Not a bad weekend for working on a few MEPs - fun with thermal imager

[Demoh]

About 20 hrs this weekend working on the MEPs we have. Sat was 46 and for some reason for me its perfect ice cream weather so I enjoyed some ice cream with a MEP in the background.



Some other highlights included unsticking 2 fuel racks in 2 different gens. Each gen had a seized pump so those were replaced. Fuel rack stops werent set correctly on the 813 (this one I am using as a donor for an 803 needing an engine) so had to adjust that and of course had to replace all the lines. The goal was to get the 813 running prior to pulling because it would really suck to install an engine with problems.

Needed to pull the tank and radiator and in doing so I discovered something which confuses me. So I removed the fuel tank, ok no problem. I started the generator up, no problem. Wait what? Every sensor for the fuel tank is disconnected but yet the generator runs without fault and with battle short off. Picture 3 and 4 is exactly how I ran the generator and it ran find without issue and the confuses me. Logically you would thing that if sensors are disconnected that it would have a fault and shut down. I guess this is kind of like the oil pressure switch where if you disconnect it the unit will never know if you have low oil pressure and continue to run even with 0 psi. This is all moot though because I wont be using any of these electronics as Ill be pulling the engine. I am curious if anybody has had the same experience where disconnecting the fuel float and sender allows the unit to run without error display, or does it sound like this unit's electrical has either been tampered with or has an issue.

And now for the fun. so I replaced a pump and tested the other 3 that werent seized up. Reinstalling and aligning the pumps was interesting. Im not done with this unit but I wanted to get the pumps close enough before the pull to give me a good foundation afterwards, and I'm a sucker for tech also so I decided to align the pumps with a thermal imager. The thermal imager was enough to get the cylinders close enough for this weekend's goals. Does anybody use any other methods for adjusting these pumps or is doing it by temperature fine?

I didnt take an after picture with the manifold temps being really close but I included the before picture.

 

[justacitizen]

i use a thermal imager for many things and is really handy to find a cool cylinder on any engine. really great to find a baby calf hiding in tall grass. use it in the house to inspect breaker box and wall outlets. even find overloaded wires in walls. pretty cool tech can be had by many. mine is a Seek thermal and it is a camera also. great application you are using it for and it would be interesting to see the comparison of the thermal against traditional methods.

 

[Demoh]

i use a thermal imager for many things and is really handy to find a cool cylinder on any engine. really great to find a baby calf hiding in tall grass. use it in the house to inspect breaker box and wall outlets. even find overloaded wires in walls. pretty cool tech can be had by many. mine is a Seek thermal and it is a camera also. great application you are using it for and it would be interesting to see the comparison of the thermal against traditional methods.

Definitely handy for sure. My friend that I work on these MEPs with owns an automotive shop so he has a nice high-res snapon imager that the tool truck used as a demo unit so he got it for the same price as a Flir or other medium brand. At the time it had 4x the resolution than the Flir unit on the market, not sure if thats still the case.

In the first month we used the imagers more at our houses doing exactly that, breaker panels, lighting, areas which insulation was thin, anything we could think of just to play with the thing. The snapon unit also has settings for what material you are viewing as different materials have different emissivity (which I assume would affect the readings or else why would they put the setting?)... Lets just say I spent more time in my attic and doing electrical maintenance because of this thing.

BTW my house has aluminum wires, which when I bought the place in 2014 I did all of the copper transitions I could find, and this allowed me to find junctions that were missed which I think was 2. On my friend's panel we found a major lug issue on the neutral bus that was sure to spell doom if the conditions were right. I really hate aluminum electrical components.

 

[csheath]

Don't think I could justify the cost of a thermal imager but I was running my unit without a load the other day and thought the next time I do my monthly test I would use the IR tester to get exhaust and block temperatures both with and without a load.

 

[Guyfang]

Something else you can use it for, is looking at photoelectric panels, when its a nice hot day. If you see spots on them, you have a problem area, that will be the place it fails some time later. It can also be used to find scratches, on the underside of the panel. Another thing that can cause the panel to fail.

 

[Demoh]

Something else you can use it for, is looking at photoelectric panels, when its a nice hot day. If you see spots on them, you have a problem area, that will be the place it fails some time later. It can also be used to find scratches, on the underside of the panel. Another thing that can cause the panel to fail.

Ahh now isnt this a nice gem of info here... I never knew that and looks like now I can quantify how my "damaged and replaced by shipping insurance but they never asked for the panel back" solar panels are doing. Back layer was damaged but still produces similar to the rest in the array. I know the cooler the panel is kept the more efficient it will run, but my OCD hasnt broken myself down to strap a bunch of heatsinks to the backsides yet to test that theory. Maybe I might just do that, as if I didnt need more projects. Thanks Guyfang....