The sawmill where I work has a Cat Loader IT24, with a Cat 3114, dry sleeve, engine. I am in charge of it at times. It has 16000 hours. Probably 1/3 of them at idle. Running mabe 4 to 6 hours a day. It will take 2 to 4 gallons of water in the radiator. It gets pushed in to the oil. Before start up, I usually drain the water out of the oil, or change it. We have been running straight water to save on antifreeze and excess engine wear. The engine really runs good. No smoke or blow by. Cat service checked the uppers, head, injectors, oil cooler, they are all good. Some of the guys don't drain the water out the oil pan, it will eventually completely fill up and run out the breather. Cat said theres not any rebuilt or drop in engines available for it. Does anybody have a comment or suggestion?
Not familiar with that particular engine but are you saying you drain out 2 to 4 gallons of water each morning? Is it possible to remove oil pan with engine in place? If so it should be easy to see where that much water is coming from with the pan off. Not to sound alarmist but hope you are not depending on this machine for your next pay check as from what you have posted it may not last very long. If a rebuilt engine is not available from Cat has anyone looked into a good used engine or a rebuilt from someone else? Guess I should have asked first off how long has this been going on and did this leak start out slow or did it show up out of the blue?
Hi kshansen, and thank you for your reply. Yes we have to add from 2 to 4 gallons each morning to the radiator. So I will drain off the excess water out the pan after it sets and sort of separates from the oil. If it is really milky I will dump it all and put in new oil. No, the engine would have to be pulled to get the pan off, because the rear axle member sets too close. It has been leaking for over a year now, and we all know that its days/weeks/months, are numbered. The leak started before I worked there. I suspect it was run low on water, and someone add water while it was still hot. It is strange that the head is not cracked. Most engine rebuilders, don't rebuild these for some reason or another. No good used engines can be found so far without major issues. Also Cat no longer builds this engine new because of not passing emissions, we assume. I was wondering if the older Cat 3304 engine could be swapped in place of the 3114?
What's the Serial Number of the machine..? There may be some documentation somewhere about repowering it with a different engine model.
Hi Nige, As far as I can make out the tag says, IT24F-4N00400, The engine a 3114- ARB00334, it is around 1996 model
I think you've missed a letter "N". The Serial Number 4NN00400 would correspond to an IT24F manufactured in late 1995.
Ok the tag is all bashed and scarred up. So that sounds about right. I was just using my best guess without calling cat.