[V8] So far off topic that you simply can't believe it....

[Kneale Brownson]

Ah, the Detroit Diesel, slimeball of the internal combustion engine world.
I have a 3-53 "powering" a tractor.  On the two-cycle diesel engines, air
gets compressed and then the fuel gets injected into the compressed air and
the heat generated by the compressing.  That air comes from a blower.  If
you're not getting function, you either aren't getting sufficient air, you
aren't getting enough compression or the fuel isn't being sprayed into the
cylinder appropriately.  

Is this machine exposed to the weather?  Is the muffler mounted above the
engine?  Does the cap on the exhaust work properly?  If the answers are
yes, yes and no, you probably have a valve issue.   Otherwise it could be
something wrong with the blower, which I'd expect to be least likely, or
you have an injector issue.

Generally these GM products are well known across the country, so you
shouldn't have any problem getting a mobile service company to come work on
it wherever it is.  


At 07:59 PM 8/11/2006 -0400, Roger M. Woodbury wrote:
>But I was wondering if anyone out there has any knowledge of Detroit 4-71
>engines?
>
>We have a forklift truck that has a Detroit 4-71 that has a peculiar and
>very annoying problem:  it will not hold rpm on load.  It will idle like
>fury, and when in neutral, will rev up to the very top...whatever "the VERY
>top" really is.
>
>But as soon as it gets load, it will just bog down to nothing.  The engine
>still runs, but without enough power to move the fork truck out of its own
>shadow, until eventually, VERY eventually, the engine will rev up enough to
>move and rev some more, until it dies down again. All this with the throttle
>mashed to the floorboards.
>
>Any thoughts?  Fuel pump?  Governor?  I dunno....
>
>For those of you who may not know (and probably don't care) the engine is a
>two cycle diesel with supercharger.  It is four cylinders of the same type
>that was used ad nauseum in old Greyhound busses in the sixties and
>seventies.  The ones with huge oil smears all over the ass end.....