Engine is in an excavator and as I monitor oil use, I would say it is using about 1-2qt/100h. I have 36qt oil capacity. NO alarming blow by or running issues at all. I am just evaluating the oil use. Engine currently has 6000hrs but that is probably only 4000 of actual work.
Measure oil consumption related to how much fuel the engine burns. So in US terms that would be X gallons of fuel burned per gallon of top-up oil added. That's the standard Cat uses and so it would be easy to compare your oil consumption to the charts that are kicking around.
Not the straigh answer but as far as I'm concerned you got a new engine the 953 is burning a gallon of oil every 8 hours with equates to about 50 gallon of fuel
Does the oil level keep going down if you don't top it off? Some engines kind of set their own oil level.
I typically keep my engines at half gallon low, always seems to not use oil like that.
Regarding my earlier post, for a 3126 engine anything more than 1 gallon of top-up oil added for every 250 US gallons (average figure over time) of fuel burned would be considered as a case of "investigate the cause of the high oil consumption".
Before the charts, i seem to remember Cat using a percentage number( ie. 2 1/2%) and leaving you to do the math yourself
I'm totally cool doing math. I just have no bearing on the consumption rate. Only one I found was for a different engine at .0008lb/hp/24hrs. Whichever. It is also going to be interesting how I quantity the use anyway. Not like the ol stick is highly calibrated but I'm certainly not burning 1gal/100gal of fuel. Prob not even 1gal/100hr.
If you were you'd be well in the "danger zone". You need to be burning well over 250 gallons of fuel per gallon of oil added to be considered "normal".
You sure that engine didn't let go already
It starts right up and puts in a days work with no complaints hardly any blow by. For us it will last 20 more years
Oil will always be new
Just change the filter
Yeah you ain’t got a problem at that oil use rate in my book.
Some old merc V8 industrial engines had a spec of not more than .5 % of fuel consumption. Had 1 that burnt just that for years but between 6 to the current 8 K hours weened itself off to nearly nothing.
I did not do the previous oil charting so all I know right now is I am 60hrs and 300gal into an fresh oil change where the level was a bit over the full line and is now slightly under the full line. What it will take to bring that level back is not known. But it does sound like trying to run it over full is not ideal for oil use so I might let it drop a bit more and add oil and see what it takes. But I did have to add 1gal of oil on last oil change, which I had about 280hrs on near as I can tell. Using the above 5galhr burn rate, that would be 1400gal of fuel for 1gal of oil. I have been pushing that machine to max for days so I guess it could be expected that it might sniff some oil, but I think she needed the workout.
We lost 2 engines at work doing that. Boss didn't want oil changes "we are always topping them off, so it's a perpetual oil change. Could have sealed a driveway with the thick tar like goop in the pans. Was like touching ink too, looked like a coal miner working on them and it took weeks to wear off my hands. Seems like it was mostly the fresh oil getting burned/leaked.
Damm I never thought of that
That makes sense, the oil pump is mostly just pumping the thinner new oil and old thick oil is staying in the oil pan.
Yeah when I had my two smoke I didn't bother changing oil as I put a gallon a day in it, leaked bad after a runaway and was deep in two stacked frames so I couldn't fix.
On several of my Cats, the first pull of the oil stick in the morning is always lower. Count to 10, reinsert and recheck.
I forget which engine but had the opposite. When you first pull the dipstick it is way over full but put it back in the and the level is correct.
Or don't have your machine perfectly level and lose your mind! I would,however, like to find an actual spec for the 3126B engine for normal oil consumption just so I can sort of bench mark that. Otherwise, I really can't say I have complaints other than when I am trying to jam, I apparently want more power than that engine wants to give so I end up slowing the boom or something down as I don't like to pull the engine down that hard. All the fuel filters and such are new but was considering throwing in a new air cleaner just to see if I notice. They are both still white and I usually bang the dust out of the outer filter daily. Not sure if that is in the book or not, but I like to. It does have a "clogged filter" sensor in intake but has never alerted me and I was straight giving it to her the last few days. Never whitish exhaust smoke, never really misses a beat. Just feel the 180 ponies ain't enough.
You’re going to be unlucky then because it doesn’t exist, at least not in any official channels. The only thing that exists is the 250:1 fuel/oil limit, already mentioned above, below which oil consumption is regarded as excessive.
$50k engine but can't buy a $100 filter...... sorry nothing on you it's just a pet peeve
Anyone paying $100 for an engine oil filter is paying way over the odds IMO.
How hard is it "pulling down"? There shouldn't be any reason to baby that engine, 180HP is a conservative rating, it would be 330 in RVs and fire trucks, and 450 in marine. If anything it should be run harder and hotter to see if it helps the oil consumption, not that we're thinking you have a problem yet, but an annoyance. Too early to bring up the cat part number for bon ami that you sprinkled in the air intake to seat the rings on new engines that didn't get worked hard enough after rebuild. If it pulls down more than it should, there might be a "hydraulic stall" or similar specification for measuring an excavator engine power.
I would be checking the full stall speed and recalibrating the prv. You should not have to back out of the controls unless there is something not set right.
Air filter
A lot of equipment states not to service the air filter until indicated by the restriction indicator. More dust is ingested by service than operation. The non-serviceable inner filter helps a lot, but just gets plugged faster.
blow by is a good indicator but you need a blow by indicator it measures just that and there are charts and numbers of % blow by for the different Cat engines. Also you can loose some oil thru a turbo seal pull off the turbo outlet hose start engine and hold a clean piece of cardboard in front of it with the engine rpms turned up if its spitting oil you have a turbo seal problem
does the engine spend a lot of time idling or not under load?