I work on a diesel electric drive ship and we have three Caterpillar 3516s that we use as our main gen-sets.
I just went down to light one off and found that the oil level on the dip stick was almost six inches above normal, which equaled to almost a half full oil sump.
Recently a tune-up was done on that engine and it has only about one hour of running time on it since then. During that one hour running time/test of our tune up everything checked out to be just fine. Good cylinder exhaust temps…etc.
Now to find out where the oil level rise has come from im thinking its Fuel Oil but I am not sure and also not sure what went wrong in our tune-up to cause this as we do these every 2000 hours on our Main Generators and Ship Service Generators:
Things to check off or at least that I have so far…
J/W head tank level which appears to be fine and no signs of the level dropping or dropped.
L/O inlet valves closed (one was slightly cracked open but only by a hairline crack or so basiclly not enough for me think that is the problem.)
Has anyone else had this problem? Any help or suggestion would be greatly appriciated, Thank you!
[QUOTE=SailorRae;132668]I work on a diesel electric drive ship and we have three Caterpillar 3516s that we use as our main gen-sets.
I just went down to light one off and found that the oil level on the dip stick was almost six inches above normal, which equaled to almost a half full oil sump.
Recently a tune-up was done on that engine and it has only about one hour of running time on it since then. During that one hour running time/test of our tune up everything checked out to be just fine. Good cylinder exhaust temps…etc.
Now to find out where the oil level rise has come from im thinking its Fuel Oil but I am not sure and also not sure what went wrong in our tune-up to cause this as we do these every 2000 hours on our Main Generators and Ship Service Generators:
Things to check off or at least that I have so far…
J/W head tank level which appears to be fine and no signs of the level dropping or dropped.
L/O inlet valves closed (one was slightly cracked open but only by a hairline crack or so basiclly not enough for me think that is the problem.)
Has anyone else had this problem? Any help or suggestion would be greatly appriciated, Thank you![/QUOTE]
On a DD 3-53 the engineer in the family discovered that the injector fuel lines under the valve cover were loose and leaking FO. Same thing, high level of LO.
I have no idea if this applies to your situation or not.
Fuel contamination, if the oil is emulsified it would more than likely be water. no emulsification the only other suspect would be fuel.
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The dip stick has 2 sides, one for at idle with warm oil and the other stopped. I had an oiler who kept filling the sump to the stopped mark while the engine was running. When I checked the oil before starting it was always too high. I did a school call on the correct use of a dip stick.
On a few of our 3512’s we run a hydraulic pump off the fwd end and have had the seals on the pump go out therefor filling the engine w/ hydraulic oil. You prob don’t have a pump but just thought I would throw it out there
Some of those 35 series (maybe all?) have a shitty aspect on the water pump where rather than weep when the seals go, the water will weep into the engine (timing gear area—not an engineer so excuse my terminology) . Cat stuffed some kind of material in the weep holes leaving the coolant a worse path to exit. But that as previously said would be an obvious mess. I say fuel!
Don’t you just love the way someone will come on here, post a question, and never return? No follow-up info, no thanks for the replies just one post and disappear.
To be DP2, thrusters will have to be operable during a power failure, mechanical lube pumps are installed on the thruster engines to keep them running, loss of servo pressure will kill the engine to prevent damage to the gear. The mechanical pump seal can leak gear oil into the sump, You will probably get a low servo oil level alarm, that is something else to look at, if a mechanical pump is installed. Being a DE vessel more than likely non was installed as if you lose power you’re DIW anyway. I’m chief on a DE with four 3512c engines, 4160kw, I really like the DE boats.
This is a no brainer, the little black bottles rolling around the deck under your desk are for this particular dilemma. Before you do anything take a oil sample and send it in for analysis. If you have that much fuel in the lube oil it is pretty hard to miss the smell, it will also be very thin, if you pour it compared to a sample from one of the other gensets it will be more like water. As stated above common cause after a large service would be fittings leaking in a valve cover or a HP FO pump seal failure. Based on what you stated about the fill valve I think that is the more likely culprit. if the generators are on a common LO fill manifold and the fill valve was cracked open a tiny bit while oil was added to another unit, or the fill pump was not isolated, or even worse its a gravity feed and it wasn’t isolated it would account for the extra oil.
Besides the suggestions above, a simple sample test is always a quick way to rule something out. I know not all ships will have a viscosity kit (easy check for fuel contamination). But water-in-oil test kits are pretty cheap and you really should keep one in stock. You can tell in a few minutes if you have a problem rather than waiting for a shoreside sample result.
[QUOTE=SailorRae;132668]I work on a diesel electric drive ship and we have three Caterpillar 3516s that we use as our main gen-sets.
I just went down to light one off and found that the oil level on the dip stick was almost six inches above normal, which equaled to almost a half full oil sump.
Recently a tune-up was done on that engine and it has only about one hour of running time on it since then. During that one hour running time/test of our tune up everything checked out to be just fine. Good cylinder exhaust temps…etc.
Now to find out where the oil level rise has come from im thinking its Fuel Oil but I am not sure and also not sure what went wrong in our tune-up to cause this as we do these every 2000 hours on our Main Generators and Ship Service Generators:
Things to check off or at least that I have so far…
J/W head tank level which appears to be fine and no signs of the level dropping or dropped.
L/O inlet valves closed (one was slightly cracked open but only by a hairline crack or so basiclly not enough for me think that is the problem.)
Has anyone else had this problem? Any help or suggestion would be greatly appriciated, Thank you![/QUOTE]
Any news on what caused the problem?, Just like to know.
Sorry everyone, im new on here at the time I posted this I had very limitted internet connection and for some reason I wasnt getting any noticifcations of replys. I just logged in again for the second time ever and saw all of these. I will make sure to check this now more frequentily.
First, I just wanted to say THANK YOU VERY MUCH for all of your replys and help!
Also, for those of you wondering what the cause was:
The L/O that was purchased was the wrong kind and also bad. We purchaesd 2000 gallons from Brazil. The viscosity of it was extreamly less than the required and very much resembled F/O.
At the time I took samples from everything I possiby could to compare and try to figure out the unexplianed high level.
Turns out when the wipers changed the oil as part of the 1000 hour at the same time I did the 2000 hour they did not close all of the valves tight. My chief on their insisted on to leaving all valves open in the system from the L/O tank at all times, past the pump, and only close one single ball valve on the fill side of the engine. When the wipers closed the ball valve it looked closed to the eye but was actually still slightly open just enough to let the very think L/O pass flood the engine. Which it did due to the head pressure from the L/O tank.
Quite embarassing and im bummed I dont have a better educational story for you all, but I can say this: Its important for whoever takes on the L/O to make sure it is the right product and not just assume and also make sure to close all valves in any system and correctly.
