I was at the London Gateway Port with our Senior Service Engineer, Andy, to help with a turbocharger cartridge job for Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world and it brought a few things home to me.
It’s always good to get out with our engineers – it gives me a fresh appreciation of their expertise and how quickly they’re able to think in challenging environments.
We were in London on that day to change out the turbocharger cartridge, and when we got there we ran into problems straight away.
We lost 90 minutes waiting for our security clearance to be approved, despite us providing all the necessary information beforehand.
Then to reduce our time frame further – the vessel’s departure time was brought forward by two hours, cutting down on the time we had to work our magic – if we didn’t finish before 11 pm we’d have to stay on the vessel whilst it travelled to Germany!
We still got it done, although it was a race to finish line.
Having considered the whole job, I thought I’d share with you why we were able to get it done in the time frame – I’m sure you can relate to some of these:
Factor in the time it takes.
The main difficulty with the job was the ancillary pipework and fittings. Some bolts had seized and the air manifold had been sealed with some extremely strong compounds. If we had based the timing to carry out our scope on the maintenance manual, we would have been way out. The manual is based on near perfect conditions, not a turbo which has been running regularly for over 15 years.
Measurement is key.
When inspecting the nozzle ring, three of the blades were badly corroded, but with the knowledge that it is the overall flow across the ring as a whole, we knew it didn’t need changing. MAN confirm this by giving guidance on the average blade corrosion, not just a couple. This knowledge saved the client a replacement ring, whilst ensuring performance was not compromised.
Expert knowledge.
Our knowledge of the equipment meant that we knew there were two different types of rotor assemblies – standard and pulse. We were quickly able to check the right type was installed, rather than finding out on the engine test. (You can check the type of assembly by looking at the material of the nut on the compressor end of the shaft)
Treat with care.
Originally we were planned to change the cartridge on AE3, but this was changed to AE4 because another engineer had stripped the jacking bolts threads trying to separate the inlet insert from the housing. We’ve now put a plan to the client to drill and tap some new holes so we can work on AE3 during its next visit.
Bartech replacing turbocharger cartridge for Maersk
All in all, it was great to be part of a successful project, with some great learnings.
