We have recently shared pictures of a “mystery engine” during an overhaul for a marine operator, and people have been giving us their opinions on what it is.
The engine was an mtu 183, also known as a Mercedes OM444LA, and whilst the purpose of those shares was a bit of fun for those in the engineering world, we wanted to expand on what you may have seen in the reveal pictures (below if you missed them)
You can see a gauge panel on the engine that doesn’t exactly look up to our usual standards. Why?
This panel is a temporary system we installed to carry out precise monitoring during 100% load testing. For this water-cooled engine, we drilled into the cylinder heads and fitted micro thermocouples, connected to a digital thermometer and data logger.
This allows us to ensure the engine is running as expected and make any adjustment needed before it goes back for installation.
This isn’t just something we do in-house; we have retrofitted this system and made bespoke gauge panels where required for several operators seeking greater visibility of their engine performance.
The variations in temperature this data shows could indicate hosing injectors, which, if not caught, could lead to huge problems, expense and downtime.
