I was called out by a customer on a 3-53 Detroit 3 days ago. I didn't get to the machine until yesterday since it has been crazy hectic here. I was told that this machine had been running on this job (wasn't told exactly when) and that for some reason their mechanic had decided it needed fuel filters. The owner then told me that the machine had been down for 2 weeks while his mechanic had been screwing with it, and thought all he had done was mess with the fuel lines...….Below is a few pics of what I found when I got there. As you can see, there is one of the fuel filters off its base and all the fuel lines have been removed or altered. I was told that the mechanic had installed a new fuel supply pump with no results. A nice pile of fittings with some damaged and no restricted fitting at all.
This is the return line lying on the ground. LOL So I get to work building new fuel lines, added a R70 fitting to the cylinder head and pulled the secondary filter while searching for the primary filter. The fuel in the secondary was varnished badly, so I checked the fuel tank...….same thing. Start draining the fuel tank into a 55 gallon drum. Once the tank drained, I added 15 gallons of fresh fuel and begin the bleeding process. Spin the engine over several times......no fuel flow.
Yes, there is a new fuel supply pump but I pull it anyway...…...found a stripped drive coupler on the governor side. So I install a new drive coupler, bolt the pump back up, and off we go to bleeding again. I start cranking the engine and WAHLAAAAA...……..great fuel flow out the secondary so I installed the bleed plug and am now ready to build fuel pressure and fire this dam thing up.
Here is where it gets interesting! I start cranking the engine, it coughs a couple of times, then all of a sudden it climbs to the moon. I am standing there with my remote starter in my hand, reach over to the emergency blower flap only to find out there isn't one. This engine is just skyrocketing out of control and I am standing right next to it, less than 2 feet away. I then realize the only tool I have there that might work is a needle nose pair of vise grips so I grab those. While I am adjusting the vise grips to pinch off the fuel line, about 50 years of my life flash through my mind. I am pretty much convinced at this point that the engine is coming apart and I was trying to decide "should I just get away from it?...….or keep trying my best to get this engine shut down?" I finally get the vise grips adjusted (seemed like it took forever) and pinch off the line. It seems like an eternity after that. I keep standing there waiting for it to start choking and nothing. Figuring I had lost it, I turned around to start to bail and I hard it cough. I turned back around and said "EFF IT" and started yanking on the vise grips until it ripped the fuel line off. Engine starts to choke out and finally, after what seemed forever, died out. So...…….I am standing there, covered with diesel fuel from the pressure spray and the engine fan blowing it all over me, fuel in my eyes where I cant see...…….being pissed off at myself because I KNOW better than to NOT have 3 different ways to shut down a runaway. I didn't check anything else because I was told it was a fuel line and pump issue. I got extremely lucky to not only save the engine, but save myself. 30+ years of experience and did something stupid...…...I KNOW BETTER.
The problem is in this pic. There are some hints of what the problem is if you look close enough. Do you see it? I dam sure didn't. (I did pull the governor top off, so that's not it.....LOL)
Next time take a video. In all seriousness, I'm glad you and the engine survived. I don't know enough about green leakers to notice what's wrong with the governor, but I do see the fuel rack is still pegged and the return spring is barely hanging on.
Spring jammed won’t let it pull back? Glad everything out alright for you
that linkage piece had worn a groove on the pivot shaft an is now out of the groove to the outside of the shaft. No sign of lubrication...froze?
I'm a little rusty on my detroits, but I'm going with the spring also. Should it not be pulling the rod the opposite way?
The roll pin in top center. The throttle return spring doesn't look right either.
So with the spring pulling backwards I'm guessing the throttle is floored.
Think your right as the spring has worn a notch in the arm and there is a place to perch the spring below the arm... I failed my first screamer online test!
I know nowt about a Detroit. but my guess is the spring is in the wrong spot. Looks like it WAS positioned 180 degrees from where it's pictured. So the spring is pulling it open instead of closed ???
Sure looks like there is a major problem with that big spring. Why is the wear in the hole at bottom center of the hole and pointing straight down toward another hole below it? Don't think it is part of the problem but what is it with that pressure switch with two terminals and only one has a wire connected to it? Or is it a double function switch with one terminal normally open and the other normally closed? I doubt it but then anything is possible. Things like this is why I was always too chicken to ever think about going out on my own. If this outfit's "mechanic" can not do a simple filter change on a 3-53 how screwed up is everything he has touched? And how dumb is the guy who hired him?
One more thing I just noticed there is Bendix air compressor running off the rear of that 3-53. I would be checking it close when you get the engine running. Reason is we had a truck crane with an old gas Waukesha in it that a driver had it over-speed going down a hill. He tried to blame the damage to the engine on a failed bearing, which it did have as a result of the over-speed. But when we were working on the engine I found the Bendix compressor had two broken rods. Driver said see it must have lost oil pressure and that caused the failure! Well two problems with that theory, first the compressor did not get oil from the engine, separate oil in base and second the rod bearings were not seized. Big ends of rods still on crank and they were nice and free! You should be able to here the compressor exhaust valves burping while turning the 3-53 over by hand. Must be an old machine as that style air filter I don't think has been used for many years.
Good eye Ken !
Well … The customer IS capable of learning... He did eventually call Vetech63. "Stupidity is forever, Ignorance is curable..."
Well I hope Vetech63 cashes the check at the first bank he comes to after finishing the job! And put "no guarantee" in writing on the bill.
Not sure if I’m seeing it right, but that spring doesn’t appear to be connected to anything
It seems to be hooked on some vertical rod that goes to who knows what. I just got off a job where an ebay flipper rebuilt a whole propane fuel system to an engine out of parts it looks like he got from a hardware store, and it is all wrong. All you can do is charge by the hour and no freebies given, until it is fixed.
That's a hydraulic governor. I've seen something similar on a 318 in an old compressor. You didn't happen to say that this was a railroad machine used for some kind of track maintenance. I got that from one of the other photos. The spring is supposed to hook up down below and counterbalance the hydraulic power that is pushing up under that button on the right side of the governor housing. The type I saw though had a rod going through the top cover and was either at high idle or low idle. The spring is hiding whatever kind of linkage is used to control the throttle. That switch at the bottom is going into the bottom of the pressure gallery for the governor hydraulic pump. I would suppose it would have a light on the dash panel somewhere.
You can see where the spring is supposed to attach straight down below the bellcrank. Looks like the spring is hooked to the dipstick tube? Nasty trick, you think he did it on purpose?
Well, after a decent nights sleep I have awoken to great answers! Most of you are right on track...….Detroit doesn't install spring that run bent or crooked on anything. Below is a pic of the RIGHT install of the spring. Someone had pulled the spring over the throttle shaft position and hooked it to the throttle link rod, locked the fuel rack in full fuel tighter than a drum. The correct way pulls the fuel rack into NO fuel and allows the governor to control the position. Once the spring was corrected, it ran like a top!
The reason for this thread goes back to my other thread in a way. I really hate giving out too much information on these Detroit engines. It is just too easy to make a simple mistake and have a disaster on your hands. Its a good thing the customer called me when he did. If his mechanic would have gotten just a couple of things right then this engine would probably have exploded and done some serious damage. It is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to get this shut down at all. This just reminded me of no matter how much experience you have, even experienced people can make oversights or assumptions than can be disastrous in itself. Lesson learned...…...again.
To me was DEJA VU, sitting on a 6v53 and it running amok. Then the CO2 extinguisher went off and awakened me!! Rebuilt that SOB and NEVER Once found what it was that set it off, inspected EVERYTHING tearing it apart and it did not have a Woodward on it. Frickin 53 series, were KNOWN to be jinxed engines!! I can feel your pain bub.
When you showed the first pic, I was looking for the flap lever thinking this was gonna be a simple "gotchya" No wonder I didn't see it. Thank goodness it wasn't consuming wrist pin oil. That woulda not shut down at all. Right? The first , only , runaway I had was a refresh. New pistons n liners. Got the thing all set to run, soon as she got fuel, it took off. My co-worker without even blinking just hit the brass elbow with a hammer. She slowed to a stop. He looks at me and says, that's why they're made of brass.
Talking about jinxed 53's we had one a 6V-53 that was jinxed because of the idiots the company had running it and maintaining the machine it was in! Had the worst cobbled up exhaust system ever that allowed water down the stack to hydro-lock and bend some rods. I helped remove it and another shop rebuilt a different engine which I helped install. That one had no oil pressure on start up which I finally traced down to the oil pump being installed in the position for a left side oil cooler and this machine had a right side oil cooler. Pain in the but to remove pan and front cover in frame to reposition the pump. Due to the extra time needed to fix that screw up they would not give us time to fix the exhaust so I have to wonder if it ever was fixed. Then a few months latter heard where ever the crane was they could not get it to run. So eventually they called in an outside contractor to come look at it and get it running. About another month latter I was at one of our other quarries and happened to see this contractor and asked him the story about it. He said "You didn't here it from me!" and then gave me the details. First thing he saw when he got to the job was the small pile of empty starting fluid cans, not a good sign for a recently rebuilt engine! After a little quick checking he found the emergency shut down flapper was tripped! This was in a rough terrain Grove crane that was passed around from plant to plant as needed with no full time operator and no one bothered to clean out cab and the control panel was always covered in trash and dirt and to make it worse the engine shut down and the emergency shut down buttons were close to each other and with the filth in the cab the labels were impossible to read. Contractor I talked to said engine did run but he felt it was nowhere as good as a newly rebuilt engine should be due to all the either force fed it trying to start with the shut down tripped!
So I see the RR track, what is this little Mochine?
I've had stale injectors right out of the box act "sticky" from dried preservative oil, I always gave them a soak with WD 40 and stroked the racks a few times. But yeah, I hate 53's too. Had one a guy put new heads on that did some crazy stuff. Turned out the genius couldn't get the rack rods to work right so he just left the nuts loose on the two piece rack control rods.
HOLY CRAP!!
That was my response too.
Get ALL kinds in our little side of the Wheels.
I saw the spring wear on the lever and even Though i have not much knowledge on 2 stroke detroits i knew that was your likely problem. The project mack engine reinstall i finally got done doing a little while ago was full of little problems like this . First it was no oil tube for the compressor feed, a intake and water manifold that were both junk ,mack powerleash in the topend not adjusted anywere near correctly and on first start found o ring missing under one of the jake solenoids. Then lastly the oil pressure problem that ended up being standard bearings on a .010 under crank. Then weeks making everything work and not leak on a truck that sat for 3 years , i feel your pain , owner were i work at jokingly says to me sucks working behind someone doesnt it , i think he does it just so i vent then i regroup and reassess it and try again mind you these are the problem child's that everyone has tried to figure out and gave up on i am his last resort so far i am 3 up trucks and equipment 0. The three im up on were all problems for 2 plus years that they were just dealing with.
With all the things *** up on this engine, smells like sabotage to me. Everything leads to failure like someone wanted it to.