Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/231795
maintenance | continued LUBE OILS Cold weather can be hard on engines, especially at start up. Using the right lube oil or a premium brand and making sure it's in good condition can go a long way towards getting the best protection and performance out of your engine. Over the last few years improvements to the additives and increased use of synthetic and semi-synthetic oils have allowed truck and equipment owners to use lube oils with a lower range of viscosity. Instead of 15W-40, you're increasingly seeing 5W-40 or 10W-30 oils speced. "When it's 30 degrees outside, a 15W30 lube oil is going to flow much slower to all the upper parts of the engine than if it was 100 degrees outside," says Dan Arcy, OEM technical manager for Shell Lubricants. Getting the oil to all the parts of the engine as fast as possible is the key to providing the best protection to an engine and a lower viscosity oil will do this quicker, he says. "It used to be a myth that you shouldn't switch between synthetic and mineral-based oils," Arcy says, "but that's not true. You can switch back and forth without any negative consequences." So it can be a legitimate strategy to use a lower viscosity synthetic during cold weather and switch to a higher viscosity and/or mineralbased oil when it warms up. The other advantage to Did you miss us on page 11? low-viscosity oils in cold temperatures is that when you use them it takes less energy to start the engine. "On extremely cold Enter to win $20,000 in fuel. days the battery is going to have less energy to put out," Arcy says. keep a truck or a piece of equipment moving. But that can change the freeze point percentages, and unless corrected you could have a cooling system that is radically out of balance. Too high a concentration of coolant can lead to slushing, Dilley says. The coolant thickens – almost like a thin wallpaper paste – which leads to poor coolant performance. The water pump will have to work harder and may leak or suffer shortened life. And the corrosion inhibitors may precipitate out, leaving your system vulnerable to corrosion, he says. Too little coolant could leave your system vulnerable to corrosion, and and the freeze point protection will not be sufficient, leading to freezing and non functioning cooling system blocked by ice. This could even crack the block or split heat exchangers due to the expansion that occurs when water freezes, Dilley says. To check the freeze point, Dilley recommends using a refractometer as the most accurate method. Test strips also work well, but Dilley cautions that some squeeze bulb type test devices can throw off the results when contamination is present. stop! Smart works. 30 January 2014 | EquipmentWorld.com So using a thinner synthetic or semisynthetic product with a lower viscosity could be a benefit when starting an engine in those temperatures." Arcy adds that many parts of the country now have anti-idle laws for trucks, some even for off-road equipment. Being able to reduce the battery drain caused by multiple starts in these areas can be a significant benefit. DEF Diesel exhaust fluid is a relatively new product used in most diesel truck engines built since 2010 and Tier 4 Final off-road engines that use selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to reduce exhaust emissions. The fluid, which costs about the same as diesel fuel, is sprayed into the exhaust stream to chemically alter NOx – a primary component of smog. You have to have DEF to run these engines. Without it SCR engines will derate or stop. The key thing to remember about DEF is that it's about two-thirds water. "DEF freezes at prolonged exposure to temperatures of 12 degrees or lower," says Jean Van Wyk, marketing specialist at Thunder Creek Equipment, which makes DEF storage, transport and handling equipment. "DEF is not harmed by this expansion. If it freezes it can thaw out and will function the same. But if it freezes and expands it could cause the container to burst if you don't leave room for expansion." The second challenge with DEF in winter is that if it's frozen, you can't pump it into the equipment's on-board storage systems. Most Tier 4 and new truck engines will have a heating element in the on-board DEF reservoir so that any frozen DEF will quickly thaw out and be ready for use. But you should also make sure that your DEF storage and dispensing systems have some way to thaw it out and keep it thawed out during your service visits to the machines. EW