Capital Equipment News July 2018

MAINTENANCE NEWS

Savings from diesel injector technology – if you keep up

As diesel engine technology advances in leaps and bounds, fleet owners need to appreciate the high level of equipment and skills needed to keep their trucks running efficiently. “The great advantage of modern diesel truck engines is the fuel cost savings they offer their owners, mainly due to significant recent developments in fuel injection systems,” says Reef Fuel Injection Services director Andrew Yorke. “Recent technological progress has in fact been focused more on the diesel injection aspects than on the engines themselves.” He warns, however, that keeping abreast of the specialised know-how and equipment from OEMs to test, diagnose and calibrate injection systems today requires constant and considerable investment. “Many of South Africa’s aftermarket service providers had already fallen behind global trends during the sanctions era, when we ran with one brand of engine with mechanical fuel pump technology,” says Yorke. “The rest of the world had begun pursuing the electro- mechanical route, and we were not keeping up.” This required South African players to Condition monitoring specialist, Wear- Check’s diagnostic manager John Evans, recently diagnosed his two millionth oil analysis sample, making him the third in WearCheck’s team of eight diagnosticians to reach this milestone. While official statistics are not readily available, it is extremely rare on a global level to have diagnosed this quantity of samples, therefore the achievement by Evans aligns him with only a handful of top diagnosticians in the world who have reached an equivalent milestone – among them, fellow WearCheck diagnosticians Michelle Allis and Rowan Maartens. WearCheck has been conducting used oil analysis for more than 40 years, and the diagnosticians have, between them, a combined 175 years of experience. Thanks to meticulous record-keeping, the company has now amassed a sample diagnosis database of over 12 million samples, which grows by around 750 000 samples each year. Evans outlines the importance of the database, which contains invaluable information about component condition

effectively skip much of the electro-mechanical phase of development in fuel injection and jump straight into the modern era of electronics. “For those players who did not fully understand this transition – and who did not invest substantially in the requisite equipment and expertise – the pace and demands of change have left them behind, leading to considerable attrition in this market,” he says. “The fact is that proper testing and diagnosis now requires OEM-specific

An RFI technician doing Delphi common rail injector calibration.

equipment, if the fuel injectors are to be restored to as new condition after maintenance.” Yorke highlights a critical step – often overlooked due to the lack of the right equipment – in the final calibration and adjustment of modern fuel injector systems. “Before the injectors will operate optimally when reinstalled, they need

vital trim codes to be generated by the OEM test equipment,” he says. “These are calibration codes that are fed into the engine control unit, to allow each injector to deliver exactly the right quantities of fuel.” Without the trim codes, the repaired vehicle will seem to run adequately, but it will not deliver optimal performance and the efficiency benefits will be lost. ❂

Two million oil samples and counting

trends over time. “The power of our database lies in the in-depth insight it provides into the inner workings of machines across all makes and models. In fact, we often have access to more data than the OEMs simply due to the large number of samples we diagnose,” he says. “On occasion, we even help OEMs with their own research and development and the setting of limits, although we always recommend rather referring to trends when diagnosing samples that indicate potential component failure,” adds Evans. “The database is also used extensively in our customer training modules, where the different circumstances of a component are studied – such as operating conditions, presence of contaminants, varying temperature and other external factors.” In addition to traditional used oil analysis, WearCheck also offers reliability solutions services such as thermography, vibration analysis, balancing, laser alignment, motor current analysis and milling.

Condition monitoring is used to boost machine reliability and therefore enhance profitability across a range of industries, including mining, aviation, power generation, transport, marine, earth- moving and others. WearCheck’s footprint covers 15 laboratories in nine countries (RSA, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, DRC, Ghana, India and Dubai), with a presence in several other African countries. ❂

John Evans of WearCheck.

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