Compound Turbo 15.2L Caterpillar C15 Core Diesel Engine - Will it Run?

all right what I've got here is an mxs E15 acert truck engine these are 15.2 liter displacement they're compound turboed a lot of guys will call these twin turbo engines but they're not they're compound turboed I'll show you more about that whole set up a little later in the video probably but these are a really common engine they built tens of thousands of these and they're a pretty good engine considering the emissions regulations that they had to meet during the time period that they built them you've got to compare these engines to an EGR cummins or Detroit and if you ask me I'll take one of these any day over either one of those cat did not use an EGR valve and these engines were Cummins in Detroit did but when you compare these to the older cat truck engines the earlier pre-acert c15s and 3406cs these are really not quite as good an engine they're a little bit over complicated compared to those earlier engines and they're also a little bit thirstier on fuel but this particular engine is a core engine that I just bought I didn't need it but the price was right so here it is they told me that this thing would run but it was just worn out which that's a pretty common story when you're buying these cores a lot of times it ain't true but I don't see anything too far out of place on this one so I figure it'll probably run I guess that's what I'm gonna do first I'll try to get it fired up and then after that I mean it's really worth more to me in pieces than it is whole so I'll probably end up tearing it down to the bare block but before I do that let me see if I can get this piece of to run gonna have to get a flywheel bolted on it so the starter's got something to engage to crank it over and of course get a starter bolted on it right here uh there's no power steering pump on it but that's all right I'll just let that leak it won't be too bad I noticed that this stud here that holds the air compressor on is missing but the one over there is there and it appears to be tied this one down here is here but it looks like it's backed out some so I'll try to Snug that up I want at least two out of those three to be there and be good and tight before I try to run it I don't need to destroy the front gear train fuel system seems to be intact for the most part that line right there is not tight but otherwise I think it's okay I'm going to probably pull this block off plate off and put a hand primer pump on that just to help me get it primed up the only other thing I saw that wasn't exactly right this plug here on the coolant diverter valve on the pre-cooler has been broken and it's not plugged in anymore but there's the end of the harness for that and that's not a big deal anyway that doesn't have to be there for it to run fuel transfer pumps missing a bolt and other than that I figure get some oil in it and some fuel to it I think it'll run all right I'll give you a real quick run through on this top end setup I'm sure there's several of you that are wondering what the hell is going on here the purpose of these three housings is two things the first one is the compression break function which is the exact same thing as the jake brake does the same thing works the same way it's just not called a jeg break because it's not made by Jacobs you can see the cat logo right there so like all these cat compression breaks the second function of this housing is the Iva function and all that is the function basically these housings will hold the intake valves open during the first part of the compression stroke when the ECM calls for it and you'll also sometimes see these called vbas or variable valve actuators same thing this is what they're talking about so it's really no big deal looks complicated but all these things are doing is actuating on the intake valves for the Iva function and the exhaust valves for the compression brake function you'll need a little all right there's the first five five more to go all right there's about 10 gallons of oil in it I don't see any of it running out on the ground anywhere yet so that's pretty good got some fuel ready to go the last thing I need to do before I start cranking on it I want to plug into this ECM and make sure it's alive it ain't going to do me no good to try to start it at the ECM is dead okay I think I just saw it connect yep I've got a uh official caterpillar chair here that I commandered from a drunk cat salesman one night it wasn't very hard I said hey I want that chair and he said okay it's yours so we've got an mxs 19629 see where it's set at 475 horsepower 1850 foot-pounds of torque at 1200 surprised it's not a 550. all right let's see what it's got for totals 47 000 hours a total distance is one million three hundred and sixty one thousand two hundred forty five miles a lifetime total revolutions this is pretty cool these a search will show you this looks like 3 billion 156 million eight hundred and six thousand that's a whole lot of going around in circles there we're digging through my old box of harnesses I think I'm gonna take one of these in the house with me tonight and uh cut all this Old Wire off and deep in it clean everything up good and build me and actually real nice harness with real douche connectors and everything for the throttle pedal and uh the power supply to feed into and all that instead of this hillbilly that I always normally do like this right here that's one of the harnesses I've used in the past just about ready to go here I got this harness built last night I went ahead and put the ATA in the j1939 data links in it so that's why it looks like kind of a clustered up mess but I can use that now I've program ecms or whatever I need to do I can leave my other clean one in the house but got the pedal bolted on the cylinder head I put a plug in the harness for that so I'll have some throttle control and uh I'll use that for the uh we use the laptop for the oil pressure gauge too since I've got the data links in it that'll keep me from having to plumb in a mechanical gauge all right everything's hooked up everything's live got the engine a little pressure highlighted there for you engine coolant temperature showing 81 manifold air temperature showing 82. atmospheric showing 15 psi that's all right where it should be it's cranking pretty damn hard I don't know if that's because this battery's dead or if we got problems wait all right let's have a little bit of that and a little bit of that see what happens now this negative cable seems to be getting really damn hot so I'm going to swap that out and just make sure that's not the problem but I'm pretty sure it ain't gonna go all right here's the first one swapped out see what we got now oh that's a lot better all right we may be back in business let me uh get this all plugged back in okay we're back live there so it can possibly start if it's going to I still don't think it's fuel primed yet but here we go oh all right she's a runner thank you look at all this that blew out of the pre-cooler here looks like some good stuff that sound you heard over here that was the air compressor so that's not I mean I'm sure there's plenty wrong with this engine but that's uh that was normal that's what you were hearing didn't even check the oil pressure let's fire it up again see what we got all right I'm gonna explain this turbo setup real quick before I forget and then I'll probably run it a little bit more and do a couple more things with it so this is how the intake air and the exhaust gases move through this turbo setup in and out of this engine this is the intake elbow right here this would be piped up to the air cleaners on the truck the Clean Air would be coming in through here being fed into the compressor housing on this lower turbo first and this is where a compound turbo setup Works a little bit different that air is going to get compressed inside this compressor housing and then it's going to be piped directly into the compressor housing on the second Turbo the second turbo is going to compound that boost from the first Turbo and then in this case it's going to send it on to be cooled twice and then used by the engine so that booster charge air is coming out of the second turbo right here going through this little bellows and being fed into this thing this is called a pre-cooler the C15 Acer truck engines have a pre-cooler it's just a simple air-to-water heat exchangers all this is being cooled down and then it's going to come out right here from there the charger is going to be fed to the air which is just another charge air cooler it's an air-to-air cooler and then from there it's going to be piped back to the engine to go in that hole right there to be used now on the exhaust side it works sort of just the opposite got your exhaust manifold here all the hot high pressure exhaust gases are all being fed into this upper Turbo right there there's a flange that that's bolted to it's kind of hard to tell there's a couple of the nuts so the exhaust gases are coming into here they're spinning the turbine inside this turbine housing and from there the exhaust gases are coming out through this elbow being fed into this lower turbo spinning that turbine coming out of that turbine housing through this elbow to the exhaust system on the truck and then out to the atmosphere this is called the high pressure turbo this is called the low pressure Turbo it's not hard to figure out why this turbo is getting the higher pressure exhaust gases because it's getting them directly from the manifold it's also getting the higher pressure intake air or charge air or boost because it's getting it after it's already been compressed by the first Turbo and that's sort of another key element of a compound turbo setup one is the way that they're plumbed the way that they're plumbed in series you could say and then the second element is that normally the two turbos or possibly three or more are usually not identical and in this case that's true these two turbos are not the same just pull these three elbows off here so you can get a little better look at what's going on that one's all hacked up you can see the little radiator inside the pre-cooler there like I said that's just an air-to-water heat exchanger so the charge air blows through there and then coolant flows through those bigger tubes in between the little skinny fins and that's how the charger gets cooled first before the air-to-air that's looking at the compressor wheel on the lower Turbo and then here's the exhaust side of the lower Turbo okay all right well I guess that's about all there is to running it and uh now that I've sprayed ether into it it's I mean it's destroyed for sure if you don't believe me just ask all the internet online diesel experts and they'll tell you all about that so I guess I might as well get started tearing it apart I'll make it look like this one over here and we'll see what it looks like on the inside I wonder how much fuel I burned just getting started taking this thing apart I've got the ECM off of it and that's pretty much it so far going to give you a quick explanation on the fuel flow in and out of these engines well it's all still together here so this is the fuel transfer pump right here this is just a simple gear pump is all it is this is the suction side of it so there would be a hose connected to this fitting right here that's going to go back to the tanks and normally there's going to be another filter over in here somewhere bolted to the frame rail or whatever so usually it's going to go through one filter first and then the fuel is going to enter the transfer pump it's going to get pressurized by the transfer pump and this is just low pressure depending on the condition of the pump and the check valves and engine RPM obviously and everything else usually somewhere in the ballpark of 70 to 100 PSI is what you've got for fuel pressure so it's going to go from the transfer pump output right here and this line is going to send it up here to this fuel manifold now this should be a hard metal line that runs up through here but I had this hose handy and that metal line was screwed up so that's what's on this one right now but that line is going to run into this fuel manifold right here it's going to send that fuel through the filter to be filtered it's going to come out of this manifold right here that clean filtered fuel is then going to come up through this line it's going to send it to this little Junction block right here now this is nothing special there's no valve or anything in this it's just a straight pass-through so the fuel is going to come out of the top of this Junction block right here it's going to run through this metal line up and over it's going to come into the cylinder head right here that's the other end of that line so there's a fuel gallery that runs the full length of this cylinder head all the way through here supplies all six injectors with fuel the back of that fuel Gallery is right here so whatever fuel the injectors don't use it's going to come back out of the head through this line it's going to go back to this fuel manifold there's a valve in here it's going to go through the valve make a 90. and this fitting right here is going to have a hose connected to it that's going to send the fuel back to the tanks that's all there is to it moving along here tearing this thing apart I just pulled this coolant elbow off here this is the elbow between the water pump and the oil cooler be the outlet of the water pump and this metallic I don't know it's like a metallic slurry or something it was right in here inside of this elbow so I don't know what that's all about but it's almost like it's furry or something I don't know what that is the hell is that all right here's your little cleaner look at the top end and this turbo set up one of the first things I noticed when I was looking at this engine to buy it was this pretty fresh looking set of cat reman injectors that's in it that's 6 10r 1273s that aren't very old and probably the very first thing I noticed was this new looking head that's on here that's a cat 20R 2647 think you can probably see that there so that is a brand new caterpillar utn head and it just makes you wonder how does an engine with a brand new head on it and a fresh set of injectors in it wind up being sold off as a core engine I don't know but anyway something else to notice here is how much bigger the lower turbo is than the upper one you can't tell as much by looking at the compressor side but look at the size difference between these two turbine Wheels that lower turbo is quite a bit bigger the upper turbo is wastegated that's what this thing right here is and it's gated based on the pressure inside the compressor housing on this lower Turbo so once the lower turbo hits 25 PSI boost what it's going to do this this little hose would normally be connected right there it's going to start to open the wastegate and this is a 25 psi actuator I know that because it's got a tag on it that says 25.03 PSI so that's going to start to open at 25 psi when it does there's a little flapper in there that's going to open up and that's going to allow some of the exhaust gas to bypass this turbine wheel and go around it of course it still has to go through the lower turbo the lower turbo is not gated let me grab the air hose and I'll actuate this thing and show you what it looks like when that opens and closes you kind of saw it there that's how that works The Rocker rollers and the cam are starting to pit and Flake pretty bad so they definitely didn't do rockered arms with the camshaft when they did the head and the injectors I've seen them get a lot worse but those ain't real good that's for sure rolling along pretty good here acert water pumps quite a bit bigger than the pre-acert pump and uh these triangular shaped Outlets or ports on this turbo flange I like these pretty good they seem to hold up a lot better than the rectangular style ones with the straight Center divider that Center divider always gets all cracked and warped up on those it seems like after a long time and these tend to hold up pretty well from what I've seen I'll show you what to do with this insulation garbage cat put on all their truck engines that's what they should have done when it was brand new there's no way this thing ran very long after they put his head in the new injectors in it I just peeled these uh exhaust inserts out of here they would be in there like that you get the idea and uh I mean they came right out look how clean they still are those haven't been run very much at all that was a new cat reman water pump they had put on there and that's a new McBee oil cooler too looks like both those things probably went on there at the same time that they did the head knee injectors and I don't know it's possible they could have inframed it I'll find out once I get the pan pulled off of it and get to look at the rods see if there's a remand number on them or not you can see some more of the damage to the cam lobes here I mean that would still run for a pretty good ways longer but it's just going to get worse from there and it's going to get worse faster and faster so anyway I guess I'll pull the cam gear off and then pull the cam out of it get the injectors out and then it'll be time to pull the head all right camshafts out and I'm pulling the injectors need to be extra careful with these because they're probably good enough that they need to come right out of this engine and go straight into another one and keep going well I believe this thing was rebuilt there ain't no way that those liners have got 1.3 million on them got crosshatch all the way to the top even where the Rings change direction which is normally that doesn't last very long so definitely was rebuilt that still doesn't mean that uh we don't have a liner o-ring leaking I've seen many a guy build an engine with screwed up lowers in the block thinking they can get away with it and uh they didn't so we'll see when we get there head looks perfect I mean why wouldn't it it's brand new almost safety experts are going to love this I'm doing it just for them so let me get that pan out of there before gets out of control and it gets smashed and then I need to get this little pickup tube it's a little pump off of here block stiffener plate and I'll have to knock that dipstick out of there get seized in the block hopefully it'll come out they usually do sometimes they don't all right I got all that stuff off the bottom and know the dipstick tube didn't come out seized in there harder than hell Rod's got a 10r 2117 number on it so that's going to be a reman cylinder pack that pretty much tells me that this thing did well obviously it got rebuilt that tells me it got a platinum kit it had a cylinder head injectors cylinder packs a water pump and an oil pump oh yes got to fly a little housing off of it and I got the front cover off got all six rods and pistons out of it everything looks pristine just like you'd expect it to for just having a fresh Platinum kit in it no broken Rings bearings all look good well my calculations may have been just a little bit off on that I almost flipped that block over in the floor but I didn't so crank looks pretty good I'll put that through the machine shop and polish it and balance it and mag it and measure it out and all that it'll be good to go that's the good stuff there you don't want any of that junk those fourth graders over at Cummins designed block looked fine bearings all look good nothing unexpected there so the last thing to do is pull the liners out of the block and that'll be it all right foreign well I found the problem took me right up to the very end but I found it usually you do this whole cooling system is full of this metallic Rusty gritty stuff I don't really understand exactly what it is or where it all came from I mean there's quite a bit of it but what I do know is that several of these liners have some pretty bad cavitation damage like that right there that even got through that upper o-ring I don't think it would have been putting any Cooling in the oil because the lower two O-rings there in that case are all good and I haven't seen anywhere made it all the way through all three of them but what it probably would have been doing especially in the case of some of these that are even worse like this one I threw that upper o-ring there too but not the lower two if you look down in that liner you see that black stuff that's corrosion damage so that tells me that there was a little bit of coolant seepage making it through the liner so probably when the thing got up to operating temperature what it would have been doing hey it would have been using a little bit of cooling but more importantly the bigger problem would have been that it would have probably been pressurizing the cooling system because of the tiny little pinholes that are in that liner I can't directly see any spots where there's light shining through but I guarantee you that some of those holes are communicating all the way through that liner they're probably really really small maybe even almost microscopic but they're there and that's not the only liner like that I've seen that in two or three more of these so there's probably quite a bit more damage there's a little bit right there we cleaned these up you would see even more so that's what killed it I don't really understand though what all this material is I mean there's a lot of this stuff surely that didn't all come from these liners I don't know but uh yeah I don't know if they were running a some sort of an automotive coolant that doesn't or didn't have any scas or dcas in it or the way these liners look they might have even been running straight water I mean this happened pretty quick because this engine didn't run long after it was rebuilt with this new stuff so there's no telling what they did you see all kinds of stuff so uh anyway there's the parts pile I've got a big ass mess to clean up I'm going to get started on that guess that's all I've got for this one thanks for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: KT3406E

Views: 6,354

Keywords: kt3406, diesel, engine, rebuild, engine overhaul, engine rebuild, cummins, detroit diesel, 3406, 3406e, c-15, c18 cat, c16, c-16, 3408

Id: xlqyWCf15sM

Length: 34min 39sec (2079 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 08 2023