Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#20
|
|||
|
|||
Wireless 802.11 NMEA server
On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 08:02:07 -0500, "Jim Woodward" jameslwoodward at
attbi dot com wrote: To start it, you go down in the engine room, turn on the lube oil (remote dry sump), the seawater main, and the 24v to the starter, spin a wheel on the front to decompress, bar the flywheel over a couple of times to make sure everything's free, and push a button on the "Motormatic" box. Relays start clicking, the prelube pump (24v) starts, and oil pressure comes up. When oil pressure hits 50psi, the starter engages. After a quarter turn or so, you spin off the decompress and it starts. The prelube pump stops. You turn off the 24v to the starter and let it warm up for a few minutes. You can shut it down from the wheelhouse, but you have to go down and shut off the lube oil. Wow...prelubing. That thing never runs at all without oil. No wonder the ones 70 years old are still pumping! Thanks for the procedure. Very interesting. Your new diesel will be simple. Flip the switch, Crank the starter and wait while the bare metal scrapes against each other until the oil pressure rises 10 seconds later. Sounds "temporary" doesn't it? No wonder the overhaul shop is packed...(c; Now, this is a wonderful sequence, particularly the Motormatic (in this age of computer everything), but can you imagine trying to sell it as a yacht over here in fifteen years? I'm amazed at the automation. I have visions of a 16mm training film for Lister engineers showing this neatly dressed narrator in his 1934 double-breasted suit pointing out how "Motormatic takes the work out of starting it." I can see you'd have to find a diehard diesel kinda guy to buy it...It's a "manly thing".... It has a number of little open catch basins for fuel that leaks off. It's hard mounted to huge engine beds, so the whole boat vibrates when it's running -- four huge pistons, and while you can practically count the strokes, they're very present. The official RN manual says that you shouldn't run the boat between 7.5 and 10 knots, only faster or slower (top is 10.3), because of various resonances. Parts are beginning to be a problem (new starter $4,000). I have a ham radio friend who is master of SeaLand "Performance", a Dutch-made 950' containership. Performance has a very interesting diesel power plant, 7 cylinders, 38,800HP at 110 RPM, 2-stroke, forced air loop charging. She's about 3 decks high. The cylinders are about 5' in diameter with a 12' stroke. I couldn't pick up the spare injector..(c; She's totally computer controlled! The duty engineer has no need of being in the engine room. The computer will page him on his pocket pager if it detects something it doesn't like. Each injection is computer controlled for best combustion at this throttle setting in each cylinder. It has no transmission or reduction gear. The output shaft, which goes over the main generator room's massive power plants to run all the refridgeration containers on deck, goes directly to the single screw. A picture of the screw in drydock shows his wife standing at the base of a blade that's about three times as tall as she is. The screw is huge! On the engineer's board in the air conditioned control room with windows overlooking the engine gallery, there is a warning sign "DO NOT OPERATE BETWEEN 32 AND 38 RPM". This is the resonant frequency of the ship and engine. They run up through here very rapidly and never operate from 30 to 40 RPM because the engine pulses will rip the hull apart when the whole thing resonates with the engine going one way and the hull the other. Starting is simple. Push the throttle ahead to the position you like. 6000 PSI of compressed air is injected into the proper cylinder just past TDC and #2 diesel fuel sprays into the pressure. The ensuing explosion cranks it as the computer watches on. The compressed air injection stops as the cylinders start firing on their own from just the compression. The computer automatically turns on all the blowers, etc., by itself. Once the engine exhaust comes up to BOIL the bunker oil (one grade above Bunker 'C'), the computer switches the injection over from the expensive #2 home heating oil to the boiling bunker oil that was too thick to inject a little while ago. Now she settles in and at econocruise only burns 75 tons of bunker oil a day to get to Europe. To reverse, pull the throttle back into reverse and the computer goes back to air injection to blast the engine into reverse. Of course, the 2-stroker will run equally well in both directions. Larry says he can do an emergency stop from econocruise in....well....a while. Takes a lot of power to stop all that mass in those boxes... She'll come about in about 2 and a half miles! How's that for a high speed turn? He's been a master for many years. "You never get tired of playing with it.", he tells me. It was a most impressive tour. I'd love to see it running some day. He says the thumping is quite loud in there, something like a diesel pile driver running. And, as also shown graphically on the site, it's huge (see http://www.mvfintry.com/pix/erplan800.png) -- the Cat 3406 is no little thing, but look at the difference. While the engine room is 20 feet square, I've got a lot to go in it and removing the Lister helps. Sorta makes you wonder what Cat left out.....metal? And so forth. I'm sad, though. I'll miss it, except when trying to sleep. I'll bet if its thumping varies, you wake right up, too..... Thanks for the information and your thoughts/story. Great website. Larry W4CSC "Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!" |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
2003 Cingular Wireless Winterfest Boat Parade presented by Nokia | General | |||
Save your Win 3.1 notebook for NMEA testing..... | Electronics | |||
Laptop passive cooling idea | Electronics | |||
Before you connect new NMEA and blow your network.... | Cruising | |||
Before you connect new NMEA and blow your network.... | Electronics |