Week 4

This week I got to do another valve adjustment on a cat motor. This time I only had a limited amount of time to get it done so the bus could be back on the road. I got the adjustment done with time to spare. I have really gotten a lot faster at getting the valves set and everything put back together. We had another bus come in with a lose of power so a cylinder contribution test was ran on it to see what each cylinder was doing. Number 5 cylinder ended up having no power. It was originally thought to be a bad injector but after I had gotten the valve cover off I discover that the jam nut on the adjustment screw for the #5 intake valve had backed off and the adjustment screw came out of the rocker arm. Luckily none off the parts had fallen down into the engine. The push rod had also fallen out but we were able to locate that too but it had gotten bent. Everything looked ok so a new push rod was put in and the valves got adjusted and the bus was put back into operation.

The rocker arm that is up in the air is for the exhaust valve, the push rod for this rocker arm had to be removed to get the bent push rod for the intake rocker arm out because it was stuck behind it.

 

I also got to do an LOF on four of the smaller buses, one of the school districts vans, and one of the drivers ed cars. They all got oil, grease, and an inspection but the car also got a tire rotation so that gave me a chance to finally try out my Ingersoll Rand impact gun.

The drivers ed instructor had brought in another one of his cars to have the spark plugs replaced and since I'm the low man on the totem poll I got to do this job. Its not that bad of a job to do but I don't like to work on little gasser cars. I like engines without spark plugs for a reason. what was going to be just changing spark plugs turned into to also doing valve cover gaskets after I found some oil on the upper portion of one of the plugs.

This week =32, total =78

Week 3

On Monday when I came to class I went to check out the 6.0 Ford project and Dan had his class come over to show them some stuff. One of the things Dan was talking about was cavitation and why in diesels it is so important to have the correct coolant. I learned that its caused by little air bubbles in the coolant forming up against stuff like cylinder liners and when ignition occurs there is so much pressure that the liners want to expand and it causes the air bubbles to pop. From continuous popping of the air bubbles it will wear away at the liners causing holes in them.

On Wednesday day I started my internship at the Stanwood bus garage. I started out changing a wiper arm and bracket on a bus and doing some general maintenance like changing fuel filters and air filters. Then I got to learn how to write a service report to keep track of all the work you do and which parts you used so you can keep track of them for inventory.

Thursday I got to learn how to adjust valves on a cat c7 in one of the buses. The engine was set on top dead center by removing an access bolt in the back of the engine and then inserting a wood dowel rod against the flywheel and turning the engine over by hand until the dowel rod slides into a hole on the flywheel. After we got the engine on top dead center Scott showed me how to adjust the valves and then set me loose to do the rest and to have one of the other techs check out my work when I was done. After I got half the intake and exhaust valves set I had one of the techs check them and he said they were a little loose and he showed me some tricks. So I reset those valves and had him check them again and he said they were good. Then I had to rotate the engine 360 degrees to do the other three intake and exhaust valves. I got those valves set and had the tech check them and they were good.

 

The number 6 cylinder was kind of a pain to do because of the limited amount of space you have to work with

 

The white mark is aligned with the serpentine belt to show where top dead center is for when you rotate the engine to complete the valve adjustments

 

On Friday I got to drive the bus garages service truck for a bit because a bus had to be taken to the cat dealer for warranty work because it wouldn't go into regen to clean out the diesel particle filter. Then I got to learn from one of the techs about removing and installing injector cups on a cat motor with a heui injection system while he was working on it. Its important to clean out any oil, fuel, and coolant that goes into the cylinder after the cups are removed to prevent the engine from hydro locking once its back together. Then I got to end the day with adjusting some more valves on another cat motor. This motor had a high pressure fuel system on it so you don't want to mess with any of the fuel lines because the fuel is under such high amount pressure that it can cause really serious injuries.

I got to replace this bolt will we were inspecting this bus and the other tech told me that if you find something broken you get to be the one to replace it. On this bus a driver reported hearing a clunking sound and then smell somethings hot which ended up being this lower shock mounting bolt breaking and this is a grade 8 bolt. Initially we had checked it for blown boost couples and checked the cooling system. This was found after the bus got put up on a lift to check the underside

 

week 3 = 32 hours,  total = 46 hours

Week 2

This week I was able to get the design for my 2" open end wrench done and drawn on a piece of paper ready to be cut out and traced on a piece of metal. On Wednesday I got to help out on the 6.0 ford truck in the shop and after looking for the reason why it was getting fuel into the oil we discovered that one of the fuel injectors on the passenger side had come apart and was causing a fuel leak that was somehow getting down into the oil pan.

On Saturday I finally got around to adjusting the clutch free play on my grandads old Ford 5000 tractor because it would occasionally grind when shifting gears, we use this tractor for scraping cow poop on his dairy farm. The service manual said to set the free play on the pedal between 1.5"-2" so I got the free play set to 1.75". The clutch felt like it worked better but it was still occasionally grinding when shifting gears, so after a quick google search I found out that its normal for these tractors to do that and that Ford even recommended that you wait a couple of seconds after pushing in the clutch pedal  to shift gears.


                                   The clutch pedal linkage removed from the clutch arm

                                 The old Ford 5000. All it needs now is a straight pipe stack.

Ready to start

Ready to start learning all that I can this winter quarter