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Diesel Engines Questions

Hello Can you help I am in a bit of a senior moment regards starting diesel engines.

Back in the late 50s. I worked for a plant hire farm who dealt in most large building works .. dumpers, generators, vibrators etc.

Many times we were called to sites where the engines would not start. The engineers would remove the bleed bolt and pour in a smidgeon of Castrol 30 replace the bolt swing the handle and away it would go.

I have been told that I must have dreamt this especially the bit that some engines even when cold would run on anything including engine oil and vegetable oil , these engines I believe were Scammels.

As an electrician I have no grounding in such matters apart from decokes, changing ,bearings, pistons etc. and also the pleasure of watching old Listers doing their thing.

thanks in anticipation ......................Leslie

Reply to
Leslie
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You sure it wasn't a smidgeon of ether they poured in?

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Petter AA1s, AB1s, Coventry Victor ABs, and Lister ST1s [and probably loads of others] all had a plunger in the head, remove it, fill with oil and inject it into the combustion chamber with the plunger to decrease the volume and hence increase compression ratio for starting when cold. Works well until some muppet puts so much oil in that the thing locks hydraulically on compression! We used to have a Petter AVA1 that was so worn it would only start when about a quarter pint of oil was poured down the inlet to take up all the gaps. Enfields used to fit Ether cups for cold starting from new, which shows how much confidence they had of the thing starting without it!

Regards Dan

Reply to
Dan Howden

You weren't dreaming, Petters, Cub Oil engines, Coventry Climax and many others had oil priming cups, as did the Villiers D270/415 and many Listers, although none of the water-cooled Listers were fitted with this aid.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes Email: snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Web:

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Reply to
Peter A Forbes

Well, I've never heard the like. :-) So much for certain makers boasting about cold starting diesels. :-) Thankfully I was brought up on more gentrified engines. :-) However, for engines a trifle weary in the ring department, purchases of little brown bottles from the local chemist, were the order of the day. Of course there was the occasional "muppet", (must have been an immigrant,:-)), whose hamfistedness and haste tended to cause crank breakage's with premature dosing prior to engaging the electric crank... :-(

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Strictly speaking, these things generally feed oil (or diesel) into the inlet port rather than directly into the combustion chamber. The effect is much the same as the compression changeover system used on Lister CS, FR, JP etc but much cheaper to implement and self-cancelling . The cups usually fitted to Air-cooled Listers, Petters etc are of a 'designed' volume so that a single charge shouldn't do any harm. It's a routine dodge with Narrow boat Nationals and RNs to take off the inlet covers (horizontal valves) and give a few squirts from an oil can into the inlet ports. The Crossley BW1 I've recently worked on has an open cup which requires two or three fillings to give much chance of a start on a cold day, but the layout is poor in that half the charge tends to run down the breather into the crankcase, and in a marine installation how much is lost this way depends upon how level the vessel is lying. Gardners had an arrangement whereby moving the decompressor lever the 'wrong' way increased the tappet clearance, which has the effect of increasing the compression ratio.

Cheers Tim

Dutton Dry-Dock Traditional & Modern canal craft repairs Vintage diesel engine service

Reply to
Tim Leech

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