Interesting fault finding technique

[Bixxer Bob]

My 4x4 has a slight wheelbearing howl.  It hasn't developed far enough to be able to say exactly which one by jacking it up and rocking or spinning it, but I need it fixed before a forthcoming 600 mile trip so I visited a friend who owns a local garage.

No problem he says and put it over his service pit.  He then went round all four hubs with a laser thermometer, the sort your doctor uses these days.  It's the front nearside he says, showing me the temp was about 30 deg higher than the other three.  He also checked all four brake discs, which were within half adegree of each other, to prove the heat wasn't coming from them.

I don't often get surprised these days, but that was a really neat idea!  It's probably common in the trade but it was new to me.  I'll certainly keep it in mind for the future.

[Mustang]

they are cheap too
chinese versions are under 20 bucks on ebay

[iansoady]

Yes I have one of those and it was useful finding which cylinder on my BSA A10 was not firing properly as it was cooler than the other. Beats putting my hand on the exhausts!

[John Stenhouse]

Very clever, work smarter not harder, always a good motto

[Sin_Tiger]

Yup great tool in my line of work as are the thermal imaging cameras, great for finding bad contractors in high voltage switchboards and a tad safer.

In my younger days we used basically the same technique for adjusting the fuel racks on V16 diesels, switch out the lights and put them on near full load and look at the colour of the exhaust pipes, it works.

[metalguru]

Would that be the Detroit 4 strokes?

Used to have a great time with the 2 strokes as well.......Till one ran away! 

[Sin_Tiger]

Would that be the Detroit 4 strokes?

Used to have a great time with the 2 strokes as well.......Till one ran away! 

On the button sir, Two Stroke N71. Having a fuel shut off was a complete waste of time, they run on lub oil quite happily, bit like a Girly on it's side. How's that for get back OT 

[metalguru]

Think I still have my set up go-no go gauges in the nice wooden box they came in for the V71 series.
First time I saw the how hot set up I was an apprentice, I was amazed how hot a manifold could get. when it was at idle the manifold would be cool enough to touch within minutes!!
It was amazing how much junk an engine would consume when it ran away, the rag just got chewed up and spat out, books and paper were about the same and they still revved out!
Grea times on great engines.

[Sin_Tiger]

Excuse us folks 

When you hear that awful clack as the intake flaps on the routes blowers slam shut, you know that's the oil seals gone and the engine is going to suck the sump dry and run the bearings within seconds, all done at 1800 rpm, and there is not a damn thing you can do to stop it happening.

Happy days indeed 

[metalguru]

Err yes excuse the ramblings of an old fool!! But staying slightly on thread. 
Before CAD came along some bright spark would have an idea and it was built to 'see what would happen'.
One of the funniest times I had when I was an apprentice was this idea was to be built in to a test mule and driven to whenever something broke then we would find out why and improve the idea.
The test mule was either for the British military and or heavy haulage, it was and 8V71 Detroit Diesel linked to a fuller 9 speed box and then through rear tandem 2 speed axles with a centre diff between the axles, talk about complicated..
This thing they thought to rate at about 55-60 ton carrying capacity including the trailer so a bit of a beast, but they wanted it to do 70mph loaded, God knows how it was meant to stop!!!! (It was the early 70s after all).
Some may be familiar with the Millbrook testing ground in Bedfordshire, well this thing was driven 24hrs a day untill it broke, which to be honest because it was built by engineers and not an accountant it didn't do very often.

Getting back to the event, it had clocked up a high milage and was in for maintenance and a check over. All was going well as expected and the lump was fired up to do the testing, the engine was being revved to check out the top end revs and no doubt the fuelling when someone shouted the brilliant words 'RUN AWAY'.
So we hung around looking while the whole workshop and it was huge, filled with burnt lube oil.
Well it got to the chocking stage and we thought we had better evac the place and have a headcount.
There was one guy missing Harry was his name a real character who was never backward in coming forward, someone said he remembered Harry heading off for his constitutional and a read of the paper so we thought we're not going in after him fearing the fumes in the workshop and the toilet, knowing there was a substantial wall between Harry and the 8V71, we thought....well he will be ok!!

Several minutes went by and the 8V consumed the sump oil, it started slowing so we finished our fags tea etc ready to go back in, it finally went from about 1800-2000 rpm to zero and it went quiet apart from clank clank crash and some severe expletives from the midst of the smoke and dust.

What had happened was, on the front of the crank was a rather large and heavy pully which doubled up as a torsional vibration damper, with the slowing of the said crank was a bit quick it sheared off and went quite happily bouncing across the workshop floor at a great rate of knots and about 1500 RPM, something that heavy and spinning that fast is a force to be reckoned with.
The substantial wall was not a problem for the pully, nor was the wall for the toilet on the inside and out.
The main problem here was that the toilet cisterns, the old high level ones with a chain, were mounted on the substantial wall. With the wall now weakened and missing, the cistern was not supported properly and the lead downpipe just bent allowing the water contained to escape.
Harry didn't really want a shower as he had had one that week, he wasn't too impressed with having his constitutional disturbed let alone gettting an enforced shower but when he stood up the now unsupported cistern which was cast iron met Harrys head hard.

It took weeks to stop laughing.

And the mule?
That got a Cummins straight 6 put in and was later an option on the TM Bedford and a 6X6 military version released to run along side the MK fleets. The 6X6 was dropped in favour of the TM 4X4.

You can wake up now guys if you got this far.         

[Bixxer Bob]

While we're meandering I have no big engine experience, but was once tasked with procuring a mobile load bank for thrashing our V8 Deutz 380 KVA diesel generators.  Supposedly to prevent bore glazing.  Procuring it was no problemand we had it shipped to Scotland (Buchan) for testing.  Being little more than a giant electric fire it worked quite well out of the box so I wandered off to find a cuppa leaving the crew to their task. As I walked to the crewroom Inoticed it had begun to rain. Again. But that's normal for Buchan.  I was just stirring my tea a few minutes later when the door burst open and ther stood a near-speechless young technician with saucer-wide eyes and hair on end.  "B bb b Boss...." he stammered, "That f***ing thing isn't waterproof"!!!

I can leave you to work out how he knew....

[iansoady]

More tales please!

[Sin_Tiger]

I think we'd better save some for the July meet up before the others loose the will to live