Does anyone know what kind of fuel temps they are running in the summer. Just out of curiosity I have been monitoring my fuel temps on the dozer lately via the ecu display. I was surprised to see that they were up to 200F+ in the heat of the day. Our daily ambient temps have been running 100F + with full South Texas sunshine. I shot the fuel tank with an IR thermometer and the metal was 142F. I then opened the cap and took a shot of the fuel to verify what the ecu was telling me. I had about 50 gallons in the tank so it was about half full. Hydraulic fluid was running about 180F. Hydraulic tank surface was 137F. My machine doesn't have fuel or hydraulic coolers. What are some of you guys seeing on your machines?
D8T 138f About 25c ambient.
Thanks for the reply. I had to look up 25C so's I could get this in 'Murican numbers. I think I might look into visiting Canada before too long as my central AC will hardly get my house down to 25C during the day.
We did have issues with high fuel temps on one machine. Would set light off. Next time I see mechanic I will ask what was cause. I can't remember off hand.
I guess it would also depend on the location of the fuel temp sensor on different makes/models of machine. Think about it this way if the coolant is running about 190-200 DegF on a system performing well then you'd expect the fuel to be at a similar temperature because it's going through (at least part of) the engine depending on what type of fuel system you have. How big a part would depend on whether you have an old-fashioned pump & injector setup, a common rail system, or something in between.
This was also a light load day. During the week it's higher I'm sure.
It's a common rail system on a Deere 850J and the temp sensor is on the injector pump. From what I can gather, the sensor limit is 212F before it will throw a stop alarm. I presume it will throw a "Fuel temp moderately high" warning as we approach the limit, but I don't really know.
I ran the machine pretty heavy pulling a root plow over the weekend with ambient temps 100F+ and the fuel temps I saw were around 180F. I just finished putting in 6 new injector so I'm thinking that maybe I was developing some heat via excessive fuel return from bad injectors. I also made sure I had a full 100 gallons in the tank to mitigate any heating situation. I've haven't thrown any codes to date, but I was just surprised that fuel temps were running that high. Of course, I didn't have any reference what 'normal' might be so I had no idea of what excessive looked like.
Fuel recycles back to tank at a fairly heavy rate on Common Rail engines, that becomes a heat transfer media not unlike coolant and will drag that heat back to the tank.
Agreed. In a lot of machines with common rail injection the low fuel tank level alarm is often higher (as a % of tank capacity) than on other types of engine. If it's possible try running the machine while all the same time maintaining the fuel tank level as full as possible and see if it changes anything.
Will do. Will try come up with some sort of data for system temp vs. tank level. I don't have tank level alarm that I'm aware of, but only have an analog gauge that I monitor while operating.