I'm opening this thread here because there is no ENGINES forum. I've pulled this F6L912 out of my Deutz-Fahr tractor and have hauled it indoors for a look-see and a redo. A look-see to find out why it had low compression and occaisionally loud reports, and also to discus disassembly issues. To start with the front end pulley/balancer bolt is LEFT-HAND THREAD and is torqued during assembly to 50nm/37 ft-lbs + 210 degrees. Nowhere does it say what kind of torque will loose it after 30+ years in service! Well, just in case someone might be googling for such info I put my weight on the end of an 8 foot bar for some 1600 ft-lbs of torque and held it there. It then very slowly began to move. I've got all the heads off and although I haven't examined them in detail saw no major issues like chipped valves etc. The cylinders have NO RIDGES which seems impossible for a 1991 tractor unless they were replaced. Cyl #1 (rear) looks like totally dried out/glazed. There is no sign of any shim under the heads, none. One head-bolt plug was stripped and just glued in there. A few exhaust manifold studs had been replaced with just bolts. Tomorrow I might pull the cylinders and see if there are any shims under them. The rear of the engine is extremely filthy, valve cover #2 (second from rear) is very oily inside. The hex head of the fwd left head bolt on EVERY cyl-head was stuck in baked coal and since the bolt head is in a hole I head to scrape it out before being able to put a socket on it.
There is some of these engines for parts out there as they were used extensively in the mining industry in Northern Ontario and Quebec. Sudbury Ontario area had lots of them. The parts are pretty dear, so some people use spare ones for parts. These engines if maintained can run 40000 hrs or more. I have fuel spilled them for the timing. Even have the real degree wheel for doing it. I may have a parts book. Have to look in my stash. Simon C
Some of the best steel I've ever found, was in Deutz aircooled engines. I ran an old F8L714 V8 in a Magirus-Deutz truck in the 1960's, that engine was a beast. Those head/cylinder retaining bolts are made out of some unbelievable strength moly-chrome-nickel steel. These engines will handle anything but dust combined with oil leaks. Dust + oil leaks = blocked fins = overheating = equals kiss your engine goodbye. Fortunately the old Magirus-Deutz had a huge red warning light for overheating. I wish I still had that truck, they don't make 'em like that any more. A 12 ton rating on the single rear axle, and all-position barrel-roller bearings in the axles construction. That old Magirus-Deutz hauled my Cat D7F's, just with single drive, and did it for years, grossing 35 tonnes (77,000lbs) just with single drive and a tandem trailer. Does the F6L912 still have the centrifugal mechanical oil filter, as the earlier aircooled Deutz engines did? It took me ages to figure out what that device was, the biggest problem was Deutz maintenance information in good English was hard to come by. It's important when re-assembling these engines to ensure you align the exhaust ports with a straight-edge to get the manifold to fit snugly and accurately.
There are several ‘tricks’ and special procedures to use when reassembling these engines. Also a couple of simple tools to fabricate. A service manual is a good investment, paper or download. The cylinder head alignment and crown clearance are quite important
Those weren't 912/913's were they? Wasn'tthere a special low emission model for mines? About the manuals, I have been meaning to contact this vendor selling low-end PDF versions but if you ever dig up yours and they are ones with real part number listed then I'd buy them off you (subject to price and you wanting to sell them). This engine is the stock F6L912 in a Deutz-Fahr-Dx-6.05 tractor but I'd also get me the BF6L913/BF6:913C one as I want to continue researching a swap.
I have the Foley Service manual but I fgotta get used to it again (last and only read was in 2008), and disassembly always challenged me more than assembly )) For example right now I'm looking at the tandem hydraulic pump for removal, I suspect I'll need a wheel puller because it may be a taper shaft under that nut.
All you fine folk if you only knew how pleased I am with being in the right forum! Yes, those fins do have to stay clean. Centriguge OIL filter? You don't mean one of them oil-pool air filters do you?
There were lots of F6L912 engines in the mines that I worked in. Other than adjusting valves, changing oil, and routine maintenance, they were the last unit to break down. They were about the best for emissions tests for underground. Will go check my box to see what I have exactly and will post it. Simon C
The filthiest part of stripping is done, I was sure I'd find evident causes for the engine's poor condition but I was wrong. NOTHING dramatic seen so far, opened one rod and the crank journal is bright and shiny, bearing surfaces not bad at all. No thrust washer parts in the oil pan like in 2008. Tomorrow it's more around the crank and cylinders and some actual micrometer details but unless this engine has been redone then it doesn't have many hours on it. One of the mystries remains the absence of cylinder shims, there were none on top under the head and the one cylinder I pulled (becasue I just had to see) had none under the cylinder either, neither shims nor busted piston tops... weird.
If you had valves out of adjustment, Fuel injection timing out of adjustment, Head gasket leaking, the engine could lack total power. These are probably the toughest engines I have ever known. That being said they are in need of exact adjustments. I have a degreee wheel for doing the exact perfect timing as there is Zero marks on the dampers of these engines. I do have a F3,4,5, F6L 912/W parts book all in one along with a F3-6L 912/W Operations Manual. If you need some information I could text you a picture right from the books. Where are you in Quebec as both of my parents were born there. If I can help let me know. Simon C
No, the old F8L714's had a big circular oil filter that operated on the principle of centrifugal force, mounted in the centre of the "V" at the front of the engine. Here's an operating description from another website; "The centrifugal filter of the Deutz diesel engine is composed of the rotor housing, rotor body, rotor shaft and filter base. The oil with impurities separated from the coarse filter enters the rotor. There are two orifices in opposite directions on the rotor. When the engine is running, the oil is ejected from the two orifices under pressure. As the reaction force of the oil ejected pushes the rotor to rotate at a high speed (generally, above 5000 RPM), the mechanical impurities in the rotor cavity are separated under the centrifugal force and thrown to the wall. Clean engine oil is sprayed from the nozzle and then flows back to the oil pan." I was quite surprised to find that Detroit also produce a centrifugal oil filter. The basic principle is very sound, and that centrifugal filter trapped a lot of fine debris from the oil.
Amazing, never saw one. I suppose the exit orifice would be raised off the wall toward the center so as not to get plugged up. Can't have that my friend, it doesn't need elements to be replaced every so many hours!
I have that parts book but it has no part numbers, only drawings with ref numbers. I'm interested in both but I gotta figure out how to send messages instead of broadcasting.. I live in the far east ...of Quebec This thread was started knowing that it would be relatively short. Once everything is boxed and annotated I'll start one about the build , or rather about different stages of it because I've seen some threads getting out of hand becoming impossibole to follow if too big.
How about screwing lightly to the manifolds and THEN final-torquing the heads down (just a guess, cheating would never occur to me)? I've done the soldering lead thing, thought it was pretty cool, which is why I have so many questions about this engine having no shims (so far).
At the top there is only the head seal(gasket). The shims will be between the cyl barrels and the crankcase. When reassembling, put a few shims under the barrel and after checking the crown clearance, just cut the unneeded shims and remove. Saves you having to remove the barrel again. Very important that you remove the barrel studs and check the length for excessive stretch because it looks like the last guy who had it apart may not have known what he was doing
If I remember correctly, there are screw plugs in the top of the head by the rocker arm.. MAKE SURE they’re tight/torqued..
The centrifuge type oil filters were used on a lot of Europeon engines 30+years ago. Deutz, Belarus,Scania etc
Found one thin shim under each cylinder (haven't measured yet) so, encouraged, I went poking under the heads where the bolt holes are and finally loosed one, each cylinder has one of those. A gasket is something that compresses taking form, all I see is thinner or thicker hard shims. Why do they call the top ones gaskets?
You mean for oil not to leak outside? They were all very tight but one of them had some stripped threads. I'll see if my blacksmith can cannibalize az insert in there...
Looked at the rod journals and bearings, all look like new except one that was installed wrong and caused wear where the misplacement over the setting pin was forcing the bearing up against the journal. Rod journals are in the 59.94-60.10mm 2.360-2.365in range but my digital caliper is not really suited for this. Couldn't measure the mains at all. THEY all show a weird streak in the oil hole orbit. I think I will need to get them to the machine shop for polishiung an while there also for a full wellness-week All the upper main bearing are nice but all the bottom ones are beat up, seems almost like undersized bearings OR running with low oil-pressure? QUESTION: When I did my Cummins 12-valve the shop decked the block, is that practice also done on these Deutz air-cooled engines? I will have to drive 300km to bring the crank in, I might as well bring the block in too.
Not much to check on a deutz block is there? ask them. If the cylinders were tight and didn't wear into the shims then the block should be flat, and the piston to head measure would be adjusted with shims. Clean up the top of the block and check it with a straight edge and a flashlight on the other side.
#1-That dark ring on the crank is typical caused by the grooved bearing inserts. Mic the crank to check for wear. #2- that head gasket(seal) is relatively soft and maleable. #3- the cyl head sealing surface should be trued on a lathe. I made a fixture for this procedure on my lathe. Only take off enough necessary to clean up the sealing surface. #4- with all the stuff thats wrong due to previous misassembly, i would check the long cyl barrel studs for length. I think there is a spec for it. #5- the long cyl studs are ‘stretch studs’ torqued by the torque-turn method. It is the only method that will give satisfactory results
Amazing block, thought so in 2008 already when I did an F4L. But since I did much of what I've done in wood, somehow I feel good about proportions that would make sense in wood, like the ring around the starter that also holds the frameless tractor together )) I know, I know, 60 thousand psi tensile and all that...
Never seen one before That's a new on on me as well, a bit like the philosophy behind copper washers. []quote]#3- the cyl head sealing surface should be trued on a lathe. I made a fixture for this procedure on my lathe. Only take off enough necessary to clean up the sealing surface. [/quote] My local blacksmith can do that (mean cat, has 2 machinist diplomas on the wall with the professors' heads beside each) I remenber cardboard gauges that came with a build-kit. Who makes the better Deutz rebuild kits BTW? Great reply 56 wrench, appreciated!
[QUOTE="56wrench[/QUOTE] what's the 56 before wrench?
Random lol
I figured you were a '56 model.
Well, today i feel a helluva lot older than that
Me it's in the morning when every bone in my body is making its presence known ...but it's good pain.
I was not aware there is any ‘good’ pain but i guess its better than being on the wrong side of the sod
Sure, muscle pain, means your muscles are working and self maintaining. Bad pain is nausea in chemotherapy and such other delights. There's also bad no-pain like a zipper on your belly that doesn't hurt at all so you go and remove the fuel thank of a Cat-426 the day the let you come home, then you hear a 'pop' and call it quits because that didn't sound good The crank and block are gone to the machine shop BTW. I had forgotten that you cannot oversize Deutz sleeves so this could become richer than just a bore & hone. The machinist also showed me what a Deutz head made in China looks like after a valve failure, pieces of valve and seat went through the head outside.
One of the block-2-cylinder shims was distorted, somehow misaligned and pinched during torquedown. One rod bearing pair was forced with the bearing over the lock stud (see slot and wear pattern). The main upper bearings were hardly used and the lowers looked not too bad BUT the caps order was inverted in 2 places. All in all I figured that both the crank and the block line-bore just HAD to be checked out in a machine shop. I've dealt with this shop before, great crew and the machines to fix a 0.001" bend in a crank. The block & crank checkout is going to cost me $800 even if there is nothing to do but if I keep this engine and not swap in a blown 913 then it will have to be a mission-critical build meaning that it MUST NOT fail in service. The design is good for that, 40 thousand hour engines these, but the care has to go into the build.
Just curious, what are you going to use this for that is mission critical? And, it IS a tractor, why not keep a spare to roll into place?
Although many _country_ driveways are hundreds of feet long mine is close to 3000 (it's also a runway). If I cannot even start a snow-removal sortie then I can call in a contractor, there are next to none nearby, it'll cost, but otherwise its no panic. But once I start to clear it myself I HAVE to get to the public road or it's gonna cost really big bucks. Calling out an unscheduled snow-removal contractor will go to $1000 easy just to get to where I got stuck. Then I need a tow crew to pull/push me out of the way, this may be impossible if I've lost hydraulics (bucket on ground, won't happen once I start using the tractor with a front PTO). Then the contractor can finish the snow removal all the way to the house. Then I have to get towed in all the way and THEN begins whatever repair is needed. Bottom line, once I get moving , it's a critical-mission op.
I left 6 rods and pistons in an electrolyitic plastic bucket for the night but noticed that one piston was badly scuffed. I suspect that low oil-pressure had lead to lack of cooling spray AND the incredible amount of external sludge contamination all ended with overheating and piston damage. It MAY be an idea to replace not just this piston but all of them, I'll see their condition better tomorrow or the day after when completely cleaned. Meanwhile, since I saw no residual x-hatching in the cylinders (gone to the machine-shop) I got off on a tangent about x-hatching IN ANOTHER THREAD in THIS forum: "X-hatching moods" .
Typically the back cylinder gets plugged up with trash and overheats, the piston scuffs from expansion. If you want this top notch, why not all new cylinders? If the pistons fit the tolerances, nothing wrong with new rings on the good ones, but compare the rings to the whole shebang before you go to the trouble. Doesn't matter if there is any residual cross hatching, if you're putting new rings in, then you hone for a cross hatch pattern.
I should have a report from the machine-shop within a week or two, they might tell me that the cylinders are new-spec or something entirely different. I'll take it from there. When I said I didn't see any x-hatching I meant that it would therefore have to be redone and THAT's where the other 'aggressive' x-hatching issue and tools came to mind. http://www.tractorshed.com/gallery/uptest/a25139.jpg but this tool doesn't even come close to the x-hatching in the photo in that other thread, THAT x-hatching will outlive the engine so, since exactly 45 degree x-hatching is there to prevent ring rotation while seating, maybe the aggressive version is designed to prevent ring rotation after ring seating as well?
Those stubs you talk about are usually called dowels
Brass I think, and my local blacksmith (also pro welder & machinist) will replace all the short ones. I wonder why the same method as used for main bearings (which seems less problematic) isn't good enough for rods?
Cooling fan is in the beauty-bath, this thing has some sort of a clutch but I can't take that part apart. Anyybody know how it works? It's pretty elaborate with 3 sets of needle/ball bearing-pairs and all. I find very little documentation but it's a good bet that temperature control is the basis. Since I'll be operating it MOSTLY as a snow-blower hosting tractor (-5 to -25c) it may not come on that often. At what temperature is it supposed to engage/disengage?
If i remember right, its a fluid coupling supplied by crankcase oil and is thermostatically controlled
I'm still very much in the clean-up phase for this fan unit; I see 2 oil inlets one is to the bearing in the guide vane section the other seems to be to the clutch and everything else, I presume both are pressure oil (think I will replace all 6 bearings during assembly). What I don't understand is why bother with a clutch at all, especially oil controlled/powered? If I have a low oil pressure and overheat situation (which might have plagued this engine) then the last thing I want is fan degradation caused by the same condition, such being the very foundation of vicious loops. If anything the clutch should default to ENGAGED unless low oil temperature AND cold oil (high) pressure in series say to disengage. Even then there'd be little point in doing it, my 2 cents.
There should be a small washer under a special small bolt located on the oil thermostat for the blower. If i recall correctly it could be removed allowing the blower to run full time. With cold weather operation though, under light load, the engine would not run warm enough if the blower ran full time, hence the thermostat valve. On the older engines with a full-time direct drive blower, blocking the airflow works but too many operators forgot to remove the block-off and sometimes overheated the engine
The F4L912 that I built in 2008 came out of a shovel and it originally had a box with a thermostat controlled flap-valve on the downstream side of the jugs. I threw out the box and baffled the cylinders redirecting more air to the rear ones (like they do on airplanes) and that engine was runing under load most of the time. It turned out that I didn't need thermo control. This time I think I should keep what there is once I figure it out, but right now everything's in a 'filthy-parts' box that'll get sorted out as I clean and overhaul them in turn. I'll start new threads when the build begins, I should end up coming across that washer too. The manual could get someone to scrap a stator hub though: step-7 to remove the aft/inbrd circlip is folllowed by a diverging clutch section before resuming with the hub stripdown at step-12. Anyone who skips the #7 and moves to hub section is likely to try pressing out a roller bearing with the first circlip still in place. Not impressed, as I almost did just that but first looked to see if the egress path was clear
After all the post-pandemic delays I finally got my block and parts back from the engine shop. The good news is that the block, the crank and the cam are totally within new specs. The bad news is that (all of the following are chinese knockoffs) some pistons are scuffed, 3 cylinder are scrap, the heads are probably salvagable with new guides and seats https://imgur.com/U08zp1W.png
Whats with the broken edges on the barrels in the upper row?
The top 2 or 3 fins have broken corners, I have no idea how they were "achieved" There are a good dozen reasons I could badmouth the last person working on this engine BUT (as I have seen before) one never knows if it wasn't a poor and sick farmer with his back to the bank wall if you know what I mean. A few years back I bought a small IH b25 or something from such a farmer: he had been diagnosed much too late with prostate cancer so I knew he had no chance of being half as lucky as I had been when I was diagnosed in time and got away with it (so far, knock on wood). IF these were OEM-Deutz and not chinese jugs I would not consider such chipping alone as reason for scrapping, maybe I'd move them to the front, but I can get the new ones for less than a beer six-pack so I won't bother. Haven't decided yet, I'll spend some time scouting for new-spec used ones locally (the out of town used market is being clobbered by skyrocketing shipping costs).