I have a El 240B excavator that every time I try to start it I have to crank for sometimes more than a minute. The use of ether just locks up the motor and wont allow it to start no matter how much you crank. The injectors have been changed once about 2500 hours ago. About one in every five time you try starting this machine you run out of battery before you get it to start so you have to stop and charge the batteries before you can continue. Once you start the machine though it runs like it was brand new and is one of the most powerful machines that we have it has even more power than our newer 322B. Another quirk it has is that when you do try to start it it will fire on the first couple of cranks but you have to keep cranking because immediatly after it fires it will fall on its face and you will be back to cranking. If you stop cranking once it fire and it dies you can start again and it will repeat the process all over again. What would cause this and what could I do to possibly fix this? The machine has around 22000 hours on it and the motor was rebuilt at around 15000 hours.
Without knowing what engine it has.. right off the bat, I'd say fuel supply.. sounds like it hits off the fuel left in the lines and after it sucks that out, theres nothing left to run on.. as soon as it dies.. get out and unscrew the filters.. see if there is any fuel in them or they're empty..
I think you have a 3116 in that machine. You could have injector seats leaking or a transfer pump problem. I have also had trouble with some of the governors on these not giving full fuel on startup until the oil pressure is up. If you pull the valve cover off you can move the rack farther open by hand to see if that helps.
Should be a Cat 3116 engine. That's not a great motor to start with. Do you know if the head was rebuilt when the engine was rebuilt? Sounds to me like it's low on compression. It's turbo charged, so once it's running and up to speed, the low compression will not be a much of an issue. Have a compression test done. You may have weak rings or leaky valves. Does it use oil or have a lot of blow by?
I do believe that it has a 3116 in it. It does not use oil but it does have some blow by. I just tried starting it and pulling the filters after it does and they are still full of fuel.
Is this part saying that it will fire right away, but not catch and keep running. But if you stop cranking it will fire again right away but not catch again? Other than this part, it sounds like fuel draining back, air leak etc. Does that have a separate transfer pump besides the one mounted up high next to the governor? The high transfer pump makes it hard to prime if it's sucking air. You could priming the system by applying a few PSI air pressure to the tank and loosening a fuel line near the governor to see if it starts faster.
Does the grid heater or glow plugs work. Is there any smoke out of the exhaust while cranking
it has tons of grey smoke while cranking but once it begins to fire that smoke turns black as pitch. just as you say Delmer. you can crank four or five times and almost every time it fires probably three or four cylinders and then dies. and as far as i can see it does not have a second transfer pump. both the grid heater and glow plugs work. the only problem with the glow plugs and grid heater is that once they start warming up while your cranking it struggles even more to start. the best ive been able to get it to start is when it is about 50 degrees outside and we had kinda a cold night. any warmer the problems listed above arise in force and any colder and it wont start no matter how much you crank on it.
A 3116 won't have glow plugs just an intake heater. When you say it struggles with the heater on do you mean it's cranking too slow. Cranking too slow will cause hard starting.
It's not cranking to slow. It just doesn't like to fire and it struggles to fire.
The smoke is unburned fuel. I still think it's a compression issue.
Yeah, forget what I said about air, and no fuel. It's obviously getting fuel with smoke like that. Not enough fuel would be no smoke or puffs of white smoke with puffs of clear air. None of that makes any sense to me anymore. Have the valves been checked recently? Any chance there's some hydraulic drag that kicks in too soon? Only other thing that I can think of is the weak starter/batteries/cables...
Does it have a block heater? What happens if you plug it in for a few hours?
It does not have a block heater. There might be some hydraulic drag that kicks in to early but I'm not sure how to test that. We haven't had time to check the valves recently and we just put brand new batteries in it this year with a starter last year. I've had the mechanic that the cat dealer sent look at this machine and he was quite confused saying this was the weirdest machine he had run into.
Well that's a confidence builder. To test the hydraulic load, you would need to remove the main pump coupling or somehow disconnect the engine from any load. Then you could try starting it and see if there is a difference.
Was this a slow developing problem? When was the last time the valves and injectors were adjusted?
In your first post you say that the use of ether locks it up. This makes me think it is cranking too slow or loading up. Also if the intake heater is working and you are using ether that could make for a big boom in the intake! How did you verify that the intake heater is working. Can you post a video of the cranking speed.
Good point, if it had low compression the ether would go right through, if it didn't start it.
I'm with Mobiltech. IMHO it's cranking too slow. What with all the talk about new batteries, etc, when was the last time the starter motor was overhauled and what about the condition of the starting circuit/ground cables and terminations..?
We used a temperature reading device to check to see if the intake heater was working. We put a brand new starter in it last year. It will be a while before I can post a video of the cranking speed due to the fact that we have shut down for maintenance on all our equipment. We currently are looking into the valves and the injectors. Although I can say that when the batteries are fresh it cranks at about 3/4 the speed of a brand new 3406C that we bought to put in a local use dump truck.
Too slow in other words ....... If the starter was replaced recently then I'd look very hard at the cables and connections in the battery/starting circuit. As an aside what viscosity of oil do you have in the hydraulic system..?
The first step for me would be engine RPM, as has been said. A photo tachometer is not too expensive, and should help you out to determine the engine cranking rpm. Its a nice tool to have, in any case. With all that smoke, and it starting easier in the cold weather, plus the heated air from the intake heater making it harder to start, I'd give the air side a good look over. Make sure your air filters are good, and you've got no restrictions. That's pretty basic though, and you've probably looked it over. If you find the RPM's are low, and you suspect the hydraulic system, you should be able to plug in a gauge and see what sort of pressure is being generated during cranking.
sorry for the late reply. we finished the general maintnence we were doing on the machine and it started right up first try with minimal cranking it ran like that for about a week and then it blew a exhaust manifold gasket. we changed that and then it would not start. it was blowing white smoke so we checked the fuel system over an fixed some bad connections on the fuel pump and changed all the fuel filters. it started to blow black smoke now when we tryed to start it but it wont start. we have even jumped it to another loader to give the starter more power and it turns like a jet engine but it will only half run and half turn on the starter while belching black smoke in between the large amounts of dark grey smoke. the solenoid on the fuel pump clicks when you turn the key on and off. the fuel filters stay primed when we try to start it. could this be a bad fuel pump? low fuel pressure? can anyone send me some diagrams of the fuel system or tell me the recommended spec for the fuel system?