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

[Roger M. Woodbury]

This particular malady is recent.  It really began in, oh, June.  

We bought the machine last fall from the franchised dealer in this state.
It is a Taylor Forklift, and it is close to being the largest forklift in
Maine...or at least the largest Taylor.  

The truck had supposedly been extensively overhauled at the company's
Massachusetts facility before being moved to Maine.  Well......no.  What
they had done was a lot of work on the hoist, but the engine had not been
touched.

When it got cold, a low pressure hydraulic line froze and instead of holding
no pressure, it became a pressure line.  It popped off its stud, and pumped
about 35 gallons of hydraulic oil out.  Nasty.  It also required a special
dumpster and notification to the good folks at the Department of
Environmental Protection.  Water in the hydraulics was the cause and I
raised hell with the seller.  He scheduled his mechanic for a visit the nxt
week.

But the day before he was to arrive, the truck blew a BIG hose in the middle
and we pumped out another fifty-five gallons.  I whispered the three magic
letters in the ear of the dealer:  D, E, and P.  And didn't they move!

Turns out that the truck's engine hadn't been touched and they proceeded to
install new injectors.  The mechanic spent about two weeks, commuting 120
miles each way, each day, AND working on the top of the hill where the
quarry is located in single digit temps with a howling wind.

In the end the truck ran pretty well, and we were optimistic.  The hoist
will really hoist, and with 65,000 pound forks it is sufficient for anything
that we would need.  

But this spring, the truck has proceeded to work poorly beginning in June or
so.  We have been advised that the governor on these engines is suspect, and
I can easily see a fuel pump being cranky.  

To answer your questions, yes, it lives outside.  NO there is NO exhaust cap
over the upward pointing exhaust, but we have equipped it with its very own
5 gallon bucket which works very well.

Yesterday we moved three blocks, each around 30,000 pounds.  The truck
started perfectly, rolled over to where the blocks rested, picked them up
with a shrug, and then when put into reverse roared, started to reverse, and
sort of stopped there, with the rpm dying back to idle....wait, wait, wait
for it....then bellowed back into a rage and stomped off to where we needed
to move the stone.  The whole exercise took about half an hour but should
have taken ten minutes at the outside.  

Roger

(I have had great training for the mysteries of the 4-71 Detroit....after
all, I am a veteran of two Audi V8's!)

-----Original Message-----
From: Kneale Brownson [mailto:kneale at coslink.net] 
Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 9:29 PM
To: Roger M. Woodbury; v8 at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [V8] So far off topic that you simply can't believe it....

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.....