Goose My Semi has been in the shop for ten expensive days for a bizzare little problem..I thought some of oyu might get a kick out of how a little wierd vibration turns out to be the key to a problem. Truck has a 500 HP Detroit diesel engine, at 1600 rpm (about 75 miles per hour) there was this wierd harmonic vibration made the whole cab and sleeper buzz (like dual exhaust on a car when you have it mounted to the frame with no rubber). Well the Engine had started shelling 400 dollar water pumps every three days.. now this pump has a spring loaded ceramic seal in it and this seal was turning to powder.. turns out after all the 90 dollar an hour experts told me that this vibration didnt have anything to do with it but that they couldnt find anything wrong either. I said fine find the vibration .. turns out the "bull Gear" (think 18" cam gear) that drives all the accesories (like the water pump) was out of blalnce.. Go figure. Just goes to show..the first thing to do about a problem is look and listen and think!.. I am amazed at the wierd little connections in the mechanical world.. but in hindsight it shook all the hoses apart on the front of the engine as well as the alternator an A/C compressor guess it was trying to tell me something ehh?
Mudrat DAMN!!! And how does an 18 INCH :shock: :shock: :shock: cam gear become unbalanced in a situation like this??? Common y'all VOTE!!! We have 7 total and are down on the second page You will now be returned to the regularly scheduled thread ....
Goose Well I guess I should splain better.. It is actually an Idler gear. It is driven from the crank and is bolted to the block on a bearing, all other gears and acc drive off of it. So in essence what happened is at 800,000 miles this bearing failed (started to fail) setting up a harmonic vibration throughout the gear train, which as these large thick gears vibrated they began to flex and began trying to "climb" over one another and since this ceramic seal is spring loaded against one another, the vibrating and the spring worked together to beat the seals into powder. But I must give credit. When this service manager at Stuart and Stevenson heard what I had to say about this vibration. he pulled the bullheaded mechanic off the Job and put another guy on it, and this problem went to the engineers at Detroit Diesel.. so They really took care of me.. Course they realize that truck cost me 1500 dollars a day when it is sitting.. But you know If they had just listened three weeks ago when I told them about it the first time...nahhh.
Lifted79CJ7 I always thought it would be fun to turn some wrenches on a Big Rig - especially after that Monster Garage where Jessie James turned that truck into a trike. Man, I can't believe how BIG those motors are!! I did get to drive a big rig once...was in Vegas to boot. Ahhhhh how I love Vegas!!
rollen dean montoya ouch! i drove a "B"train from spokane wa. to medford or. that was fun. 105,500 lbs when loaded.panic stops are non existant.
Goose Well Rollen, I have 50,100 lbs of 2 7/8 pipe for an oil rig on.. nervous work .. from Houston to Thermopolis Wyoming.. This stuff moves around, but hey if it was easy everyone would do it.. Just a side note, We have been hauling a lot of drilling mud and pipe to the northern and western states, These rigs are going like crazy..I am guessing that the domestic drilling has been waiting for the price to get over that 60, mark.. now they can't drill fast enough. I wouldn't be surprised if the price of oil keeps going up.. these guys know something we dont. and they are putting their money into holes in the ground.
73hornut rollen dean montoya wroteouch! i drove a "B"train from spokane wa. to medford or. that was fun. 105,500 lbs when loaded.panic stops are non existant. Rollen, I work in central point and live in gold hill. Honk next time your rollen through, and I'll wave real big! :lo1l:
Lifted79CJ7 Have you guys ever seen those shows about the trucks in Australia that have some ungodly amount of trailers and horsepower speeding through the dessert???? Pretty cool!
73hornut Lifted79CJ7 wroteHave you guys ever seen those shows about the trucks in Australia that have some ungodly amount of trailers and horsepower speeding through the dessert???? Pretty cool! Ya, built to run at 80 on dirt roads.
tufcj We had an old (early 50s) Allis-Chalmers farm tractor. About twice per year, it would break the flyweights on the governor and the engine would instantly go to full throttle, no way to shut it down except shut the ignition off. Did it for probably 10 years, and the engine was rebuilt (freshened, rings, bearings, gaskets) about every other year. One year during the rebuild, I noticed a small chip on about 3 consecutive teeth on the cam gear, which also drove the governor. Swapped that gear, and it never broke another governor, we didn't change anything else. The chips were tiny, and didn't even look to be in the contact area of the tooth. You just never know. Bob tufcj
rollen dean montoya i only drive when i go to my dads and his neighbor needs the 2nd truck. usually picking up 2x6's in medford to take up to spokane wa. other than that i help build the ultimate flying truck and sometimes bomber the C-17 globemaster III.
