Originally Posted by AGHRMatt:
Originally Posted by OGR Webmaster:
That's not a turbo failure. That's a diesel running on its own lube oil. The "heartbeat" Farmer Bill refers to is the sound of the single cylinder in the engine that has a problem. It could be a broken ring allowing lube oil into the cylinder or some other failure that is allowing enough lube oil into the cylnder to act as fuel and keep the engine running.
This is a potential runaway situation, where even shutting off the fuel to the emgine won't stop it because it's running on its own "internal" fuel...the lube oil. The only way to stop the engine is to cut off the supply of air. That is almost impossible to do on a big diesel like this.
Does the crankcase oil leak into the intake manifolds from the intake valve in the bad cylinder (and thus "fuel" the other cylinders)? I was thinking that the one bad cylinder wouldn't have sufficient power to keep the engine running.
As Rich said it's a blown piston ring. High pressure lube oil is constantly forced into the piston wall/cylinder area and the top ring that is designed to stop it from reaching the combustion area has failed. I would also assume the engineer or conductor has enabled the emergency fuel cut off by the the end of the video so what you hear is that single cylinder running and the excess uncombusted lube oil being burned through the exhaust. As it is a mechanical pump being run by the rotating crank it will not shut off.
I think (do not quote me on this) the new GE units have electric lube oil pumps for this exact reason.
