Hello Everyone, I will be bringing my old Komatsu PC60-6 home soon and want to continue upgrading the machine. It has done wonders for us this year. As it has for the 25 years I have owned it. Its not surprising that it is showing signs of its age. It smokes blue when I first start up for a minute or so but that goes away for the most part when working it. If I let it idle for more than a minute or so then when I power up again is smokes white for 10 or 15 seconds and then clears up. I wondered if anyone had suggestions on what steps I would take to identlify and fix these two things. I would like the machine to run as clean as I can. Thank you.
Is it using coolant? If not, leave it alone.
"25 yrs" means nothing. What is more important is the hours on the engine. First thing to check is blowby. By some accounts, this can usually be judged with experience, but there are values and I am even searching for some for my Cat engine right now. Zero blowby is the gold standard, and if there is basically a jetstream of air coming out of the crankcase, you should consider evaluating the engine via compression and leakdown testing. Injectors, pump, timing, etc, could all be the culprit, but you need to know the engine is good and what you are describing sounds like a cylinder cooling down from a lack of compression. BUT, it could also be an injector that has a poor pattern (jet instead of spray) thus requiring more heat in the cylinder to get it burned.
Both Cat and Komatsu use what is basically an anemometer placed in the stream of the air coming out of the breather on the engine. Unless you have that tool, their specs aren't worth anything. The easiest way to test is a water tube manometer and the spec is one inch of water with the engine at full throttle and fully loaded. If it is over that the engine will still start and run fine but may burn some oil. It is normal to get blue smoke out of those engines at cold startup. The white smoke isn't what I would call normal but isn't something that might be cause for concern unless you have other issues that go with it. If you are using oil, coolant or excessive amounts of fuel, than just monitor it and keep in keeping on. You can spend lots of money and loose lots of sleep chasing ghosts.
What John c said.