One of our GE 44 tonner engines is giving us fits lately. The engine has started to run away a couple of times and the engine stop lever has no affect. The only way to stop the engine is to close the fuel valve. This past summer we had a mechanic come out and mess with it and he was able to free the mechanism up for awhile.

Unfortunately we had surging problems soon after. We attempted to start it a couple of weeks ago and it ran away again. It appears that the fuel rack is getting stuck in the full open position and we have doubts as to the condition of the governor weights as well.

The major hangup we have is trying to get in to work on the dang thing. Alco/GE would have really helped if they had put removable access panels in the roof instead of the narrow cooling hatch.

We do not want to remove the entire hood if we do not have to, it was cut once in the past and welded back in but I really do not want to get into that as we just repainted the loco.

Is it possible to remove the entire assembly without pulling the hood and radiator? How difficult is it to adjust everything back in once removed, disassembled, cleaned and re-assembled? Are special tools required?

Any advice from someone who has actually done this work would be very helpful. Our shop is not well equipped and we have no overhead cranes only a forklift to pull things out.

Thanks in advance.

Don't take any chances if she still wants to run away. Pull the injection pump, send it out to be repaired, and reinstall with new filters.

I would recommend two shops to do the pump.
Diesel Equipment in Potterville
Or
Diesel Injection Srvc. in Grand Rapids

Does the 44 ton not have the huge removable cover on top of the hood?

Not sure which version of the 44 tonner you have, but one we have is what fans call a phase 3 (D17000 engine, round headlight single bulb, front radiator grill, sloped nose, (4) air intakes, trough down the top with flaps inside the hood)

http://www.trainweb.org/willstrainart/GE_line.htm

The hood is bolted to the deck and body (same as on our 45 & 25 tonners), the bolts between the hood and the cab are visible from the outside, and the bolts into the deck are inside the hood. Knowing these engines the bolts in the engine bay should be nicely lubricated, but you may have problems with the ones in the generator bay and up front below the radiator. You may be lucky the previous owner may not have seen the bolts hidden under the dirt and oil.

Regards,
Rich C.

Yes this is the phase 3 design with the ventalation hatch on the top of the hood. The pump is a rack design similar to an EMD, not at all like modern pumps.

D-17000 injection pumps are independently oiled and their sumps tend to fill with fuel causing problems. Try draining the pump and adding new motor oil and see if that helps.
If not, the pump has to come off. I ran 2 44 Tonners, built in 1947, and I'm familiar with how inconvenient the pumps are mounted. From the factory, our pumps were bolted to the front of the motor and the only way to access the bolts for the pumps on our engines was to pull the cover on the front of the motor. That meant the fan, radiator and the hood should come off. We were fortunate enough that when a injector pump started to act up an oil change cleared the issue up. there's a dip stick on the fill cap of the pump. Pull it and see if it's overfull. It it is, drain it and refill (about a quart) to see if that stops the over revving. The drain line should be at the back of the motor near the generator comportment behind the original fuel filter housing. It's a in-line quarter turn valve. If this solves the issue, keep an eye on oil level in the pumps. Ours were changed about twice a year to keep them trouble free. Hope this helps.

All of the D series cats that I have seen have an injection pump (like Ed described) with the goveror on the back. When you say yours is more like an EMD, does that mean it has an external (woodward?) governor that directly controls the fuel rack in the pump? I have never seen a cat of that vintage with unit injectors, so I assume that design is out.

Sorry I am not a diesel mechanic(all Dad's farm tractors were gas) and that was what I was told by another member. They do have the normal D17000 injectors, I just meant the injector pump/rack is not driven off the cam on the side of the block but up between the cylinder banks.




We will try this, the last time we had the cover off last summer there was quite a bit of diesel contamination in there however we did not change the fluid as we were in the height of our busy season and were just trying to get back to running.

Is this contamination normal or is there a seal or something that has gone bad? I have read in different manuals that some recommend using mineral oil in the governor and another book says motor oil. Not sure why the CAT manuals are disagreeing with each other maybe a spec change for later models?

I am tempted to pull the assembly out of a parts engine and have that one rebuilt to swap in later but this does not sound like a weekend task for a part time mechanic that happens to be good with machines and putting out fires.

You need to immediately change/flush the diesel out of the injector pump/governor. They require OIL to work and lubricate, the diesel is causing the pump to tear itself apart.

I dont know how the lube oil system in a D17000 works, but if the governor oil and lube oil are in the same system, and you have fuel dilution, this is a major issue and WILL lead to a crankcase explosion ultimately, if the engine does not chew itself up in the mean time.

Bad. Fuel oil is not lube oil.

If the oil in the governor is ugly, something you can try is to flush it with ATF a few times. Run it for a few minutes every time you refill it. When the ATF starts coming out clean, then add the regular oil.

Sousakerry, I think that seal and pump clearances are out of spec, allowing the fuel to enter the pump sump. EWrice is correct about what comes out and the flush, however, you could use fuel oil as well as ATF. What is happening is the sump is building pressure, because it's overfull, causing the governor to malfunction. This style of fuel injection was common in the 1950's on industrial and diesel farm equipment. International Harvester used a similar system on their TD style bulldozers. Fuel oil has very little lubricating value so getting the pump drained and fresh oil in there is a must. As for crankcase contamination, you should be the judge. How long has this problem been going on and if the oil looks thin and smells like diesel fuel, then it's time to change it. IIRC, each end holds about 50 gallons of motor oil. It would take quite awhile for the fuel oil to reach a dangerous level in the crankcase.

As I said earlier, the injection pump is independently oiled, and doesn't use crankcase oil for lubrication. Fuel oil can get into the crankcase by following the pump driveshaft to the front cover.

Changing the oil in the pump and running the motor to see if that solves the issue is the first and the easiest step. If the motor runs properly with the fresh oil, you now know what is happening and a pump rebuild may be in your future. Monitor the level of the injection pump sump regularly. When the oil level is 1 inch ( that was what we did and it worked well) over the full mark, it's time to change it again. If this happens more than three times a year with regular running, it's time to think about a pump rebuild.

Ed thank you for the advice, As far as I know we do not have fuel in the crankcase oil just the governor case. This weekend I will pull of the governor cover again and see how it all looks. I plan on pulling the ventalation hatch off the top of the hood so I can get a better view of what is going on. Previous times we were in there most of the work was done by feel and mirrors..

On this type of diesel the "throttle" is actually an RPM selector to the governor. The "governor" is not an overspeed device, it has command of the actual throttle, or rack, which controls how much fuel is injected. In fact this type of engine has no overspeed device.

A working, healthy governor is it.

What you have here is a stuck rack. It doesn't matter what the "throttle" position is in the locomotive cab. On startup, the actual RPM will be lower than commanded RPM (i.e. idle), therefore the governor will move the rack to full rack. After it reaches idle speed, the governor tries to back down and the rack doesn't move: it has stuck. So the engine over-revs because the governor lacks the ability or strength to pull the rack back. And you get

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im3Wvrk6muA

Now in these videos, the engine is able to endure running at wide open, because they are naturally high-revving diesels, so they can survive a little overspeed. Top RPM is limited because of the resonant tuning of their intake or exhaust systems (which is optimized for working range). Being de-optimized for overspeed is a safety feature to prevent the engines from literally exploding. The Cat D17000 has no such safety feature.

I would have expected this to occur the very first time this happens: it boggles my mind that there have been more than one of these runaways and they have all ended non-destructively. The D17000 does not have any safety system capable of doing that.

I would say you caught a very lucky break - buy a lottery ticket. You would be wise to stop running it until the problem is fixed-for-sure. I would not recommend tinkering inconclusively and starting up to "see if it's fixed" - expect the next start to be the one that grenades the engine as you helplessly try to stop it. And boy, that would be a lousy feeling.

The weakest link in this engine is the crankshaft - D17000's have a reputation for breaking them, and this may factor into why. As such, cranks are particularly scarce WRM had a heck of a time finding a crankshaft for SN 146. (the old crank had a spun bearing.)

For readers' information, it is not as simple as positioning a man on the fuel cutoff. That takes awhile to shut the engine off due to the fuel "in the pipe" between cutoff and injectors.


The entire long hood is designed to easily unbolt. There are bolts along the bottom flange of the hood, and the firewall. (the stack fascia and radiator louvers come off first). Water lines need to unbolt, and all the electrical comes down to a single terminal block on the firewall.



This is Visalia Electric 502. The hood was not repainted. The unit spent some months with the one engine being overhauled, and the unit was used with a single engine.


I would presue that's why CAT separated the governor's oil supply from the engine.


I don't disagree, except that "running the engine to see if that solves the issue" is exactly what I'm recommending against: "trial and error" only makes sense when the "error" is small.

Honestly the best play is to pull the entire unit and bench overhaul it. It has not had appreciable service in 20 years. The only reason it had not been done 7 years ago when the engine was out, was the financial paucity of the time: the rebuilder was told to pinch pennies as hard as possible. By the way, that service was to replace a broken crankshaft... coincidence? Perhaps not.

Same, with Sacramento Northern 146.


The lower picture really is of the engine bay. It's been picked clean for overhaul.

I reviewed previous posts in search as I recall this Cat model coming up a few times... both the fuel system and crank have come up before. I don't want to hijack the thread but since the crankshaft was mentioned - has anyone ever tried pricing a new custom crank? http://www.scatcrankshafts.com I find it ironic that we will pay for new or custom boilers, but when it comes to diesels many organizations will not consider spec or print built parts... I'm just curious - we see similar issues getting parts for Cummins LI-600. I thought there were a fair number of shops in Indiana and Ohio that did this kind of custom work for diesels, but maybe I should put some money where my mouth is and start a sourcing company for these relics?

Sully

Edit: corrected spelling and Updated L600 to LI-600