CAT Problem

A place to exchanges questions and ideas of a technical / procedural nature. Go ahead, try to stomp us !
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JK
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by JK »

There is so much aluminum in the Cats, you have to use the Cat antifreeze to prevent those sort of issues.
I had a Cat gen that auto started but never caught. As it spun down, it tried to restart in the very tiny instant of time when the engine kicks backward before it comes to a complete rest. Dam thing started in reverse. Virtually destroyed it before it was shutdown. 36 years and never heard of it, I should have bought a lotto ticket. The CE called me at home, almost in tears as he was getting the ship ready to sail for docking. I think we had to put a cat in a box on the aft deck and run cables down to the board, (or that might have been another ship we did that on because of gen issues )
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JollyJack
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by JollyJack »

I always figgered that Cats were the biggest pieces of dogcrap ever designed to sell spare parts.......then I worked on Cummins......
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Merlyn
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by Merlyn »

JJ, You should have been over here when the Leyland 12 litre 510 engine came out, the headless wonder! To access the valves you had to take the crank and Pistons out, biggest load of kack ever invented engine wise. Always in major trouble crank and liner wise, there always seemed to be one in the workshop stripped, no head to whip off here! If your other standby gen set was one of these best thing you could do was to jump ship. Total nightmare all round. You don't know what you missed out on being over there!
Remembering The Good Old days, when Chiefs stood watches and all Torque settings were F.T.
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JK
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by JK »

LOL Merlyn, after Paxmans, who leak oil like a cut artery, Cats aren't bad. You have to be absolutely scrupulous on the maintenance wich goes by fuel burnt and not to overload them. When they die, it is spectacular, it is to the crank and beyond.
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Merlyn
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by Merlyn »

Rod out the side jobby situation then, your CAT that ran backwards reminded me of the time when injection pumps were fitted with an anti reversing spring to prevent this happening. The old Perkins would sometimes run backwards seemingly with no damage caused. Weird seeing exhaust fumes coming out the air cleaner snorting and going. Now I am thinking, what about common rail engines with the ECU controlling the injection timing? Would they in their wisdom not allow this to happen? Not as yet heard of one running backwards. We mustn't forget that we have had multi stage injection cycles on one revolution, eight stages of before, after and in case of not being unusuall here. And all controlled in a lot of cases by ceramic stacks in the injectors. Who would ever thought of that? What's next?
Remembering The Good Old days, when Chiefs stood watches and all Torque settings were F.T.
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JK
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by JK »

I sailed briefly on a ship with 7 cylinder reversing Cooper Bessemers. I went there after being on the steam job. When they started the mains for the first time, I stepped behind the big 3rd engineer. I thought the thing was going to come apart with the banging and crashing. It caught on 1 or 2 cylinders, tried to rotate on the bed plate then caught.

Pre-ISM, I had her then. Bridge control job, this ship had taken more then one Captain to their knees when it didn't reverse and go astern.

All of the piping had little soup cans hanging below the joints, it leaked so bad. They collected all the oil and dumped it back in the sump tank.
When they were maneuvering you could bump the rack to give more fuel to get it started, but bump the right way or she'll stall.
It never happened to me because I was only there 2 weeks, every once in awhile it would run backwards with exhaust pouring through the intake.
Previous to this, the Captain, who had been ashore for 2 years, was approaching their home dock. He throws the telegraphs astern and.....nothing. Cleaned out all the new cribbing LOL

I eventually returned to the steamer, we were alongside at the shipyard for boiler cleaning. Myself and one of the other engineers were on the aft deck at tea time, when this ship appeared, heading in like a bat out of hell to tie up behind us. I commented to the other engineer that we may not have to worry about refit.
Huh?
If that thing doesn't go astern he's going to sink us. The other fellow started laughing because he worked on it for a stretch.
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Merlyn
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Re: CAT Problem

Post by Merlyn »

A few years ago we had in our harbour a Norwegian small freighter who, when manuevering to come alongside had a rack bar jam up and a stop control non operative either from the bridge or in the E/R. The ship steamed about half a mile up the harbour out of control hitting several fancy yachts on the way, stopping only when it collided head onto the harbour wall. Lot of damage done. We made up an electric over air stop control after removing and repairing the injection pump. Sea trialling was fun, every valve and control was in Norwegian speak!
Remembering The Good Old days, when Chiefs stood watches and all Torque settings were F.T.
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