Valve damage due to blocked airfilter.

[PierreR]

Thought i was ging to show you what can happen to an engine if the airfilter is never replaced and it sits in a dusty enviroment.
The pics comes from a CAT engine that is used to power a generator at a quarry and its used to power the rockchrusher.
The pistons and cylinderlinings are ok but the valves are a different story.

This one is not that bad:

But this is way worse:

The valve seat on the worst valve is so damaged that its not repairable and we have to replace the whole head.

The engine sits in a container but when its running the doors to it are open to let the fan draw air through the radiator, the airfilter sits on top of the engine inside the container but since the fan draw in air it also get all of the dust from the rockchrusher.
You can probably guess how it looks inside it after a day and all that dust blocks the airfilter, intercooler and radiator making it working harder to get air and whith a blocked intercooler and radiator its running hotter then designed and then things start to go bad real quick.

 

[Bandito440]

Interesting! Do you have photos of the filter?

 

[crazyoildude]

i could see that happening in a quarry where there is a super amount of dust and dirt. What head is that and what is exactly wrong with it?

 

[PierreR]

Originally Posted By: Bandito440
Interesting! Do you have photos of the filter?

No i dont, but when we did the "bang it to the floor test" there was a nice pile of dirt that came out of it.

 

[PierreR]

Originally Posted By: crazyoildude
i could see that happening in a quarry where there is a super amount of dust and dirt. What head is that and what is exactly wrong with it?

Dont know wht the enigene is called exept cat but the valveseats on the worst cylinder are smashed up in to the head a few mm past where the valveseat should sit.
The valves on those cylinders are about 3mm higher then the rest of them

So new valve seats cant fix it.

 

[krismoriah72]

Looks small but hard to tell from the pics..probably a 6.6L kitty kat. Clogged oil filter should have acted like a choke and someone should have noticed the dark black smoke from the exhaust.. if the valves look like that i would check the turbo if it has one..it would have had to work very hard to overcome lack of air.

 

[Cardenio327]

I'm having a little bit of trouble imagining how a plugged air filter would cause valve and seat damage without wreaking destruction on the rings and bores.

How many hours are on the engine? Are you sure this isn't just the typical valve failure that occurs at 10,000+ hours?

Or too high of exhaust valve seat temperatures from being run continuously overheated inside a container with inadequate air flow through a radiator which is plugged with dust? Look and see if the engine sentry unit which shuts down the engine when it is overheated has been tampered with or disabled.

 

[901Memphis]

This is something you only have to worry about with a diesel, the gas engines with panel air filters would never get that far, they would deform the filter before it got there.

 

[double vanos]

Well, at least you can revel in the fact that the filter was approaching 100% efficiency .....