Bringing a Caterpillar 3406E 14.6 Liter Diesel Engine Back to Life

it's been a little while but I'm back this is a rotating 60s 3406 II core engine that I bought from a big core supplier who I've bought lots and lots of core engines from in the past if you don't know much about the core engine market more or less the way that they're sold is either as rotating cores or non rotating cores and that's pretty much all the information that you get so what a rotating core is is one that will rotate all the way around meaning that the crankshaft will go 360 degrees and then a non rotating core would be one that's either locked up or won't make it all the way around because something's come apart in the top-end or whatever the case may be you don't really get any kind of history on the engine where it came from what else may or may not be wrong with it or anything like that it's just kind of a take-it-or-leave-it it is what it is kind of thing in the core engine market so I've got a pretty good idea that this one was pulled because it had water and the oil because of that right there but beyond that I know absolutely nothing about the history of this particular engine or any kind of specific information about it so what I'm going to do in this video is take this old core engine and see if I can get it fired up and running here in the shop floor not for any particular reason it's not like I'm going to be putting it back on the truck or anything as it is just because it's kind of fun for me to do and I thought it would make an entertaining video for you guys to watch the first thing I'm gonna do is strip all the extra wires and hoses and garbage off this thing and get it cleaned up so I'll pull the clutch off of it and probably the fan hub alternated alternator bracket all the extra associated wires and hoses that are still there from when it was in the truck that it came out of I'll get it all cleaned up and then I'll start to look at what is what's missing what's broken what I'm gonna need to replace and start getting it together so that I can hopefully get it to fire up so let me get that done and I'll come back to you and show you what I'm doing next well that looks a lot better doesn't it [Music] there's a pile of parts that came off of it I've already hauled a little bit of it all but that's most of it so now I can tell what I'm dealing with what I'm gonna need to do I've got broken boost sensor here so I've to run over there and grab one of those and stick in it other than that it looks like all the sensors were there and intact and all the other wiring is there an intact so I'm gonna need a fuel return hose and I'm gonna probably put something besides this on there say that one it's probably not any good so one thing I noticed about this engine is that it is almost completely original so this is one of those good old lis models that just ran and ran and never had anything wrong with it water pumps original oil coolers original cylinder heads original the only thing it looks like they've changed is the air compressor that's a real an air compressor but other than that I'd say this was a good one there's a serial number it's 4:35 notice how good the exhaust manifold looks for a million plus mile engine looks really really good and I don't know how many miles is on this thing I'll grab the laptop here in a few minutes and plug into it you can see what the ECM shows but I'll guarantee it it's over a million mile engine another thing about this engine and this is actually the reason that I bought it its serial number six TST six eight one seven so obviously that means it's above sixty s to five zero five four and what that means is that this is a strong block engine so it has the 137 8466 strongiy model Blagh and I don't think you can see down in there to see that no but if you could right there righteous at the camera you would see 137 8466 and so a lot of guys don't realize that there are strong block 60s is out there and this just happens to be one of them again that's the reason I bought this engine but notice they still use the single thermostat thermostat housing and the old 5ek and 60s style fuel setup but it does have the strong block so the difference between this engine and 1lw would be that the 1lw would have the updated fuel system and it would have the two thermostat thermostat housing plus it would have the longer rear water bonnet where it puts the cooling in here at number six rather than this 90-degree elbow that goes in at number four so these strong block 60 s's are just like any other 5 EK or 60's the only difference is the block itself and there are a few more differences between this engine and a 1lw other than what i just named off i was just mainly talking about the things you can see on the outside of the engine one of those is gonna use different injectors in a different camshaft depending on the horsepower rating and a few other little things but anyway I've got this spinny thing here cleaned up ready to go on it that's not the original turbo that came on this engine but it is the correct turbo for this engine the one that was on it I've already torn off and used as the core and that was a good turbo that I had over there I just need to cleaned up a little bit so I'll slam that turbo on there and need to put that plug in the oil pan and a few other little things I'll get that boost sensor put in right there and I'll see if I can't track down those couple hoses that I need for fuel and when I get that done I'll come back to you you know have my laptop and will plug into this thing and see how many miles it's got on it and if it still set at 435 like the tag says and whatever else we may see in the ECM and yeah I've got a busted peanut cover but I'm not worried about it not selling a little a little out but it'll be alright alright I'm plugged into this thing the engine serial number matches 60s two six eight one seven let's see what it said looks like it still set at 435 and let's see how many miles are on it total distance 831 thousand well I would have lost that bet I would have figured over a million but anyway so it's a no originally model with about eight hundred and thirty one thousand on it I did notice that they changed the fuel transfer pump to along with the air compressor but other than those two things it appears to be all original like I said before apparently it had water in the oil more than likely all that was wrong with it was either the oil cooler or liner or eans so there should be no reason why it won't fire it up and run but we'll find out I've got this field line changed out with one that's in a little bit better shape than the one that was on it before the new used boost sensor is on and ready to go got a feel suction line on the turbo is mounted got that plug in the oil pan down there looks like I'm still missing a little filter so I guess I need to run over and grab a starter and some battery cables and the harnesses for the ECM and get some oil in it and when I get all that done I will be ready to start cranking on it before I do that stuff I was just talking about I know from experience that these water and oil cores can get pretty nasty as far as rust if they've been sitting for any amount of time I have not pulled the valve covers on this engine yet I just took all the bolts out so let's pull the valve cover too and take a look well the jakes are in a little bit rough shape but all in all not too bad really the rollers on the rocker arms aren't bad so that's that's not too bad those Jake's will clean up really not too bad not as bad as what I actually expected so looks like the injectors or the original injectors they haven't been changed all right well that's not too bad let me keep getting my together here and we'll see what happens all right so I've got the starter on and hooked that the batteries I've been cranking on it a little bit I wanted to crank on it just enough to see that I was gonna have a oil pressure before I went any further so what I did I took this this little piece of hose off that's just a piece of hose with the plug in it but that line right there is what goes to the oil pressure gauge in the cab at the truck so I took that line off and cranked on until I got a wheel coming out of that fitting and that tells me that I've got a little pressure and the oil pump is working the last thing I want to do is fire this thing up and lock it up because the little thumps bad so now that I know I've got a little pressure the next thing that I really the only thing left to do here is to go over and get the harnesses for the ECM to put power to the correct pins and when I get that done I can start cranking on it and get the fuel system primed up and it should fire up if it's going to a GS look here 39 MT all right I've got everything wired up everything's connected everything's ready to go I've got a throttle pedal here I just bolted to the peanut cover so I am ready to start cranking on it and we'll see what happens well I had a little problem I had to fix what happened was this feeler turned check valve right here had gotten stuck from sitting and so I was noticing as I was pumping the hand primer that it was getting really hard to pump and then it got to the point where you couldn't pump it at all and I wasn't getting any return fuel so the most obvious first place to go was this check valve so I started loosening it up and sure enough as I did he'll start up by passing around it in the housing there and started coming out here where it's supposed to so I knew that that check valve must be stuck at that point I went ahead and took it on out and got it broke loose of the screwdriver and then put it back in so when I got it back in I could pump the hand primer again and I could get return fuel to come out like it should so I went ahead and started cranking on the engine again and as I was cranking I was not getting any return fuel which I should be if that engines cranking is turning the transfer pump and I should be getting return fuel just like I would if I was pumping the hand primer so at that point I knew the transfer pump must not be any good probably what happened was if the transfer pump originally was fine but as I was initially cranking with this check valve stuck closed it built too much fuel pressure in screwed up the transfer pump internally there's nothing broken that I can see but it's really hard to turn so there's there's something internally wrong with that transfer pump now so anyway I went over and grabbed another transfer pump stuck it on I've got that check valve freed up I've primed it back up again and I should hopefully be good to go to start cranking on it and hopefully it'll start now I had to abandon this project last night because these battery just weren't strong enough to crank the motor over fast enough to get it to start it's probably been well over a year since this engine ran last maybe longer than that and so I unless the batteries charge all night and about half the day today while I was doing other stuff and when I go back to cranking on it here in a minute I'll probably even give it a little shot of Starwood just because I know I'm gonna need all the help I can get well it's a runner there were a few more attempts in there to get it started than what you guys will see in this video but that was the initial startup it missed a few times there in the beginning and then it cleared up and seemed to be running just fine so I'm gonna clean this up a little bit I'm gonna get these parts hauled over there where they go and maybe clean the floor up just a little bit and get some valve covers and put them on so I don't sling any more oil all over the place and what I already have and then I'll come back over here and play with this thing a little bit more [Music] [Music] that went about as well as it possibly could have I didn't really have to do much to get this thing going I put that booth sensor on it pulled that fuel return check valve out and got it unstuck and ended up having to do a transfer pump because that valve was stuck and thrash the pump but for this engine being bought just as a core engine that's pretty good you can't ask for it to go much smoother than that a couple questions I know I'm going to get asked so I'm going to go and answer them now number one why's this fuel so black it's black because I've got used motor oil in it and that's on purpose the reason I did that is because it adds a lubricity to the fuel and on an engine like this it's been sitting for no telling how long without being running it's important to put some lubrication back through the fuel system to get the injectors and everything kind of freed up and back in good working order so the other thing is what does it take to make one of these run in the shop floor on these forty fenders all it takes is positive battery to pin for negative battery to pin 5 and positive battery to pin cigs you hook those three wires up and assuming that the engines going around it's got fuel and all that that's all it takes you crank it over it's going to start an idle and then when you get ready to kill it all you got to do is remove your positive battery wires off your battery so that's pretty much it for this one I hope some of you liked it and thanks for watching

Channel: KT3406E

Views: 476,920

Rating: 4.8722863 out of 5

Keywords: KT3406E, Caterpillar, Diesel, Diesel Engine, Cat Diesel Power, 3406E, 3406E Cat, Caterpillar 3406E, 3406, 3406 Cat, 3406 Straight Pipe, 3406E Straight Pipe

Id: 0A4znrLrM68

Length: 19min 32sec (1172 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/elchoss]

nice job, really interesting, but i was waiting for the total makeover