Starting Engines

Rick and a few others alluded to it...if you start your engines once a week or so...get them up beyond a cold idle and you are probably OK...you are probably OK to NOT run your engines for months if the oil was changed and you block off the exhaust and intake openings to reduce the moisture in the engine while it sits.

Either extreme is probably bad...a start and oil pressure with no temp increase and shutting them down on a regular basis or letting them sit for years without a prescribed "long term storage" procedure. Short of those and reasonable knowledge covered here and the chances your engine will die of something else is probably true.

Hey I have a solution reference the OP's topic. And it is a "knock out" punch. Everyone get their pen and paper so they can write it down. Two words:

Block Heaters!!!!

THE END!

And reference all of the other banter....I announced my "opinion" when I voiced it. I also provided a random sample to support my argument. Factual data.

One more thing for SomeTexan. If you know 6BTs and their marine application so well, there is a market out there and money to be made. Right now, Seaboard Marine owns it!!! Before you bestow upon us your expertise, I would challenge you to educate yourself on all things Cummins Marine!!! Tony Athens has been kind enough to document his life of experiences with these engines and share them with us. Again, if you care to read up on the MARINE side of these engines please go to this link and be enlightened.

Tony's Tips - Information about Marine Diesel Engines and Boats from Tony Athens

Baker said:

Two words: Block Heaters!!!! THE END!

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Block heaters work great on my standby generators. Two 1 megawatt Cats sitting on a tank with a days supply of diesel, 1650 gallons of it. From not running to 1800 rpm full load in less than 10 seconds. Darn things will even send me an email when they want something

Baker said:

Tony's Tips - Information about Marine Diesel Engines and Boats from Tony Athens

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Thanks for this link, some very helpful information there.

-Mike (a 'happy' Cummins owner)

KJ said:

As I’m reading the posts I'm trying to determine what is fact, and what is opinion ... (except Rick B, he tells you when it’s his opinion) or just plain fiction.

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That's just because I'm such a fair and reasonable kind of guy ...

Greetings,
"That's just because I'm such a fair and reasonable kind of guy ..."

SomeTexan said:

RickB, 1, you would be surprised how much heat is added by the injection pump. Compressing anything creates heat. When you are talking over 1000psi, doubling temp isn't uncommon. But, it's under pressure, it won't vaporize.

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The compressibility of gasses is described by the ideal gas laws pv=nrt. The laws for fluids are different due to the fact that the molecules are closer and not moving at speeds defined by van der walls equations. W/o getting into a physics discussion ponder this link for a while if you choose and then perhaps we can all decide whether to start or pickle an engine for the winter. http://www.chem.purdue.edu/gchelp/liquids/teffect.html btw you have made some great contributions to this discussion.

Via iPad using Trawler

Tom.B said:

Now THAT I would like to see!!!

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It might be a couple of days before I can arrange a cold engine to video but in the meantime, take a look at these photos of a running engines.

One pic shows the IR view, the other shows the visual image of the same photo.

Note that the temperature of the injection pumps and fuel lines are (for practical purposes) no greater than the parts they are attached to. The pumps certainly add a degree or so but that is to be expected of any operating machine with moving parts. The hot bright background is a generator engine that has been running for several hours.

The smaller engine is a generator that has been running for several hours at about twice the rpm as the main engine.

I will let the temperatures speak for themselves.

A cold front rolled through last night it is 37* here.
I had to laugh early this morning when I heard an announcer on tv telling folks it is not a good idea to let their car engines idle to "warm them up" that they may be damaging the engine by doing so. HERE WE GO AGAIN!

Our ancient DD 6-71 flows large amounts of fuel to cool the injectors, which ARE the injection pump on a DD .

The tanks are small 100G each , and with a flow scan can operate with 90G used then switch.

As we cruise at 3GPH or less the last 10G in the tank may have been thru the engine 200 times .
The tank does get warm , but one can still hold a hand to it , so as guess would be below 125F , where hurt starts.

Using fuel as injector or injector pump cooling is no big deal as the injection pump is at engine operating temp, usually under 200F.

The huge surface area of most tanks is great for cooling , tho I do not know how well a modern plastic tank, foamed in place would fare.

Steve said:

A cold front rolled through last night it is 37* here.
I had to laugh early this morning when I heard an announcer on tv telling folks it is not a good idea to let their car engines idle to "warm them up" that they may be damaging the engine by doing so. HERE WE GO AGAIN!

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That's funny Steve. It's 50 here in western Washington and 45 in Thorne Bay Alaska.

A balmy 48 in Grand Coulee!