We're having a problem with a Cat D17000 engine on a GE 44. A few seconds after starting, the engine abruptly revved up past "redline" and then spun down as if run out of fuel. I'm guessing the governor was sticky, stuck at full rack, and an overspeed protection tripped. We've been searching all over the governor and prime mover for this overspeed and can't find it. Any ideas?

I can't speak for your engine specifically, but my experience with diesels makes me think there is NO overspeed protection in this application.

Has it happened more then once? (or you haven't been able to re-start it since?)

When has it last run correctly? Or is this the first time your group was able to run this engine?

My guess is that you had fuel or oil pooled somewhere in the system, and it ran away till that supply depleted.

In any case, I HIGHLY suggest that you remove the air cleaners and get yourself a couple peices of heavy plywood that can be fit over the air intake, and keep them where they can be QUICKLY slapped on to choke the air off. A diesel needs fuel, air, and compression to run. When they run away, you may have no control over the fuel (they can even run on their own lube oil in some cases). Compression only goes away when your engine starts to shred itself. But you can stop the air and kill it instantly.

The stock Cat D17000 does not have any over speed protection other than the engine governor itself. Outside the governor, the only other factory saftey features on the locomotive variant would be the low oil pressure and high water temperature shutdowns, either of which would not make the engine over speed if they malfunction. It sounds like the governor or the fuel rack stuck in full fuel. Another possibility is one of the pine in the governor linkage may have fallen out.

One other possibility is that it was stuck full fuel, the overspeed condition finally got the governor to cutoff, and now it's stuck there. Been a while since they had this issue, be nice to know what the answer was.....