Anyone else seeing random low hour cam failures. What we are seeing is sudden spalling of the cam lobes and rollers. Some we catch during the routine valve sets. Some catosphic fail and drop a valve.
This has been a major problem for years - I have seen a lot and done a dozen or so myself in the last 4-5 years. Mainly C15, C18, and C27. Cat has tried (and I'm sure still are) various rollers/followers with different profiles on the roller to try to help but still continues to be a problem. Exactly like you said - I used to feel scared for the owner of the machine when I was asked to do a valve set of C series 15L and above with under 5000hrs cause there would be a very good chance for a lobe or follower starting to spall.
Well that is good to hear, we have been told this issue is only a Fort Mcmurray area problem, so we have been stumped what we are doing different from the rest of the world. What region are you noticing this issue? What oils were your customers using? We run a 15w-40 in summer and 5w-40 for winter.
Caterpillar telling a customer "that's the first time we've heard of that problem". Tell them to pull the other one, it plays "Hey Jude" .............. I have personally seen this on C-Series engines here installed in 834H & D9T. We have 16M, 834H, D9T, D10T, & 777F all equipped with C-Series engines of various iterations. Our engines run 15W-40 year round but our climate is tropical, ambient never gets much below 20 DegC even in "winter". If I can throw in a $0.02 ............. there are various factors that I think are relevant. In no particular order: - 1. Soot level in oil. The C-Series in general seems to have a much lower tolerance for higher-than-normal levels of soot in engine oil samples. This suprises me because what Cat says is a "monitor compartment" figure for soot (say 40-50%) wouldn't have caused even a raised eyebrow on the previous generation of 3400 electronic engines working at high altitude. We saw figures of up to 150% soot on those engines and camshaft lobe/followr spalling was not an issue on those engines. 2. PM Service Accuracy. We've found that in some engine models - 16M is a prime example - soot goes through the roof if you even go a few hours (say 30 or so) past the planned oil change hours. 3. Engine oil change frequency. We've come to the conclusion that despite the "book" saying you can change oil at 500 hours, based on analysis of oil condition our engine oil won't get anywhere near that so we've set our PM's up to be at 250-hour intervals. Maybe when we have more time we will extend the ouhrs out to a point where we're changing oils based on condition. 4. Diesel fuel quality can have a major impact on oil condition. How much sulphur in ppm is in your fuel, any idea..? 5. Some machine models have Service Programs available to change the software in the engine ECM for "areas with less regulated fuel" as Cat call it. D9T is one. Depending on your answer to point 4 that could be a possibility. 6. Close attention to engine valve & injector set frequency (1st oil change on a new or rebuilt engine then every 2000 hours thereafter) is a MUST. Skip programmed valve sets and it will beat the Bejasus out of the cams & followers. 7. There is a new 356-5212 holding down bolt available for the rocker shafts. It replaces the former 5J-5794 Bolt. Make sure your engines are using them. Note that the tightening procedure changes with the new bolt. We broke quite a few of the former Part Number. The new bolt is effective as standard on the following Engine Serial Numbers. TRB370-Up, LHX28067-Up, FFH6477-Up, FSE3449-Up. Hope that helps ...............
Having worked in Ft Mac, and swapping c series cams out, I have I feeling its more prevalent with the higher suphur fuels used in the area and less than punctual service intervals. It does rear its head in some other areas but I never saw the frequency of failure that I did up there. Also, I'm willing to be the oil sands has about the highest number of C series engines out of any region on the planet, when mixed with the astounding rate at which hours are pounded on the machines up there it seems as if the problem would show its head more often.
We stick to strick 300 hour service intervals, and as well are on a 2000 hour valve set program and still seeing failures. it is so bad now that we change a cam and go back to do the 400 or 500 hour valve set and the cam has failed again? we are hearing that there may have been a bad batch of cams released to the market from Mexico? Has any one heard that?
We are running a low sulphur fuel for at least 2 years now. We literally have 3 to 4 mechanics doing cam replacements full time. Never a day with out one unit down. We do 300hr services, using UHE filters. We have caught a few with oil sampling, see slight spike in iron and chrome. We minimize the idling time. Costing us thousands.
Idling time will kill you by the amount of soot it produces. Have you considered some sort of aftermarket idle shut-down systems..? They are around. A bad batch of parts is always a possibility. I'm a bit wary of UHE filters, my opinion is that they can in certain cases affect the long chain strings of the additives in the oil. We stick to Advanced Efficiency filters. We never picked a single one up on oil sampling, but then again we only sample at oil change time. Have you tried oil sampling at shorter intervals, say half of oil life..? What % soot numbers are you seeing at the time of oil change..?
I wonder if the trucking industry is having the same problem? Lots of C-15's out there on the road.
We have all the machines you mention in our area and I am not aware of a single failure requiring a cam change in frame? Yet we were the only dealership on the planet suffering Valve Recession on the D-10T (supposedly).
Is it something in the water perhaps ......??
No expert in any way on the subject......buuuut. We ran into a rash of failures on the solid lifter engines in our oval track cars and couldnt figure out why. It was eventually chased down to the reduction of zinc in the motor oils. We started using a readilly available zinc additive and the problem went away. Possibly you could do a control after a cam change and run the additive and monitor the difference. It wont hurt to try and it sounds like the same problems it cured for us. I believe lucas oil has this as well as others. I imagine you may need several bottles with an oil change but you will figure it out.
The difference is the flat solid style follower vs a roller follower. Way less rubbing/friction with the roller lifter. I'm also a member of an Austin Mini forum as i have a '76 Austin Mini with a modified engine and this debate about oils and zinc has gone on and continues to go on with no end if its brought up with every opinion never a consensus on the zinc debate. Diesel engine oils have (and still do I'm told) higher amounts of zinc and NEVER cut them back as the "gas" pot engine oil did. I'm not convinced that the zinc additive is the best solution so I just run Rotella 15-40 in my Mini and have never had a problem. Cats problem is more of a cracking/spalling of the hard surface than what automotive zinc "fixed"
One of the issues MIGHT be (and please note I say might) the continuing trend to higher and higher injection pressures in order to more closely control the fuel injected and hence control emissions. That leads to some very extreme loads on the cam and the lifter. I know there were at least 3 iterations of design of the lifters on the 3500 engine way back when the 3500B came on the market to solve that issue because it was discovered the lifter roller was actually deforming when the load got on to it. The final design is actually barrel-shaped rather than being perfectly cylindrical although you can't hardly see it with the naked eye.
The ZINC comments are interesting....we know the addition of zinc shortens the life of our Tri-metallic bearings.....
I have customers with 10000 hr 992K/D10T/657G and have not experienced any cam issues at all. the one thing they both do well is on time planned maintenance and use quality oils and genuine filters. There is a lot to be said for following the L & M guide Cat provide except for the 500hr oil change.
Are the cam lobes the same width between valve and injector lobes? Is it valve lobes that are spalling?
Only seeing the valve lobes spall. No injector lobes yet.
Do you keep records showing "Before" & "After" measurements of all the valve adjustments you perform, especially the early-hours ones..? If so can you see any relation between valves whose clearances might be way off-spec and a later failure if the lifter roller/cam..? I've always believed that the most important valve set of them all is the one done at 50 hours or the first engine oil change, whichever one is preferred. That's the time when any initial bedding in has been completed. I recall that there was a study done some time back on 3500 engines that showed that in something like 99% of cases the valve bedding-in process was completed during the first 20 hours or so of operation and after that valve clearances hardly changed at all until very high hours when wear stared to take place,
well shouldnt they make the cams out of hardend steel
The C-15-s experienced similar roller surface failures around 300-350K miles.
The zinc additives in oil are known as zinc di-alkyl-di-thiophosphates (ZDDPS). These are synthetic long-chain polymers used as oil performance improvers. ZDDP is primarily used to reduce wear in areas such as camshaft lobes, flat tappets and lifters which undergo very high boundary layer pressures and/or shear forces at their contact faces. The other uses of ZDDPS additives is for antioxidants and corrosion inhibitors. These are vital additives in modern engines, necessary to prevent early or catastrophic wear in the above-mentioned areas of high-stress metal-to-metal contact. The amount of ZDDPS is being reduced in recent API oil grade classifications, that relate to low-emission engines using catalytic converters and other emission-control devices. The destruction of ZDDPS as a result of combustion by-product breakdown - and engine heat - results in zinc and phosphorous deposits that can damage catalytic converters and other emission control devices. Roller cam followers were supposed to reduce the need for high levels of ZDDPS. In addition - all low-emission engines use modified combustion technologies and relocated ring placement positions, that ensures that pollutants created by combustion are retained in the engine, rather than sent out the exhaust. These retained pollutants (largely, soot) are sent down past the rings to be retained in the oil. Thus, low-emission engines need a very high-detergent-content oil, to be able to cope with the increased pollutant content in the oil. Accordingly, you are well advised to keep strictly to manufacturers oil recommendations and oil change periods - and to also monitor soot and pollutants in the oil, if you want to reach optimum engine life.
I just re-read the OP and did some checks on in our records. We have NEVER had low-hours failures of the cam follower rollers or cams on our engines. We had 2 failures. First was one valve on a C-18 in an 834H at around 7000 hours. Needed a cam & we replaced all 3 followers on that cylinder. The second was literally every lobe in the camshaft in a C-18 in a D9T at 11,000 hours. Oil analysis reports showed nothing to predict either failure. We are extremely careful about doing valve adjustments at the correct times, specially the first one. I'll try to find some photos and post them. However as I think I posted before it seems on some models of C-series model engines if you go past a certain point in terms of hours the wear elements in the oil analysis skyrocket from "normal" to "do something fast" in the space of maybe just 20-30 operating hours. We put it down to the high-sulphur diesel fuel we use here. That's why we cut the maintenance interval down from the 500 hours recommended in the manufacturer's service manual to 250.
anyone checking their valve springs?
Yair . . . Ozdozer Spot on comment here. Coming from a culture where every thing got 250 hour oil changes if it needed it or not it was quite a reality check when I bought my first Japanese pre-combustion chamber diesel ute . . . 5000 thousand kilometer oil changes . . . like I mean like that's just fifty hours on the highway!! I did some oil sampling and if you exceeded that (especialy in cold weather) it seemed you were taking a risk. I have seen photo's of gelled sooted up oil in a tojo sump at zeroC at Mitchell. Things are a bit better now with direct injection. Cheers.
Scrub Puller - The older little Jap diesels are buggers for over-fuelling because the rack is controlled by an aneroid. Out on the highway, pedal to the metal means the inlet vacuum dropped and the aneroid opened the rack right up - whether the engine could use the fuel or not. As a result, following an older Jap diesel pedalling along the highway with someone flooring it, means you see a continuous stream of black smoke, and the back of the vehicle getting coated in soot. In this case, the soot is building up rapidly in the crankcase oil, too - and you'll notice the oil in these motors gets soot-black very quickly. Fortunately better injection controls on later diesels has largely eliminated this problem. However, today I was very surprised when a near-new Mercedes 4WD roared out in front of me, from a side street, and left a trail of black smoke like an old Mack. I've never seen that before, and I wondered if the Merc had some serious injection problems developing.
all the new c.ser eat cams crack heads now this is in coal ,qld aust ,at work the yellow shop we have a yard full of dead one 10 40ft container to go back to CAT so its all over
I know it's been a while since this thread started, but as I'm new to the forum, and have had similar issues with D10T's (High soot, High Iron ) thought I would share - we have chased this around with the Cat dealer for just over 9 months & pretty much came to the conclusion that high idle (gets very hot here, so engines left running for AC) & extended intervals is a contributing factor, since then we have looked at all sorts of things, from onboard kidney looping, centrifugal filters, slightly hotter thermostats, and even a way to run Air Cons on an auxilary battery powered motor whilst main engine is off. Just heard last week that there are improvements coming for these engines - new Pistons (with a change to top ring land position - sound familiar to you experianced Cat guys?) check on SIS media search for SEBD9830,although it currently doesn't include the D10T or 777F, have been told that a similar improvement is coming for them, along with a new Camshaft and a higher pressure oil pump - currently have questions in at the dealer to explain what the changes are and why they have been made ? Happy to share this with interested parties within the group Cheers DB
Yes please - our climate conditions are very similar to your although we have not seen the level of problems you apparently have. Are you changing oil @ 250 hours and what do you consider as high soot/high iron in a 250-hour oil sample..? What's your fuel sulphur %..? Ours is high sulphur fuel so around 0.15%. I'm looking at the last 10 samples from my D10T with the highest engine hours (16000+) and if we change oil @ 250 hours on the nail we see iron in the range of 20-30 and soot between 15-30%. Let them go much past that and it looks like the oil analysis fell off a cliff. We have discovered to our cost that you CANNOT let the oil go past 300 hours in our conditions (climate + high sulphur fuel). My previous experience at high altitudes it was not unusual to see soot in the 120-140% range, numbers as low as 30 frighten me TBH. I'm always thinking they should be higher - I've had to re-tune my brain...!! I've read SEBD9830. Interesting article. I would not be at all surprised if the new design piston makes its way into the complete C-Series engine range.
Just had the same problem at 4800 hrs on a 336d. Thought it was an injector, nope cam wouldn't move the lifter
Nige, we aren't actually having failure, just trying to "pre-empt", as you know, the elevated soot and iron will reduce overall engine life, our levels sit around the fe=40 to 60, and ST 30 to 50, oil change intervals can range from 225 to 275, and we do see a spike up when we go over that, our fuel sulpher content is only 10ppm, so low sulpher fuel. Our older machines that are still on first engines 13 to 14,000hrs (3 of) show around the same levels as you have quoted for yours, it is the newer machines (10 of) with from 2 to 7,000hrs, and our older machines (2 of) once they have an engine change out & although the Cat dealer tells us there has been no significant change to the engines, the trend analysis points to something different about them. Will let you all know what info I get back from Cat on the changes coming Cheers DB
Do you have idea idea what Part Number of software flash file your engines are running..? Since the flash file that was installed originally in our first tractors (2008 vintage) there have been no less than 6 changes up to the current Part Number, and 5 changes for our 2nd batch of tractors that were delivered in early 2010. I'm wondering if Cat have sneaked a fuel injection re-map in one of those updates somewhere. We have a brand new D10T delivered last month which doesn't have the latest flash file installed but it's onlt one step away. I'll keep an eye on that and report back - too early to tell yet. We also have a D10T on overhaul right now, I'll keep an eye on that one when it goes back up. Our climate is hot & humid like yours, hot enough that a failed a/c is enough reason to down a machine. Many times when we see our kit parked up we joke about them being mobile aircon units. I can't think why you're seeing such a difference in iron & soot to what we are, especially if you are using low sulphur fuel. Although maybe the fuel IS the cause - take away the lubricating properties of the sulphur and the possibility exists that wear would increase.
Check out Cat media SEPD1570 - Improved Camshaft 21/02/2013, and SEPD1564 -Improved rocker arm assembly, no word back yet on the piston changes.
How do you go about knowing the flash file you have installed and what the updated Flash Files are.
Caterpillar ET will allow you to look at the various ECMs on a machine and will indicate the part # of installed software. For updated files it would need a machine or engine serial # posted here. They're in a Cat system but not one that most users have access to.
As to what flash file is currently installed the only way to be sure is to check, either with ET or depending on machine it can be pulled up on control panels or monitors. Latest files can be found on SISweb.
Sorry, I need to clarify. As Per says the latest file is generally (though not always) shown on SIS-WEB. What's missing though is the progression from "what you have" to "latest available". That's often an interesting read ...........
Looking in TMI shows that doesn't it? Seldom with any explanation of what is changed and why, that most likely takes alot of reading service letters, magazines and bulletins and poking the right people at CAT until they talk......
Yeah, check the recent SMAG with all the iterations of software on M series graders, crikey i had to go have a good lie down after the first page!!
Just had 5th Cam failure in 7000hrs on our D10T. Hope these updated cams and higher oil pressure works. Can't afford anymore.
Something radically wrong there, i have customers with 12000hr D10T,s and everything is original, we adjust valves as per OEM and change oil 250hrs. If the machine has Productlink and you are hooked in to visionlink you can look up the flashfiles from sitting at your desk.
We have access to Vision Link, but what is the product link?
We're overhauling a D10T right at this very moment and the engine had 17,000 hours on it (for reasons I don't want to go into here) when it was removed - not a single cam failure.
Product link is the hardware on the machine, vision link is the software on your computer.
Late Breaking News ...............!!! We have 2 x D10T (one new last December & one recently overhauled with a Reman engine in it) that are producing soot at double the values of what we've been used to seeing before. We see around 35-40% soot @ 250 hours on oil compared to around half that for our older tractors where engines have not been replaced yet. Only difference I can see is that the newer engines are using a software about 3-5 generations newer than what's in the older tractors. Key will be the D10T we got back last Friday from overhaul with a Reman engine (and of course latest available software) in it. You can bet we'll be watching the SOS on that one really closely. I have officially run the flag up the pole with Cat on this one. Watch this space ............
Currently running several of the updated Cams in D10T and 777F. Also the updated oil pump spring is completed when the cam and rockers are updated. Hope this is the fix, we are currently doing 3-4 cams a month right now. Almost every time we open one up to do the recommended valve set we find a shot roller and spalled cam!! Costing us big bucks.
I am told Cat has released another letter on Camshafts, Rockers and Rollers. Has anyone seen it yet?
Specifically what machine model and S/N prefix are we talking about..?
I found this today after doing a set of injectors on an RJG prefix machine. Improved Camshafts Are Now Used on Certain C27 and C32 Machines {1210** SMCS - 1210 Engine: C27 All C32 All Service Magazine, SEPD1643, 30 July 2013, "Improved Camshafts Are Now Used on Certain C27 and C32 Machines". Disregard this article, effectivity has been added. Refer to Special Instruction, REHS9247, "Improved Camshafts, Rocker Arm Assemblies, and High-Pressure Oil Pumps Are Now Used on C27 and C32 Machine Engines" for all information concerning updated to C27 and C32 Machine Engines.
That's a Service Magazine. What post #47 was enquiring about was a factory Support Program. For RJG-prefix D10T there were 2 programs published on 5/5/14 titled "replacing the upper valve train mechanism on certain D10T tractors". I have no info other than that.
Just had to replace a cam in a dump truck with a C15. Never had an issue in any truck prior.
Yeah, found they finally published a new service letter for it. PS52662, After failure only.
That letter doesn't come up for me, must be dealer access?
It won't come up on Customer SIS-web. However you can use it to browbeat your dealer if you have a cam or follower failure.