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100KW Diesel MEP 1080 TM

Guyfang

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OK. I asked someone in CECOM what the deal is with this gen set having no TM's.

Well, this gen set was never accepted into the DOD/MEP world. This is a LAMPS Gen set prototype. It was never accepted into the military system. It has a valid NSN, but that's about it. It failed testing. It has a CAT engine. It has special software, not the same as the MEP-807. It failed noise and long running test. The fan bearings and idler pulley failed. Its similar to the MEP-807, but more then a few differences, not to mention the software. No TM's were produced. No tech data available.
 

Chainbreaker

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So with the understanding there are no TM's for this model what are you wanting to do? Does it not run, is there a problem with it, are you wanting to bring it into service or...?

There is a lot of "collective knowledge" on these SS Generator forums that just might be able to help if you describe what you are trying to accomplish with this particular unit.
 

mciikurzroot

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Ah !! and I will add you poor sole...

Here's the "back story" Several years ago MEP in its modernization quest contracted with 3 still viable gen set builders.. Fermont, MCII and Cummins, and I use MCII as a pejorative term, because it was my Company but I sold to L3 or a subsidiary Westwood Corp. each company was obliged to build 11 or so First Articles to be submitted for testing and possible long term contract award.. As you might expect Cummins had made themselves into a very favorable position, And won the contract.. The other sets were declared surplus and moved into a DRMO status for disposal. 3 of the L3 [mcii] sets were located here in San Antonio for disposal. A local City claimed them and bought them wherein when it became obvious these were and are a very high tech gen set i was contacted to see what i could do. I had the 3 of them here for near a year. These sets have a John Deere 6.8L engine , not CAT or anyone else, just JD Green as you can see and read, your set, and i presume you bought 1 or did you buy all 3 .. I didn't follow the sale so i don't know, but what i do know is your set #9 was the only runner in the lot of 3 ...

While here we only did slight mods to your set, we kept it as the example we worked from .. All these sets, your set included are CAN Bus controlled, with 3 CAN Bus's within the set and the add on bits and pieces we left the DEIF control package installed as well the 12 lead generator..
Look at the radiator for a moment, the engines are late Tier3 early Tier4 engines, thus Intercooled, Aftercooled and Air charged, also within the one radiator is a fuel cooling section, so the radiator is 3 parts, water air and fuel cooling.. The set has a nice Basler digital controlled Voltage Regulator we left in place, this set will run and make full power,

The Color screen display is to damn near to die for nice, it's trick ass, no 2 ways about it, Cummins didnt make there set that nice IMO at least, but that's sorta where it ends, the whole turn on and boot up is a circle jerk, but they were rushed and put cleaning that up too late in the building process...

If you bought the other 2 sets, you're screwed, my words, the fuel systems are highly contaminated and clogged with near Varnish as they sat too long and the fuel turned to Varnish, the JD Tech we had out 3 times i recall finally just said it will cost it think it was like $8,000 more per set to replace all the special parts, the 2 sets can be saved but at what price, not one that i recommended my customers expend the monies for was my offering...

So at my recommendation, the customer returned the sets and adjustments were made to offset their purchase price. My plan was to originally replace the DEIF control package with a very hi tech CAN Bus controller/s, we have since used the controllers in other applications non CAN Bus required..

I have the full set of schematics for the entire set as well the DEIF controller and the voltage regulator possibly, im not totally sure on that...

These are nice sets, but with the proprietary screen and software control, you're so screwed when this set burps up. you got no open source support and a very large door stop...
Ill tell you like i told the city, get rid of it or use an open source free software and updates control system, right now you're in for a lot of challenge to keep it going for any period of time.. We had installed the new controllers in the other 2 sets, it was strictly the very high fuel contamination issues that kept us from completing the total of 3 sets conversion, including your set #9 .. In our process we eliminated about 325 wires and contact points, we never expected to make money on this job, but break even would have been nice, best i recall we stopped coding our cost at negative $25,000 including direct labor cost, and we pulled my time off the books early when it went south..

I think i still have most of my field notes, or at least "as builts" ...

Little humor, while the DEIF controller looks normal to you as well the Voltage Regulator, both are installed BACKWARDS, whereby you don't see the control screen or information displays, and you think only the big color screen is where all the information is shown, but its not... there is some trick accessories that we pulled off and kept, but none you need for anything but extrema operating conditions you wont see ....

In summary, i could go on for some time on what we did learn from these sets, and how we took advantage of things we learned, but for accounting purposes, we lost our ass on these sets. I wont miss it much if i estimated $40,000, we didnt close the project out till June of this year, so i wont know the real horror till later , but again we also got a lot of education on CAN Bus building and applications, it remains to be seen if we ever use the things we did learn, at least before we forget then anyhow...

Best: mac/mc MCII
 

Chainbreaker

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Wow, now that is some "collective knowledge" and then some!!! Very interesting story to say the least. However, not very encouraging for the ownership of this beast!

Yeah, I remember the Gov't bid process from many years ago as the company I worked for submitted a bid for a NAVAIR contract and we spent over one million $ preparing CAE/CAD/CAM design software/hardware requiring special customized code and expending hundreds of man hours preparing and executing a benchmark performance test. The company I worked for then won the contract and ended up selling just enough equipment to barely recover our costs on the "one and only order" we received off the contract. Go figure...

Not sure what the OP was planning on using this 100 kW beast for but it sounds like it would be a uphill battle to make much use of it and keeping it in service. :(
 

Dewie38

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Milford Ct
Going back several years ago Fermont didn't exist either, they were DRS and still building 100 and 200 kW TQG's.
The Cat engine they were using was being discontinued and the government asked DRS to come up with a FIKE (field install kit engine) which meant that DRS would come up with an engine that would drop right into the existing 100 and 200 kW tqg's and produce new sets also.
DRS had an engineer who thought he was an engine expert and also tried to put a Chinese engine in the 3 kW when the rebuy came out and we lost that contract.
The government told DRS that if they could re-engine the 100 and 200 kW then there wouldn't be a LAMMPS contract, DRS would just continue building 100 and 200's with new engines.
This idiot engineer tried to totally redesign the 100 and 200 and we never even got to bid on the new LAMMPS contract. There was never 11 sets built by DRS.
MCII won the contract and couldn't pass prototype testing, I believe they had overheating and sound test issues.
 

jmenende

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Omg! I was about to buy those 3 units when they came up for auction a month or so back. They looked great till you looked closer. If i recall, the listing said these were experimental or something . They had many empty cutouts and it was obvious they were missing a few electronic components. Its hard enough to find electronics on the old units so finding parts for these would have been impossible. I dodged 120mm slug right there.
 
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