Komatsu 830E Haul Truck Engine
A Brief History of events- The Komatsu truck fleet are operating under a maintenance service contract fully managed by Komatsu Australia Limited, including oil sampling utilizing their own oil lab, the engines are supplied and managed through MTU-Detroit Australia.
- Dingo were approached by Customer to also manage the oil samples for the engines only, on the Komatsu truck fleet in August 2005.
- During the first five months of this engine being fitted it had a known problem of coolant entering the engine oil, and was subject to numerous diagnostic efforts by MTU-Detroit and Komatsu, including pressuring the coolant system, boroscopes, black light and dye tests etc.
- By the time Dingo and Oil Test had started analyzing the results it was deemed that all possible diagnostic efforts had been exhausted.
742 Truck Engine Stats
• Fitted on 14-03-2005
• Hours Fitted 34,234.
• Budget life 25,000 hrs.
• Component Cost $420,000 exchange
• Duration in hours to change 59
• Budgeted Hourly Rate $16.80
• Current Remaining life 18325 hrs.
• Current Remaining Value $306,600.00
What did the Oil Analysis Show?
The oil results showed continuous levels of Sodium, indicating coolant entry into the oil. All other predictors were within the limits of the three different trending software groups, KOWA (Komatsu), OIL TEST, and Dingo Fleet Oil. Dingo/Customer/MTU had developed, and issued, a detailed standard job, outlining the diagnostic steps to take in the pursuit of coolant entry.
• In November Dingo had noticed a slight increase in Soot, it was still well within the limits, but it was the only other predictor that was on the move, albeit ever so slowly. With these particular engines having water cooled exhaust manifolds it was first suggested to inspect the cylinder heads for cracks, as the bulk of the coolant would be blowing out of the exhaust.
• By January/February wear metals were starting to trend upwards, but were erratic. Oil and filter change frequencies were reduced to once weekly and sampling twice weekly.
• In Feb/March Dingo had issued another detailed standard job and also instructed site personnel to extract some carbon scrapes from the exhaust's of 742 and also from a control engine that was healthy, in this case it was unit 733. The results came back from Oil Test confirming a large presence of sodium in the exhaust of 742, and zero presence in 733.
• By April/May sodium had accelerated to critical levels over 2300ppm, Dingo issued a third detailed standard job to aid in the diagnostics and another set of exhaust scrape samples were taken, this time one from each exhaust bank on 742. The test were conclusive that the left bank ,'A' bank, was the problem as large amounts of sodium were detected.
• On the 26th of May a boroscope was performed on the left bank and it was found that six out of the eight heads were cracked, as a precaution all eight cylinder heads were changed out. The engine had achieved 6675 hours.
NOTE: For further details on the oil analysis results and management processes, or soot sample results and testing,
please see Mick O'Connor Dingo Maintenance Systems.moconnor@dingo.com
The bottom line:
• Engine had spent the first 27%, (6675hrs), of it's life in exception.
• Remaining value: $274,600.00
•$306,600.00, assuming engine achieves budgeted life
• Minus $32,000.00 replacement costs of eight cylinder heads
• Downtime saved: 11hrs
• 59 hours of downtime was avoided, by not having to replace the engine.
• Minus 48 hrs duration to replace eight cylinder heads
• A beneficial result through oil analysis has confirmed to site personnel, that it really does work!
• By thinking outside the square and employing different technologies, we as a team, have avoided a certain catastrophic failure.
• Through team work, good communication, vigilance and some degree of patience the result was a huge saving.
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