I've just had a look at a friends 289D that develops a miss after running for about 15 minutes. On the second time it did it, I was able to isolate it to No.4 cylinder by doing cylinder cutouts with the laptop. After shutting down briefly, it is good again for a short while & then starts to miss again. Fuel level is ok. Tank cap is ok. Doesn't seem to have restrictions. The machine only has 620 hours on it. (Bought second hand with no prior history) Ser. no. TAW12600. Before I go to the expense of replacing an injector, does anyone have any experience with these Cat3.3B/Kubota common rail engines & have any other suggestions? Thank you.
See below. One thing that frequently comes up on HEF is that these engines do not like water and/or dirt in the fuel system. Has the tank been drained of any water and sediment.? Relief valve #1 working correctly.? What fuel pressure does it hold.? Screen inside #6 just below the fuel transfer pump clean.? Replace if necessary - P/N 416-5884. Have the passages in the fuel filter head all been opened up and either rodded out or blown out with compressed air.? To do this requires all the fittings and blanking plugs to be removed from the head. Last thing to throw out is that there is an updated fuel transfer pump now used. 416-5886 has been replaced by 552-5534.
Thank you. I'll check these things next time I'm at the machine. (100 miles away). It already has the updated fuel transfer pump.
I had to replace the No.4 injector. (Used a genuine Denso 295050-1980 unit because it was much cheaper than what Cat dealer was supplying.) The local fuel pump shop put the old injector on the test bench & found that it would start playing up & stop injecting once it got hot. It would work ok initially & after it cooled down.
I found pre filtering my fuel to 2 microns at my transfer tanks before it goes into the machine has eliminated issues with the fuel system on these machines. Its not expensive to set up and very cheap compared to the cost of fuel system parts on these machines.
Back in the Good Old Days Cat fuel tank caps had "Buy Clean Fuel - Keep it Clean" cast into them. That statement is as relevant today as it has always been, probably even more so that it was back then with the latest generations of high-pressure common rail injection systems - yet people still continue to ignore this most basic of requirements for any modern fuel injection system.
I would sure like to know how to buy clean fuel today. I have yet to find a fuel supplier that filters fuel before or during delivery.
I can only speak as a big customer but our suppliers had contractual obligations to deliver fuel to a certain ISO Cleanliness standard and every tanker load had to carry a certificate with the delivery notes certifying same. Irrespective of that we had some pretty hefty filtration systems on our tank farms. We were filtering down to below 1 micron IIRC.
My comment was haft joke. I have never been at the level I could dictate those types of demands. None of my local jobbers are interested in filtering bulk fuel deliveries. I have asked repeatedly, and none want to make the investment or slow the flow rates on deliveries. At the end of the day the market is not demanding it. I would say I have gotten along rather well with my filtration set up with 10 micron water blocking element followed by a 2 micron filter on transfer tanks. I may be at the 1 micron level since I have started oversizing the filters and running them dramatically below the rated flow velocity. I have had at least 9 of these v3800 engines. I have not replaced any fuel related components outside of the low pressure pumps. No injectors, no high pressure fuel pumps, ETC. I have one approaching 4,000 hrs that I sent injectors out for testing to rule them out as part of a dpf issue. 16,000 gal of fuel burn which is about double the average fuel burn rate. Injector shop could only detect a minute increase in fuel return rate over a new injector. Iam sure this is trivial compared to the numbers Nige has experienced. It has been my experience that the fuel system is the least problematic system and a rock-solid system on these engines. Wish I could say the same for the rest of the engine. Needless to say I don't think anyone could lose money investing in fuel filtration and I believe my ROI is rather high on fuel filtration.
But right THERE is the proof that what you are doing works........... Kudos. Most owners can't even be bothered to drain the water & crud out of the fuel tank every once in a while...!!
Nige you are right. I also double the change interval for OEM fuel filters on most machines. Changing fuel filters every 5-600 hours rather than the 250-300 hrs I had been doing. This works out to every other oil change for me. No extended oil drains here. In looking at the cost of oem filters versus the cost of filters on the transfer tank. I am probably at an overall net reduction in fuel filtering cost with cleaner fuel. I can't complain about the ROI for 2 micron filtration with water removal before the fuel goes in the machine. You have perked my interest On ISO cleanliness. I might pull some samples and see how they test. My apologies to the OP for the hijack.
You should not be apologizing for a thread hijack IMHO. The OP should be thanking you for reminding him what he SHOULD be doing..........
I can't remember what the target ISO Code is for fuel (as used in a common rail engine) off the top of my head. I'll need to look it up.
18/16/13 (4 micron, 6 micron, 16 micron) Most large-scale operators with decent water extraction/filtration are getting somewhere in the range of 13/11/6.
289D S/N TAW10455 I'm having a different issue but same system. I was running my machine and it started losing power then died. This all happened within 1 minute. I replaced fuel filter and screen. Now it will fire then die immediately. The transfer pump has voltage and I can hear it running and it filled up the fuel filter. I also checked fuel flow from filter to high pressure fuel pump. I'm wondering what the relief valve pressure should be. I will be taking the filter head off and cleaning it. I also am wondering where the tank drain is. There is no codes that I can see. Is there anything else I should be looking for. Thanks Micah
There are 2 styles of tank drain plug. Look under the rear of the machine either in the centre or the LH corner. After you changed the filter & screen did the filter bowl fill up completely with fuel at the first cycle of the key.?
The attached shows the drains for both styles of fuel tank.
The filter filled up on first cycle. I have cleaned the filter housing and still having the same problem.
Was there any water in the bottom of the filter bowl.?
When I changed the fuel filter I thought I saw a little. But it didn't register at the time so I'm not positive.
Is there a sensor or a certain pressure that the ECU needs to see for it to continue to run? How much pressure should the relief valve hold? It seems electrical the way it fires and immediately shuts down
From memory the relief valve #1 shown in the fuel line sillustration in Post # on Page 1 is only something like 1.5psi. The HP pump is apparently quite sensitive to being fed fuel at too high a pressure. Attached something on the fuel system, but it relates more to the HP pump and injection delivery. Do you have the Advanced Display Panel on your machine.? If you have is it showing any codes, Active or otherwise.?
I have the advanced display. I do not have any active codes. I have some logged codes but they were there when I got the machine. None of them are electrical or fuel related. Is the transfer pump only supposed to run prior to starting. If it shuts off after starting does the fuel flow through the transfer pump freely? Is the HP pump doing all the suction and supply to the rail?
The electric pump is the priming pump, not the transfer pump. Its only purpose is to prefill the fuel filter after maintenance The feed (aka transfer) pump is part of the HP fuel pump and sucks the fuel through the lines, priming pump, and filter. Its function is explained in a bit more detail in the attachment I posted above. It might pay you to read these threads. A broken non-serviceable spring in the SCV caused an HP pump not to work. HeavyEquipmentForums HeavyEquipmentForums
I have read the document you attached. I have not been able to make full sense of the fact that there is a feed pump and a high pressure pump. Are they both ran off the same shaft mechanically? When I turned the key on I am hearing a small whine and the SCV is giving me 4.5 to 5 volts on the brown wire and .5 on the orange. This seems to run the same amount of time as the priming pump. When the whine stops both terminals drop to zero. After it shuts off I hear fuel dribbling into the tank from the HPFP return. I'm getting 2.1 ohms back probing across both terminals of SCV. The fuel rail pressure sensor signal wire is 1V with key on and when it cranks it goes up to 2v. Today as I was troubleshooting I would try to start it every now and then. It would do the normal fire then die after one second. This particular time I tried and it fired right up and ran perfectly. After 10 seconds it increased RPM and threw a code. I forgot to bring the code with me but it was along the lines of increasing RPM due to low voltage. Not long after this it started what felt like starving for fuel and then died. After this initial run it would idle for longer than it had been but it ran rough then died and it would not idle up. This is an odd observation but all this started after it had been really hot and then we had a colder night and a cooler following day and this all happened within the first hour of running that following day. It started today at the hottest time of day and my water temperature reading was the hottest it had been today.
Let's get this one out of the way first. This is a temporary Code that is never logged in the ECM memory, it's only Active so long as the condition exists. If system voltage is judged "too low" after startup by the engine ECM it commands an increase in the RPM to aid the charging system. As soon as the low voltage condition goes away the Code disappears. Yes they are. This video may clear it up for you. The feed pump is a lobe-style pump simply to transfer the fuel to the HP Supply pump which is a piston pump