2-71 Detroit Diesel Spewing Oil From Exhaust

[Phil P]

Hi

We had a 4-71 that hadn’t run for years. When I first started getting it ready to run I found it had a stuck injector.

When I removed the rocker cover to fix this I found the unit had apparently been overhauled installed and test run but never started again.

After the startup it ran well but dribbled oil out of the exhaust pipe so bad we had to put a bucket under the exhaust to catch the oil.

It was on an 8,000 gallon a minuet irrigation pump so we hooked an 80 gallon fuel tank to it and cranked it up to 2,000 RPM running the pump. We only shut it down twice a day to check oil.

Other than that it ran 24 7 for 2 weeks it no longer uses oil.

Phil P

[miltruck]

Another thing I just thought of is what is the temperature of the coolant in the engine when you are running it? Detroit's don't like to be cold, they run best at 170+ to 190 degrees @ the water outlet (thermostat housing). Running without a load, the engine most likely will never hit the thermostat rating. All that air blowing through the engine makes it act air cooled. Use one of the handheld touch less temperature units (cheap at Harbor Freight) to see what the various areas around the engine are at.

You could try removing the fan only and just run the water pump or block off the air flow through the radiator as an experiment.

And as stated a couple of times before, a good load on the engine would help immensely. Anyway you can do that? We bought a 30kw 100,000 btu 3 phase portable heater off Craig's List for cheap money ($100) to load and test our 2-71 30kw unit. Runs as if nothing is even hooked up but does also jump the coolant temps right up there fast. Fuel use also goes up; about 2 to 2.5 gallons per hour under load.