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Detroit 453

Detroit 453

Detroit 453

(OP)
Help please! Long story short I was having a fuel starvation problem and after checking, narrowed it down to fuel pump. So I replaced the pump, pressurized the system and started it and it idled just fine. Stepped on the trottle and it starts knocking rally bad, no increase or decrease in rpm and dumps a lot of black smoke. Where do I go from here? Can someone help me please?

RE: Detroit 453

Do you have a Factory Service Manual.

If so did you read it.

I'm not a diesel guy, but sounds to me like your injection timing is out. The FSM will tell you how to reset it properly.

Regards
Pat
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RE: Detroit 453

The 53 series also uses the fuel for cooling the injectors, if the fuel starvation problem was long term, you may have damaged a couple of injectors.

A fairly quick check is to pull the valve cover and see if all the injector racks move freely, if they all move ok, then run the engine at idle with the cover off and see if fuel is leaking between the plunger and body of any of the injectors. From there you'll likely need a mechanic familiar with older Detroits, getting harder to find the longer those engines are out of production, but they had a huge population.

Hope that helps,
Mike L.

RE: Detroit 453

Detroit Diesel 2 stroke engines incorporate a moveable flap between the air cleaner and blower

When closed they starve the engine of air, which will then exhibit the exact symptoms you describe

Their purpose is to prevent engine damage caused by overspeeding, which can occur if oil or other hydrocarbons are ingested directly into the air intake, bypassing the fuel injection system and therefore governor controls

Open the flap by finding the approximately 2" long tell tale lever on the end of the flap cross shaft, turn the shaft 90 degrees, and make sure the release mechanism traps the linkage in the open position

Someone has either bumped the release mechanism, stretched the cable running between it and the hand control in the cab, or pulled the hand control

Of course, there may be more than one problem - - ponder

Tekton

RE: Detroit 453

(OP)
Tekton You are the man! reset that stupid flap and ran the machine all day today- no problems! THANK YOU SOOOO MUCH!!!!

RE: Detroit 453

A friend of mine had a similar issue with a similar 4-71 driven generator. A mechanic checked the engine and recommended a complete overhaul. The facility was a not for profit organization and there was no budget for an overhaul. I took a look and reset the flap. The engine was still running years later. My friend didn't call that mechanic again.
Your first issue did not sound like an air flap issue. The flap may have been tripped closed while you were replacing the fuel pump. Stuff happens. Glad it was simple.
Further to Tekton's post;
This design dates back to before WW2. The oil seals of that era were made of leather and seal failure was quite common. An oil seal failure on a blower shaft would pump lube oil into the air intake and the engine was prone to runaway unless the air flap was closed.
I saw a GM 2 cycle take off when the crew washed the air cleaners with gasoline and put them back on the engine still saturated with gasoline. The air flap saved that engine.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

RE: Detroit 453

I made an enemy by helping a guy with the same problem. He was on a bus trip with a load of kids heading into town and the flap tripped. (On that model bus the emergency kill was on the dash to the drivers right and accessable to passenger traffic, so someone might have touched it - can't tell you how many times some dumb kid on trips I drove messing around on the dash would touch the button and trip the valve and I'd have to climb under the bus, and bear-hug the transmission just to reset it (only other option I had was to take the aisle floor board up and with passengers on board, that was always a last choice.)

So he calls in with an emergency, has to have some other bus come out - about 90 miles away - and bring the group in, and leaves the bus on the side of the road to be wreckered in the next day. I had to go out of town on business the next day on the same Hwy and stopped by the bus and checked the valve. I reset it, started the engine, let it run long enough to kill it, killed it and went to a phone (way before the days of cell or car phones) and called him and told him what I had done and to come get his bus - it was drivable.

Instead of being thankful, he resented it - mostly because I "knew nothing" about busses and he was the expert. Oh well.

rmw

RE: Detroit 453

Pat,

smile

rmw

RE: Detroit 453

And Pat,

True, but then again there's Karma too.

He would never let me have anything to do with the bus. At the time I owned tractor-trailer equipment and did a lot of my own maintenance as well as some limited driving, but he wouldn't ever give me a trip. He did give me a test ride and stated that I had done better than anyone he had ever checked out - but still no trips. Once when a driver began to feel ill and let me take the wheel and bring the trip in, he chewed the driver out pretty good for doing that since I wasn't a "sanctioned" driver.

Then he got cross-wise with the church leadership over something and they gave the responsibility for the bus program to me. I managed it for the next 25 years. That is how I ended up as a "tranmission hugger".

rmw

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