I'm writing this thread with hopes the manufactures are lurking! Ive talked with a lot of owners and dealers and the tier 4 woes seem to be endless, especially in cold climate areas?we have been sticking to used tier 3 trying to avoid the hassles, has anyone had good luck with the new regen setups and def fluid ? Gonna have to buy newer sooner or later?
Been around quite a few of the new 6T tier 4's, we actually had the first one of the assembly line and those were always having problems, just got 2 new 6T's in july and they have been pretty good so far but they only have 600 hrs.
I'm afraid we just have to suck it up and adjust to the government mandate. I don't like it. I have an interm 4a tractor , def but no filter or egr and I try not to let the sun set on it. I am planning on putting up a building on one farm to have a place to keep it out ofthe weather when working onthat farm. I pity you construction guys who can't keep that machine above 32f all the time. I figured that I would see portable temporary shelter set up to keep everything warm or plugged in. Truckers say that as long as they keep the truck running around or under cover they are OK but the house of card collapse once the truck spends a weekend below freezing shut down. I guess we will find out if that is just a myth soon enough.
I have started a tier 4 6T around 10 degrees and it starts fine
I know up here in great white north it's been a big pain. Trucks like vac trucks which see lots of idle time are continually going into limp mode. I know guys who spend 15000-20000 per unit putting bypass systems in and delete kits.In far north regions where equipment has to run overnight this is a huge problem. The governments need to get it together and offer some exemptions on off-road equipment or remote areas. The whole system seems geared to warm climates.
I'm balmy compared to Alberta, and St. Louis is not Buffalo NY. Salt and corrosion is bad here because our temps are usually good for salt to work and there is a lot of salt mined locally. So my computer and wire components have a short life. Just like the dirt is different and has different wearing effects on equipment the weather is able to impact the important parts/systems we are forced to buy. Alberta is major league cold.
We had one guy here with 65 komatsu. Got machine runnin but it would only idle. Would not rev up?? Played with it for couple hrs( warming it up) finally took off. It was minus 35c that day. None of mine have that crap but getting worried after a few years when that's all that's left.
Know what you guys are saying ! Sat. morning about 15 degrees here . started up JD 700 K with 300 hrs . warmed it up and ready to start working BUT red stop sign in dash comes on and derates engine . check codes , check JD-Link no codes . no one at dealership ? turns out to be fuel filters ? i guess i need to carry fuel filters with me . Thank You Tree Huggers !!!
If they hold the regulations long enough for the engineers to get caught up they may start to find solutions or alternatives. I think DME, and the natural gas alternatives will gain a foothold just because of the emissions problems. Just a year ago Navistar admitted it could not make tier 4 without def. Have you tried to set up temporary portable shelter?
It's going to get to were a 10 yr old machine will be junk... Will all the expensive emissions and computers it'll be impractical to keep it going. I know all the new emissions on pickups and class 8 tractors don't work out in the extreme cold. Urea freezing up, DPF clogging, etc. Couple of my friends work up on the slope, I guess there is talk of going with gas engines to "fix" the problem.
When we visited the Liebherr factory in telfs Austria they had a couple of machines that had Diesel engines converted to LNG. I don't remember where he said they were headed to but said this maybe the way of future?? I think the whole emission thing is outa control with no real homework been done!
Im from STL but havent worked here in years, last winter was in South Bend running a new 6T
Canadian National Railways tested a couple of locomotives last year converted to run on LNG they had a tank car fitted to supply the LNG to the locomotives. I know a lot of people here in Canada that are buying the new diesel pickup trucks like the Dodge's and Ford's are getting DPF and EGR delete kits I wonder if that can be done for earthmoving machinery?
I work in the oilfield in northern Pa and we are converting our high horsepower pumps over to running a 60%/40% split between diesel and LNG.
I'm not sure about the hp equivelent with LNG but it does require a huge tank! Do you think you would make a 10hr shift? Maybe liebherr was on to something?
LNG tanks for the railroads is due to lack of refueling stations not just to consumption rate(which is notably higher). LNG has less btu value and is extremely dry, Cummins tried it out a few years ago on St. Louis Metro busses, nothing but grief, engine life less than 150,000miles, considerable catastrophic failure rates from extreme wear in critical areas on the cylinders and valve seats. I am not a believer in the DEF fed tier 4 systems either, use considerably more fuel to do the same work so has to be making more emissions of something out the stack at least in total tonnage with the Urea coming from Natural Gas conversion where their major release material is CO2 cannot be good either.
It seems a little of a smoke show when these so called emissions requirements make the engines burn more fuel to make the same hp? Are you not still emitting more co2 into the atmosphere?? The climate maybe changing like it has for 1000's of years but I doubt we have much impact. Right now here in alberta we are getting winter typical of that in the 60!s. My grandmother used to say when she was married in December 1938 we had zero snow and patches of green grass could be seen in her outdoor wedding photos? Unheard of in this country that time of year?it is interesting to note that most of the delete kits bring the mileage on pickups and big rigs anywhere from 2-5 mpg? Wouldn't that alone be letting out less co2?
Not to argue with your experience, but some engines burning DEF are more economical. It's a bit involved, but basically T 4 run higher injection pressure to get a leaner, cleaner burn so there's much less smoke to clean up. Trade off is you get higher NOX which you need the DEF to clean up. In my experience the DEF equipped engines are much less thirsty than the Interim engines with active after treatment.
Has not proven out so in the US. Documentation on farm service machines, heavy equipment, road equipment seeing a loss of near to 10% efficiency over the previous non T4 engines in realtime use. The engines typically see a higher use as the system chokes down, then more use as the system goes into 'clean or purge' mode and sends excess fuel to clear the carbon in the converters. These engines also have a particulate filter, these have a service life that at a point they must be removed/exchanged for machine cleaning. As to leaner/cleaner, the leaner a burn in a diesel the more N2O it produces requiring ever more conversion in the exhaust. I try to keep up with those in the community around me to see how the systems respond to real time event and not test bed reports.
I sincerely beleive this all money grab for someone! I'll give you a example of some machines we currently use. On one occasion we did a demo of a new td25m we had our two current machines one of which was a 1978 td25c. We kept track of fuel consumption on all 3 and in the end it was the old c with the 817 ih engine that was the miser burning 100 litres less per 10hr shift than the 2000 td25g and 2010 25m? While this was before t4 it's not hard to see which direction things were headed.The performance of these three are nearly identical and certainly not representative of nearly 40 gallons per shift? The tier4 from what I've been hearing offer no gain over the previous models. I can definatly see this with my 08- 12 ford f350 that offers even less fuel economy than the 08. My brother inlaw owns big farm and he says on their big quad track case tractors they opted for delete kits and bypass programmers to bump fuel economy?
Worked for Waukesha engines lots of years ago and we had natural gas engines the ran for years without shut down in the SoCal oil fields we had anywhere from .5 to 1.7 mw gen sets running 24/7 with no problems, Cat and Cummins tried to compete and couldn't. Valve and valve seats and burned pistons. I left that industry in 85. One of the railroads in the LA area has switch running CNG
I can remember the Waukesha and Hercules engines in the oil patch of OK in the 80's, had thousands of hours steady running on well head gas, check the oil running and add as needed, some I know ran for years with few shut downs. Those were well built and designed for dry gas consumption. Current employer has a few Cat standby diesels, had a failure on one of these brand new. Shot a rod thru the side, parts of ****-can on the floor with the rod chunk running on diesel but had intended to run them on Line Natural Gas, don't see the potential in them.
Had red fuel in it plus orange A-freeze, small fire until the A-freeze flooded the hot spot.
Ouch! No part of that picture is cheap. Did it over rev too? The rod bolt looks stretched. Just a real bad day and expensive too.
No overspeed, dang thing was actually hunkering down like a locked up dog, then it let go as fuel pressure got too severe. This is more to scale. Generator was at full 2.2MW load, engine had less than a hour run time.
Was it a brand new engine or a rebuild?
Delivered that week, brand new. Spun no.1 main, starved the rods on that journal. These monsters came in as T4, urea tank has to be heated as is 300 gallon is a mess when it rocks up. The fuel tank is only 750 gallon and good for only 23 hours when the low level of 25 gallon shuts the engine down, lack of DEF(urea) and the engine drops to idle then shuts down, best we can tell at full load the urea use is .2gal to 1gal of fuel. Fuel consumption on a previous install of similar sized Cat gensets was 26 hours per 750gal tank. Extra energy to keep the system heated adds more cost to the units.
Best solution I think is to remanufacture the old stuff that ran forever! Most of it grandfathers in until you replace it, then the trouble starts.
And that is where they get you, they stop making spares or repair parts or simply go out of business from lack of equipment sales then you have the conundrum, can't deal with them, can't do without, almost as bad as a wife.
Brand new motor is on the manufacturer. I would guess there are plenty of problems with the first batch of Tier 4 final motors. Wait about three years before replacing old iron if possible. The manufacturers seem to want to do their R&D on other peoples money any more. By that time most of the bugs should be worked out and possibly this is such a disaster that the politicians will feel the heat and change the law.
The off-road is a small player in the grand scheme of emissions? Liebherr told us they produce just over 1000 machines a year? Cat & komatsu likely double that but when you compare that to trucks and cars it's minimal. Why even worry about the footprint of these machines? It's ridiculous and knowing the environment these work in even a basic machine has a hard time staying together! C'mon politicians get your head on!!!
By the time Tier 4 is debugged Tier 5 (or 6, or 7) will be mandated, the politicians who force this stuff in answer to radical greens and have only contempt for the sort of people who own and run heavy machinery. Grrrrr, rant over.
Are you thinking the red fuel had something to do with the failure?
No, just explaining the staining.
You'll see a few variations before the final solution. That's the part I fear most, the oddball fixes that fail more than fix and we pay the cost. Saw it in autos from the 60's here, EPA kept adding on machinery to try to fix the last fix to fix the first modification for lower emissions. Net result cars had to become lighter to drive fewer pounds down the road to consume less fuel while all the 'fixes' continued to use more. I still hold that burning more fuel to go the same distance even as it is less 'harmful' emissions it is more emission by ton or tonne so we gain nothing but more devices to fail. The EFI engines with programmable logic was probably THE invention to fix most of the EPA flubs while reducing emissions yet they insist to maintain the old equipment that did little which the European markets do not use. Europe gets 35-50mpg(equivalent) with the same auto frame that we can barely accomplish 25-35mpg due to EPA equipment, their line of equipment is not allowed in the States without the US EPA garbage in tow.
ih100 can you explain more on NOx? I dug out my college books (diesel tech and auto tech) out of curiosity.. NOx are Nitric Oxide (NO) and Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2). Also says "The generic term NOx does not include nitrous oxide." I'm not a chemist nor did I sleep at a Holiday Inn :tong Just when you said that N2O was a carcinogen it got me wondering. How could it be used at the dentist?
What I have been told was the NOX refers to oxides of nitrogen and is more than one compound. Higher temperatures and pressures during combustion are what creates these compounds. Cooled exhaust gas recirculation seems to be the most current add on to diesel engines to counteract those high temperatures. This seems to have provided a trade off because higher firing temperatures are what burns up hydrocarbon particles that everyone is claiming cause respiratory problems. Diesel particulate filters have been added to capture those pollutants. The burn cycle used in the filters is where fuel is injected into the filter and lit to create the heat to burn the particulates in a low pressure situation so the NOX is not generated. On the machines I have experience with, the systems seemed to work pretty well. The problems have been in applications and operator training. Operators that let the filters get plugged has been the biggest issue so far on equipment. I have heard of extensive issues in applications that require large time frames of idling, such as municipal fleet equipment. So far I haven't seen it to be a problem in medium and large off highway equipment.
As John said. I didn't say N2O was carcinogenic, just the nitrous oxides. Mind you, if was, it wouldn't stop some of our dentists using it. As for the cars, everything in Europe burning petrol (gas) is fitted with a catalytic converter now. What extras do you have fitted in the states? Higher combustion temperatures cause formation of nitrous oxides, which aren't captured by the particulate filter. hence DEF injection.
From what I understand as you lean out the engines you get more n2o. This is what they are trying to dilute with the def. I think it's all a farce! One trip from Calgary to Dallas with a 767 likely releases more of this than all our dozers combine in one year! It's a joke and by the time you get one system working they change the rules.
Nitric Oxide (or Nitrogen Oxide) is not Nitrous Oxide though. I guess that is where you had me mixed up.
What really chaps my cheeks is the estimated volume of the emission the EPA is trying to control: http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/n2o.html A grandiose 5% of total emission and we the end user of machines have to field all these machine mods/inconveniences.
Sorry for the Confusion. I hear one major company has an engine running at ultra-high injection pressures to clean up all the hydrocarbons and particulates. Theory is it will only need def dosing as after treatment, no scr or filtration. Whether we'll see it in production or not, I don't know.
Was talking with a guy that has oil tank trucks and they are so disgusted with t4 the non ending problems.They have started buying glider trucks(new with no engine or Trans)and then buy rebuilt cat or cuummins non emission engines and install on their own!these trucks run slow in cold weather where these filter systems do not work. Seems like we are hardly moving ahead if this needs to be done!
Now Carb is throwing rocks at new technology. They appear to have a big problem in methodology of their study. www.forconstructionpros.com/news/11248461/study-confirms-hybrid-earthmovers-fuel-economy-questions-exhaust-savings
Not sure how this applies to Dozers specifically but Bobcat is now introducing its new Tier4 engines (produced by Doosan) which do not use DPFs to meet emissions requirements. Very interesting, here is a little from their website... "Bobcat Engines have a specially designed combustion chamber that minimizes the amount of Particulate Matter (PM) the engine creates. The amounts are low enough that a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF) isn’t needed for Tier 4 compliance. This “non-DPF” solution induces simplicity because most DPFs require interaction and maintenance from the operator to keep the engine operating properly." They use High Pressure common rail, ERG, diesel oxidation catalyst and Selective catalytic reduction. :drinkup
Not all small diesel engines require the DPF. The DOC and SCR would still take up the room of the DPF. Any other initials we can add to this alphabet soup?
the DOC and SCR may take up the same space physically but I think its a better alternative as there is no operator input needed to keep the system up and running, also no need to add DEF fluid.
The smaller diesels I have experience with don't require the operator to do anything other than run the machine and not let it idle for extended periods of time. That is the same thing required of a system without the DPF.
The smaller engines will run lean and hot, so they're burning up the PM and just have to clean up the NOX
SCR with no DEF? You sure about that?