No doubt you’re familiar with the function of the governor on your engines. And you might also be aware of what can happen when a governor has been incorrectly set up – we were certainly reminded of it the other day. We had a Deutz BF6M1013 engine on test after a rebuild, where it was producing 230hp, instead of the required 279hp. The engine had been built from a donor unit after the original engine suffered a broken crankshaft along with the...

We had a request for technical support onboard a major shipping company’s vessel this week. The Fleet Superintendent got in touch with us to report that one of their MAK 8M20 engines started experiencing high exhaust temperatures and producing black exhaust smoke. As well as logging temperatures and pressures, they had already completed some of their own investigations, including: • Check Scavenge Air Cooler – Found to be very dirty. The client...

During a recent job, we realised that the cylinders on the engine had been misidentified. It reminded me of a much more serious problem we’ve seen before, which you can see in the picture below. All this was as a result of the A-bank pistons being fitted in the B-bank and vice versa. Not only is it critical to return the pistons to the correct bank of the engine, but when it comes to communicating, resolving and recording engine information, it...

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and he told me a story I thought you’d find useful. He’s been working in South America where he had to rectify an expensive error from a previous engineer. The operator is using some Detroit 16v71 engines and was experiencing issues with the engine’s timing, so they called a local company to rectify the problem. As part of their work, they decided to change out the injectors, but unfortunately,...

As part of an inspection and filter replacement work scope recently completed on two MTU 20V 4000 engines, we noted something that can impact the performance of your engine. We were on-site to replace the airflow restriction indicators, along with the Separ filters, and when changing out the filters we made the discovery: The engine has two fuel filters which were both removed and it was found that the left-hand filter was dry inside,...

Last week we got a call from an operator facing some major downtime issues, the situation provided a good example of how well-managed strategies can prevent these emergencies. The engine drives a safety-critical pump, and when a fuel pipe failed, they were looking at shutting down the site. I’m sure you have reviewed critical spares holdings and from my experience, there are usually plenty of discussions between technical, operational and...