Week 6 "Putting back together the Detroit S60 and Fieldtrips to B&G and Kenworth"

I had a pretty awesome week last week. Me and my group were able to finish our last few measurements on the Detroit s60 engine assignment and got it almost completely back together. Below are a few pictures of us in action.

After cleaning out the liner and oiling up the rings on the piston we were able to drop the piston back into the cylinder block and reconnect it to the crankshaft.
This all went with out any real difficulty.

After getting the valves back in and the head back on the block we then began putting the camshaft back on.


Here you can see the pin at the end of the camshaft. That pin goes into the pin hole on the thrust plate bearing across from it. However something I learned and did not no and wouldn't of expected was that before the camshaft can be pinned to the thrust plate bearing  the thrust plate bearing pin hole must be at top dead center. I'm not sure of the exact reason but that's how Detroit wants it.

 After getting the bearing caps for the camshaft on and the rocker arms on. We then began to check our valve heights and injector heights. After that we put on the intake manifold the turbo and oil pan. Needless to say we are pretty much there except a few more things.

Now you may be asking why we weren't able to quite get the Detroit done, well the thing was my class got the chance to go down to the Kenworth plant down at the Paccar facility in Seattle and also B&G Machinery in Seattle. Both these trips were awesome, I have been to both places before, actually less then a year ago and it was amazing to see how much both businesses have changed. The Kenworth plant was almost exactly as I had remembered it except you could tell that they had really been working on there organization of where parts are stored and how they get them to the line. From my understanding it had a lot to do with eliminating human error and opening up space. Now I was aloud to take pictures at the Kenworth plant, but the guys at B&G Machinery were a little more accommodating. Below are some pictures from B&G.

 This is there dyno room and one of there engines that they have re-machined put on the dyno for testing, ran it and is actually now coming off. 

Here are a couple of crankshafts that have been machined or are preparing to be machined. 

This is the machine that they use to re-machine the heads. It looks as if there is a CAT 3500 series head on it now.

 Here is a picture of what looks to be a 3516 getting resurfaced.


For anyone who has never seen these machines in action, it pretty amazing how precise they are and well have to be and the speed at which this machine works varies but from what I have seen very, very slow.

Above are some pictures of engines that B&G was finishing(left) or finished with(right). I would have to say the thing I am most impressed with about B&G is how comfortable and full of pride the place seemed to be. Everyone there seemed to really care about the work they were doing. Another thing that was really cool was we got a chance to meet a man who I believe is the CEO of a company that was Caterpillar's top 8th customer last year and number 5 the year before. That was pretty impressive, but it was even more impressive to here him tell hie story of how he got there coming from a Tech. program just like mine.

I think my main reflection this week is to keep in mind; that it is up to us and us alone to determine just how far we want to go and how successful we will be when we get there.

Week 6
Hours 23
Total 147ish

Week 5 "The Detroit Series 60 assignment"

Over this last week me and my team have made some great progress on our assignment of taking this

 Detroit S60 engine disassembling it in order to remove the cylinder head, 1 piston, 1 liner, 1 cylinder of valves and injector. We were given a list or shall I say a partial list of some of the precision measurements we were to be taking during the inspection and re assembly of our engine. Along with this partial list, we were to follow the service manual and perform any other measurements required during inspection and re assembly.




Here are some pictures of the partial list and the recordings.

 One of the First sets of  measurements we checked was the bore in the liner and the thickness of the liner flange. After checking in several different spots vertically and radially which is what the manual was requiring us to do, we came up with the measurement of the bore to be 5.1194". According to the service manual with tolerance of the diameter of the bore being between 5.118" and 5.120" our liner was with in specification. We also checked the flange thickness on the liner. The service manual specifications were for the thickness to be between 0.3527" and 0.3543", what I ended up measuring was 0.3566" this was according to the service manual out of specification.

Some of the next sets of measurements I began to work on had to do with the camshaft, valves and rocker arm.

 

Above are some pictures of me measuring the diameter of a intake valve stem (0.3421") and intake valve head(1.7334"), along with checking the angle of the face of the valve (30.2 degrees). All of these measurements were within the service manual specifications.

Another set of measurements we were required to take were the heights of the camshaft lobes. Using a 2"-3" micrometer I measured the intake lobe height to be 2.75705", the injector lobe height to be 2.80825" and the exhaust lobe height to be 2.65150" These too were within specification.

Along with having to take many, many measurements this last week I was also forced to spend almost as much time reading the service manual and checking to make sure that I was measuring the right part in the right spot while staying within the required specifications. This was probably the most difficult task yet the one I learned the most from. It kind of comes back to the whole paying attention to detail thing.

For me it was the making sure that when we were checking the liner height protrusion, that we checked all other liner heights and there protrusion also. Then taking and matching the heights to make sure that they are all within specification to the block and to each other, both matter.


Using a Cylinder height or protrusion gauge I found the protrusion on this liner was 0.002". According to the specification with a minimum of 0.0005" and a maximum of 0.003" of protrusion, on this liner we were good.

I learned a lot this week, it seems most of it really had to do with taking the time and having the patience to do the research and make sure you are doing it correct. This probably has to do with the preciseness I have been working towards while doing all this measuring. 0.0005 of an inch is really hard to see or feel, but it can be done and I now have the knowledge, confidence and tools to do so. It was a Good week!


Week 5
Hours 23
Total Running Hours 124

Week 5 "More sensor testing and the progress on the Detroit 60s assigment"

During this last week of class we spent a lot of time watching our instructor disassemble a 4.5 John Deere engine that had a hole in the side of the engine block. Neither our instructor or anyone in class had been inside this engine to see what exactly had happened. So we spent a couple hours each morning learning the proper way to keep foreign materials from entering the engine while disassembling. He was also careful to show us where to start our failure analysis for this type of engine failure.

We all had our own suspicions on what had happened and it turned out to be a broken stabilizing shaft. As to what caused the shaft to break, that is still an on going investigation.

We also had an assignment given to us that had to do with different types of sensors found on a Trucks or heavy equipment, explaining how they work and showing how they work using either a digital multimeter or a scope. Since in my last blog I posted on the testing of a ABS wheel speed sensor using the shops Modis and big screen, I figured I would test a temperature sensor using a digital multimeter.

In the left picture you can see that the temperature sensor has a certain electrical resistance at a certain temperature, it happened to be 10.816 ohms at shop room temperature. Now as we move right you can see in the middle picture that as soon as I pointed the heat gun on the sensor the electrical resistance changed in proportion to the change in temperature. In the picture on the right you can see this sensor had the same result when heat was taken away only in the opposite fashion.

Me and my group also made some great headway on our assignment on the Detroit 60s. Below are some pictures of some of what we managed to get done.

My group and I managed to get everything disassembled from the engine that we needed to, to be able to start taking all of the assigned measurements the following week. After spending several long hours staring and searching I was also able to find and print off all the specifications we would need to know if what we are measuring is in or out of spec.The link is below.

 http://www.kenmartransport.com/detroit/Series_60_Service_Manual.pdf

I think the thing I can probably reflect on the most over this last week, is how important the ability to to pay attention to detail is. For me this came up several times, once was when I was trying to explain to a fellow group who was having trouble removing the head from the engine block. They were using a hoist which should have picked the head right off the engine block, but for some reason wouldn't. They were 100 percent positive that they were completely unattached from the engine block but the head wouldn't come all the way off. It wasn't until someone actually wanted to hear what I had to say before I was able to show them, that no the head wasn't attached to the block. And that there problem was one little bolt head off the timing gear assembly that wouldn't allow them to remove the head. One little detail had 4 or 5 people tearing there hair out for a few minutes.
I also had the opportunity to remove a cylinder liner out of an engine. Something I had seen done but never had done myself, it was some what simple but new all the same.

Week 5
Hours 22


 

Week4 " Truck and trailer lighting test board test and scoping a working ABS wheel speed sensor"

I started out week 4 of this quarter preparing for our final exam for the electrical part of the quarter. We were separated into teams combining 1st and 2nd year students and were given the task of wiring up mock truck and trailer test boards. We were required  to make all lights, switches and relays properly function with out blowing a 1 amp fuse. We were not given a time limit how ever we were timed. Me and the group I was teamed up with managed to finish in 2 hours and 10 mins. We blew one fuse, yet we found the problem and were able to make everything function properly in the end. 

 These are the test boards we tested on. It was a fun yet frustrating test, but I can truthfully say I walked away with a little more confidence and understanding of what we had just done.

 Another thing I did this last week was test a working ABS speed sensor that was still attached to the wheel assembly. The reason I did this was that in week 3 we were all given different types of sensors by our instructor and asked to find out what type of sensor it was and test if possible. Now in my last blog I explained what type of sensor this is and how to test it. The thing was my sensor was bad and I wanted to test a good wheel speed sensor.

So I spent some time after morning lecture hooking up the Modis to one of our practice axle assemblies. below is a picture of my test leads hooked up to the sensor.

 The first test I performed was to graph the signal using the multimeter function on the modis, and below is what I was seeing when I spun the wheel.

After accomplishing the task of hooking up the modis to the sensor and actually testing it and seeing the signal. My instructor then asked me to put it up on the big screen and use the lab scope function on the modis instead of the graphing multimeter function.

I was able to connect the modis up to the big screen easily, I found the hardest part was finding the right settings on the modis to get and be able to read a clear signal. With the help of Travis our instructors assistant, I was able to get a really clear signal.

Another one of our assignments in class this last week. Was our instructor asked each group to go out into the shop and decide on an engine that we as a group would like to work on. We would be removing the cylinder head, 1 piston, 1 liner, 1 cylinder of valves, injector and measure the crankshaft rod bearing journal. My group decided on a Detroit Series 60, the one in the picture below. I am really looking forward to this.

My reflection for the week comes right back to one of the biggest problems I think we can have, communication. Previous too and even during our final exams on the light boards, I was having problems with my group. One half of us wanting to go about it one way and the other half a different way. At first we had one part of the group going off of a paper schematic while the other half was going off a completely different schematic. The problem wasn't that one half of the group was right and one was wrong, both sides would have succeeded if they would have gone about it at separate times. Instead we tried to do two things at once and when we thought we were done, we weren't. We had only manage to waste an hour and blow a fuse all due to the lack of communication. I was remind once again that one of the biggest keys to staying on track and properly completing a task while in a group or team setting is to have an open line of communication between everyone.

Week 4
Hours 16
Quarterly hours 73ish