I recently mentioned on another thread that I had agreed to purchase a truck from a private seller, subject to a satisfactory engine report. The truck was a 2012 Western Star with a Cummins egr motor and only had 400000 kms on the clock. During our initial inspection we forgot to look at the hour meter, so when the ecm report came back, we where more than a little surprised to find that it had 12000 hrs on it, 28% of which where idle time. It appears to be proper idle, not pto hours, which were listed separately. I had my Cat dealer test an oil sample, the results of which tended to reflect the higher hour motor. High soot level and elevated levels of wear metals. We passed on this truck, but my question is, are extended idle periods harder or easier on a motor like this than normal loading?
Harder based on experience and what I've always been told. Temps don't run high enough and cylinders get washed down due to incomplete combustion. Add the soot and other crud into the oil and you end up with a pretty acidic mixture. Plus all the emissions stuff really doesn't like idle time, especially trucks equipped with a DPF. I would have passed too. I always tried like hell to keep my idle time under 10%. It was easy with my daycab trucks, not so with the sleeper trucks. Junkyard
Idle is a killer on these newer DPF/SCR trucks. Gotta have the heat to burn the crap out.
From training and experience low idle operation was a killer on the diesels prior to Tier 1 emissions regs also. What I was told by some engineers was that 1 hour of low idle operation was comparable to two to three hours of full load operation. From experience all diesels will wet stack the exhaust if idled long enough.
Ever try load banking a wet-stacked genset? She'll throw flames no problem lol.
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The truck does have a sleeper, but also has an icepack, so no need to run the motor to cool it. It was working in the coal seam gas fields and may have been bound by some crazy rule preventing it from being shut down while on site.
Oh man will they throw flames! Even worse is a Locomotive that has done nothing but yard work for a couple of years and then gets put back into road service. Nothing like spraying glowing golf balls out the stack into the weeds.
and they always do that when it's dry.....I have damn near 1/2 mile frontage on a CN main line, it can get interesting. Ed
For some reason, UP always seems to start grinding rails in the dry part of the summer. They spray a lot of water, but still doesn't seem clever.
No, it's not real clever. About 15 years back the BNSF had a rail grinder go through here and it lit up a wheat field and killed the owner who was trying to outrun the fire in his combine. Plus we have several brush fires every year from the grinders too.
You can't outrun a wind driven fire. I've heard it's best to drive through the flame front, might be something to that.
When we had that huge forest fire here last summer they said the fire was moving through the bush at 40 meters a minute. You can run but most lack the endurance to keep that pace up through the woods and brush for long.
Some years back we had a fire like that in timber, good man in a dozer tried to outrun it. They found him in the cab of the charred machine. When the fire tops the trees and the wind is pushing it at near highway speeds, nothing will outrun it but maybe aircraft. Find water or a hole or the backside of a ridge and pray.
One of my relatives was part of a dozer crew pushing fire guard on this particular fire. Said there were some really hairy moments when the fire got really wild. Another relative was a firefighter and one of the first on scene in the first area of town to get flattened by fire. He almost got trapped a couple times because the fire was just so darn unpredictable.