I have a 3208 cat n/a that absolutely refuses to run . ALL the known non start reasons have been checked and rechecked- fltrs.-solenoid- stuck shutdown-air in system etc. this engine ran fine when last run in april or may of this year when it was moved by me has been sitting since then. to my knowledge no one else has tried to start it. short of tearing it down I have done everything including some off the wall advice to get it going even shoved some 800 deg. air down its throat today still won`t fire except on ether . anyone with any ideas as to what could have gone wrong with it just sitting i would like to hear them cc
Stuck rack in the pump housing. Ran into this on a drill rig carrier 2 years ago.
Any smoke when you turn it over. Sounds as though it is not getting any fuel.
rack is free- very little smoke
Spinning up fast enough?
What RZucker said. You can take a little cover off on the pump, or else its through one of the either solenoid or the hole, I can't remember which right now, and pop it free with a screwdriver. They can get hung up from setting. (had this exact thing happen). I would probably crack a injector line to make sure you aren't getting fuel, which it sounds like. Then pop the little cover and free the arm. Then leave the line cracked until you get fuel. I'd have to see a drawing again to remember what the lever is under.
Can we assume you have verified you are getting plenty of fuel to the pump? Maybe get ahold of a primer can and push pressurized fuel to the pump?
If the pump looks like a little V-8, take the shutdown solenoid off and see if the plate it pushes on has any "spring" to it. If it's "dead" it has a stuck fuel rack on one side or another. Most times just tapping the plate with a plastic rod will free them up. It has to spring up when the solenoid retracts to let the engine have fuel. There are also a pair of plugs on the back of the pump that cover the rear of the racks a couple of light taps back there can help too.
have already done all this except maybe plug holes in back of pump ----- got plenty of fuel i`ll look for plugs tomorrow
Not sure if this will help but might give an idea of what is under that big cover plate on the top of pump. Problems like this is why I liked having a couple odd injectors laying around to hook up to a fuel line and crank engine over to see if there was any fuel being pushed out of the pump. Just don't get hand near the tip of injector while cranking engine over as fuel injected into skin can really ruin your day!
If you crack a injector line from the pump, before the injector, do you have fuel there? With pressure so its "squirting" as you are cranking it over?
update on the cat . opened it up - water-dirt-rust- rack loose and movable but just barely` 5 of the 8 plungers stuck up in the barrels hell of a mess filled the fuel cavity with kroil after sucking out the mess with a( turkey baster) took inj lines loose at pump filled barrels full of kroil . going to let it sit for a day or two and see if anything else will move. if not will have to change pump and most likely all inj.
ks sure appreciate this it helps a bunch. just found it but will help in resurrecting this thing . i have bunch of books on older cats but 3208 is not one of them. am going to school my self on this one and see if i can make it run again . apparently when i had it running last about 8 months ago it got full of trash and decided that was enough
Ouch. If all else is good, I think the pump units can be replaced with the housing on the engine. I think... never got that deep in to those pumps.
I removed the whole pump on mine for repair. It been quite a while, but I remember rotating the engine and locking the front in time with a pin, before removal. If you have trouble sourcing a pump PM me, I've still got a pump around.
it can be done little tricky but doable
will do if it comes to that` I have a total of 4 pumps including the one i`m working on but i dont know what shape they`re in` should have enough pieces to make one.
I seem to recall in one of those pages I posted it cautions against loosening the set screw that holds the lever to the shaft that raises and lowers the collars but sounds like you can change the individual pumps with the correct tooling to loosen them from the main body. Good luck and let us know what you fine. One word of caution would be to disconnect the intake so if something goes wrong on start up you can slap a piece of steel plate over the intake to choke the engine in the event it wants to over-speed. Just keep fingers clear of getting pinched!
thanks you can be sure i`ll have all important parts of me out of the way its snowing like crazy here right now so i won`t be messing with that motor for now
DO NOT.. repeat.. DO NOT loosen the set screws.!!! When u remove the top nut{bonnet} u wiggle the whole assembly lose & "scoop/tilt" the sleeve out of the control rack.. & reverse it to install.. IF your going to replace it w/ another from a "core" pump.. just measure the width of the plunger & MAKE SURE they're the same dimension. Cat has 2 or 3 diff. ones.. 7-7.5 & 8mm The larger plunger being for a turbo charged engine. & PAY ATTENSION to which way the metering sleeve is on the plunger.. it'll go on 2 ways.. but only 1 is correct.. You prob. wont have to replace it.. its just needs a good cleaning to free it up.. & start using an additive.. Good luck.
after sending the pump out for an over haul finaly got it back and am about ready to put it back in place. if engine has not been disturbed since pump was taken off i should be able to put timing pin in place and reinstall the pump with out resetting the engine timing am i correct or must everything be reset?
I would think so.. if the engine & pump was pinned before the pump was removed.. drop the pins back in & tighten it up..
thanks i`ve done this before but its been a while seems like that worked before
I thank they hand prime out the third injector out back on the left side. Leave all the lines a little loose on the injectors. Pump until you find fuel, on one of them, and tighten all the lines. Pump until hard and lock the hand pump. It should fire pretty quickly.
finaly got enough break in the weather and temps. to get this piece of stuff back together and running today
Good news,glad to hear you're running. And with the weather that we've been having lately- I'll say this much good about the 3208's, cold weather starting was never a issue.
Often wished I had been allowed to do some work on the 3208 we had at the quarry. It was in an old GMC single axle dump truck with snow plow and wing plow. Anything above freezing if you had halfway decent batteries in it it would start right up. Only problem is the smoke, raw unburned diesel smoke. I swear it was like you poured a pint of fuel oil in a hot frying pan and just let it smoke. You could run that truck for an hour or more pushing snow and it only got very slightly better. Thing seemed to have good power and ran smooth but OH! that smoke. Problem was the general attitude from upper management, truck was more of less free. Then there was the problem of can't work on it in winter as only important equipment was allowed to be worked on in off season and if it snows we have to have it to plow. Then in warmer weather "Why work on it now it's not going to snow so why worry about a snow plow!" It's the old "Can't fix the roof because it's raining and why worry about it to day it's not leaking!" Did I ever mention one of the main reasons for taking my retirement the day I hit 65?
I've been around a few that were the same way, Nasty smelling things that ruined visibility for 200-300 ft. But get them hot and they would run. One had a breather hose that went all the way to the rear axle because the blow by was so bad when it idled. But it put out decent power when it had to. They were an odd little engine as far as how they liked to perform.
The smoke on this one was coming out the exhaust for sure! Might not have been too bad if it was running down the road at 45 MPH but going slow in quarry the stink stayed right with you!
I will admit, I'm somewhat immune to the stinky diesel smoke. My wife has come down to the shop on many occasions when I've been running something with the doors shut in the winter, and she's coughing and hacking, eyes watering. "how can you guys even breathe in here- this is awful" type stuff. But I do know what you're saying, they do send smoke signals in the morning. That said, I did kind of fog up the valley a while back- I have a 60 series in this western star that's a little smoky on start up too...
A company I drove as a casual for in the 80’s had fleet of ford C series tractors- 3208’s, some turbo, some N/A. Visibility in the yard in the mornings was severely limited I have a little 7yd dump now w 3208 N/A- smoke on start-up and rattle of dual disc clutch reminds me of those days. Also why I’m following this thread...hoping I can remember some of this when the time comes for any repairs. She doesn’t get used often but, knock wood, still lights right off like you guys are saying. Darryl
I helped repower a charter fishing boat with a 3208, partly because with the wind from astern the smoke would make some of the passengers puke.
And if anyone thinks I just a bit too sensitive I spent many years working around old B81 and DM800 Macks with END707/711 no-turboed trucks. I thought they would smoke up the shop if you let them idle inside with doors closed. Those old Macks would be like fresh mountain air compared to that 3208!
it just needed a 32ft vertical stack
Yea but my house is less than a mile downwind of the quarry, not sure 32 feet would be enough!
fwiw I have all the pieces of a turboed 250 hp 3208 except the block. it was a name brand reman that had been sleeved in 3 cyl.& bored to 0.40 over size` 1or 2 of the sleeves did not hold. let water into the crankcase so was taken back out and sidelined
where exactly are you ?
Downwind of the quarry I just couldn't resist.
LOL maybe I should have asked what town is close by
Why you going to haul Crane Operators stinky truck over here? I'm just a few miles outside, to the west, of Syracuse NY.
Nothing like heavy rolling seas and diesel smoke to accompany the first morning beer for the greenhorns on a fishing trip. Many of them marine 3208s made some serious power.
They do indeed. We replaced it with a C7 so it must have been up in the 300+HP range.
I recall reading a Cat brochure that touted 430HP in a marine application for the 3208. Umm... Yeah... Right. Maybe.
Check it out
We've been there before ............ although we did find out that the engines in question were actually only 280 BHP. HeavyEquipmentForums
A lot of 3208s that smoke bad on startup can be drastically improved by advancing the timing. Around here where it does get cold I would not set a 3208 pin to pin. I wish I had video of some of the before and after settings. Doesn’t take much just a few degrees off stock setting. I’ll admit there are a lot of 3208s that just smoke all the time no matter how they’re set.
They were very popular in fire trucks around here "back in the day". Kept reasonably warm they hardly smoked more than anything else. If you were in the wrong gear and lugged they would roll a lot of black smoke but if the RPM was high they were clean. What they did not like was long idle time. Let one idle by the roadside for half an hour and it did not look like much was wrong but get back in and hammer down and they would puke enormous clouds of putrid blue-gray smoke until the top end warmed enough to burn off the loaded-up fuel. Never seen another diesel behave quite like that.
worked on one years ago that ran cold for too long and had a couple sticky exhaust valves. managed to go through the port and clean the exposed part of the stems and liberally soak with carbon remover. we sent it out and it worked ok- just lucky I guess. 3208 engines in New Holland combines were ok-easy to work on and ran well at constant rpm and load. combine engines are usually relatively low hr ( 5000 ) and are readily available at farm equipment wreckers and can be converted to other arrangement numbers to use in trucks etc. although there are serial # differences
witnessed a 3208 in a ford tandem dump truck putting 238 hp to the wheels on dyno` was a turboed eng after a fresh tune up don`t know what that would translate to flywheel hp . would guess 300 or better btw you guys should see what the one i just got back to life does at 9deg.cold start
not a chance . just trying to narrow down central ny.
Mmmm, love the smell of diesel in the morning.
Crane Operator Please don't start that truck when the wind is coming out of the southwest!
one important thing to check on 3208 engines is the pcv hose that goes to the intake. I had one that was dusted before I got it due to the hose being cracked. no telling how long it had been run like that. the crack was under the 90 degree section but the oily dirt was the giveaway. it made 10000 hrs but was always an oil burner- if it was pulling hard it would use a gallon a day