when I started out had I broken something on purpose of misuse it came out of my wages or I would have gotten the sack.

Now it's a ticktock or Instagram story.

 

[8ob]

Keeps me in work. And fortunately I love rebuilding engines this one will be rebored 0.5mm oversize. Bottom end is perfect,big end and mains still in tolerance not bad for nearly 10,000 hours. Got to have a new cylinder head though as it's cracked.

You can get rebuild kits for these engine that include pistons,liners,gaskets and shells for about £500.


Bob

 

[Trevorleach]

WTF? i laugh out loud when I see those videos. Can it just be American stupidity, surely a whole nation can't be that thick? Frightening to be sharing road space with some of those horrors

Well they voted in trump then biden, so yes I would say they are all that daft!

My old dad told me many years ago, what happens over there eventually happens over here, take a look around at the amount of over weight people on tv and in real life, then start to pay attention to how daft some people are.

 

[Trevorleach]

Just rolled in uk version

 

[Trevorleach]

Last lot.

 

[Blobber]

Last lot.

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Thats scary to think stuff like thats trucking around our roads

 

[Trevorleach]

Thats scary to think stuff like thats trucking around our roads

Many many more, all from one company that people would never dream run that kind of carp.
After a while I stopped taking pics as it was just an everyday thing.
Trailers falling off the trucks in the yard, brake drums just appearing in the yard, then whole site shut down until source of drum was found.
People getting trapped between trucks and the loading bays as they backed onto the loading ramps, trucks getting pulled off the bays as people were in the trailer with electric pallet trucks loading them up, both events happened more than once when I was there.

 

[Morrisman]

Just be careful it doesn't somehow turn out to be your fault, as "it was fine before he worked on it"....

That's the first thing that sprang to mind for me too.

 

[RichardM]

Looks like the maintenance schedules need to be re-evaluated.

 

[Smallfry]

Just rolled in uk version

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I see a lot of German high performance cars with tyre wear like that, also same cars with budget tyres

 

[Smallfry]

I think it is fair to say that this sort of thing is not confined to the "less academic", there are a lot of very well educated and supposedly intelligent people who will treat machinery, tools, and electrical things this way, and are dumbfounded when they fail.

My son in law for instance.

 

[Trevorleach]

Just rolled in uk version

I see a lot of German high performance cars with tyre wear like that, also same cars with budget tyres

They were all hgvs, much simpler suspension on the hgvs.

 

[Bornfree]

You can get rebuild kits for these engine that include pistons,liners,gaskets and shells for about £500.


Bob

They must be thin wall bore to fit liners as these are direct bored block engines.

 

[Matchless]

WTF? i laugh out loud when I see those videos. Can it just be American stupidity, surely a whole nation can't be that thick? Frightening to be sharing road space with some of those horrors

I don't believe they have MOT tests in most states

 

[Tinbasherdan]

They must be thin wall bore to fit liners as these are direct bored block engines.

Much like the Cummins b series, I imagine they can be over bored and sleeved back to std. had it done by a cracking old bloke based in Stockport that does in situ boring. Turned up, gave me grief for 3 hours, ate a bacon sarnie and charged me 150 quid for it all including supplying the sleeve

 

[redlig]

WTF? i laugh out loud when I see those videos. Can it just be American stupidity, surely a whole nation can't be that thick? Frightening to be sharing road space with some of those horrors

sharing road space ??? We share the same air!!

 

[8ob]

They must be thin wall bore to fit liners as these are direct bored block engines.

Its the way I would go, you can never be sure the block has not got hairline fractures in it when they have been cooked like that. I would bore and liner it, then face off the deck because that is bound to be all over the place, sort out piston height to suit.

Pardon our interruption...

Bob

 

[chrisg3103]

Just had my little Kubota engine rebored, looks like it's a liner engine but was advised it's easier and cheaper to just take 0.5 off if it's not had anything horrible done to it. £216 with pistons, not too bad I think.
Proper old machine shop with folk who have done it for years, but moved with the times with online ordering and whatnot. guy was saying he's been there since the 70's but he's still the new boy! Going through to pickup the engine there was a traction engine boiler in the workshop with associated gubbins, stone in the crank grinder was massive! Wish I got some pictures. Anyway, jem engines in Falkirk, nice guys, not very local for you though