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Another Perkins Pukes

apetad

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Jul 24, 2012
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384
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Leander, Texas
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Compact Construction Equipment Sales
January 2012 Cat made arrangements for Kubota to build their future compact equipment engines and put the Cat name on them. I guess even Cat gave up on this one.
 

Digdeep

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Mar 6, 2007
Messages
704
Location
Wisconsin
January 2012 Cat made arrangements for Kubota to build their future compact equipment engines and put the Cat name on them. I guess even Cat gave up on this one.

The primary reason was because the 3.3L engine made by Mitsubishi and branded by Perkins was not going to be Tier IV.
 

smokey1

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Jan 12, 2009
Messages
114
Location
West Bridgewater,MA.
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Builder/Owner
My contacts in china tell me the Perkins 804d 33 series engine is the tier IV engine, and that engine is being used in most of their small equipment, all skid steers and also told me CAT was using it also, and CAT would soon start building them in the USA down south somewhere. They told me the the reliability and emissions numbers on the 804d engines was super good. Tried to get info out of perkins and they are in the dark on it. Another sourse told me CAT purchased all the perkins rights to the engine. I am not concerned about the manufacturer, I am more concerned about who will stock the spare parts..
 

Digdeep

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Joined
Mar 6, 2007
Messages
704
Location
Wisconsin
My contacts in china tell me the Perkins 804d 33 series engine is the tier IV engine, and that engine is being used in most of their small equipment, all skid steers and also told me CAT was using it also, and CAT would soon start building them in the USA down south somewhere. They told me the the reliability and emissions numbers on the 804d engines was super good. Tried to get info out of perkins and they are in the dark on it. Another sourse told me CAT purchased all the perkins rights to the engine. I am not concerned about the manufacturer, I am more concerned about who will stock the spare parts..

That 804D-33 is a Mitsubishi built engine that Mitsubishi decided not to have a final Tier IV solution for. I do know that Perkins did come out with their own 854F series that will be Tier IV final compliant, but I can't speak for whether CAT will be using these, or anyone else for that matter. I had heard that ASV(Terex) was not going to use a Perkins engine any longer above 75hp.
 

John C.

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Jun 11, 2007
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Location
Northwest
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Machinery & Equipment Appraiser
I have also heard that Cat was going to the Kubota engine in the small machines. Skid steers and mine excavators.
 

Welda

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Joined
Jul 28, 2012
Messages
4
Location
55-490B Keawe Iki Place Hawi, Hawaii 96719
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Welder, Machinist & Mechanic self employed
I only know of 2 things that'll lock up a Perkins or any other diesel I've worked on...#1 hydro lock & #2 too much staring fluid (I don't use it, I use a gas rag over the air cleaner bonnet). But you were running so #2 don't apply, if it was anything else mechanical she'd more than likely come apart on you...got me scratching my head now...
 

Steve Frazier

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Oct 30, 2003
Messages
6,599
Location
LaGrangeville, N.Y.
I can finally give an update to this thread. The machine broke during a real tough time for me and I haven't had the time or resources until now to do anything with the machine. I had a heavy equipment mechanic run some tests on it and the engine is toast. He did an oil sample and it's full of what appears to be aluminum particles. I'm going to have him pull the engine for me and then I'll take it to the shop at work to tear down and see if it's salvageable.

I live in a somewhat rural area where skid steers are not uncommon but you don't see one wherever you go either. Bobcat, John Deere, New Holland and Caterpillar all share a portion of the brands that you do see here. This mechanic is one of the few independent mobile mechanics not related to a dealership and he told me he's done 7 of these engines in Cat skid steers that have puked. My point is there aren't an extremely high number of these machines around yet this mechanic has repaired 7 that were blown. He told me they almost always throw a rod through the block, mine did not, I think probably due to the low rpm I was running at. I'm hoping to find just the bottom end torn up.

I don't remember if it's been mentioned in this thread but I've learned there was a defect in the oil pickup tube where it would crack. It could suck air for a while and foam the oil until it would eventually break off and result in catastrophic failure as in my case. I'm curious to see if this is what happened. I'll keep you posted.
 

Steve Frazier

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LaGrangeville, N.Y.
Well folks, it's terminal. I stripped off most of the accessories and pulled the head. No. 4 piston wasn't where it's supposed to be so I figured the rod broke. It wasn't until I turned the motor to work on the bottom that I realized the block was spider webbed next to no. 4 cylinder. I got the pan off and the largest dimension of the pieces of the rod is about one inch. No. 3 rod bearing is spun. The oil pickup tube is intact. I haven't been able to yet determine what caused this mess. Oil is in real good condition other than the shrapnel it's littered with.

I've read where these machines now house Mitsubishi engines. Has anyone ever done a conversion?
 

Bob/Ont

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Sep 18, 2012
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Ontario
Steve, is your engine a 3 cylinder? I saw two of them seize in small rollers. The engines where Perkins, assembled in UK with parts from India. If yours is similar, has the injector pump cast into the cyl block, governor and oil pump in the front cover. Look for this when you take it apart. The one I had apart had a rotary oil pump mounted inside of one of the timing gears. The gear used a bore in the front cover as a bearing. The rotary pump was driven by three small pins, the pin holes were drilled in a groove around the bearing surface of the gear(midway along it). Look for a groove gouged in the bore of the front housing by the drive pins. There is a spiral spring wrapped around the gear and should be in the groove holding the pins in place. The one I had, the spring was pushed back against the gear teeth and not in the groove. The drive pins had nothing hard to hold them in place, they just ran against the housing bore and soon gouged out the aluminium untill they no longer could drive the pump. Then no oil pressure and seized crank.
Later Bob
 

OzDozer

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Jan 18, 2007
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Perth, Western Australia.
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Semi-Retired ..
Cat bought 50% of Perkins in the late 1980's and acquired 100% ownership of them in 1997. Their disastrous foray into Chinese Perkins manufacturing has been put behind them, and settled (through the Chinese courts, surprisingly).
The corporate crooks involved in the Tianjin Joint Venture were jailed. However, the damage the Tianjin crooks did to Perkins is unquantifiable.
No-one really knows how many dodgy Chinese Cat Perkins parts were produced by Tianjin - or how many Chinese Cat Perkins engines were produced with poor assembly or build quality.
With this kind of problem, it can still be appearing 10 or 15 yrs down the track, as the low hour engines crash due to the Chinese faults in manufacture or assembly that aren't discovered until many years later.

However, Cat should still be standing behind their product, and if you have a premature failure and make a lot of noise in the dealership managers office, they usually admit to any known problem/s.
The standard initial reply is, "you're the only one having this problem". This has been the Cat standard reply since I bought my first new Cat D6C in 1966 - and the D333 had heads coming off valves within 4000hrs.

Of course, after the standard Cat reply, I found out that other local Cat owners were having the same problem! It was only when a head fell off a valve less than a week after the dealer did an engine rebuild (and they were up for another rebuild under warranty), that the dealer grudgingly admitted, "Yes, we had a batch of faulty valves - so we'll give you a full new set for free".
Now, the stupidity of the whole deal was - if the dealer had admitted the problem, first up, they would have saved themselves the cost of a full engine rebuild. :duh

Back to the Chinese Cat Perkins saga. As of December 2007, Cat built an entire new engine factory in China, and went into Joint Venture with IHI-Shibaura, the Japanese engine & tractor company, to run the Chinese Perkins engine production facility.
Shibaura has a long record of building Perkins engines under licence, and there are no Chinese involved in the QC or the management of the new JV.
The assembly-line workers are Chinese, of course - but they are working under tight Cat/Shibaura control, and QC is equivalent to any other top Cat or Shibaura manufacturing facility. This factory came on stream in late 2008.

http://china.cat.com/cda/layout?m=315919&x=7&id=1629444

http://www.ihi-shibaura.com/english/aboutus/history.html
 

Digdeep

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Joined
Mar 6, 2007
Messages
704
Location
Wisconsin
Cat bought 50% of Perkins in the late 1980's and acquired 100% ownership of them in 1997. Their disastrous foray into Chinese Perkins manufacturing has been put behind them, and settled (through the Chinese courts, surprisingly).
The corporate crooks involved in the Tianjin Joint Venture were jailed. However, the damage the Tianjin crooks did to Perkins is unquantifiable.
No-one really knows how many dodgy Chinese Cat Perkins parts were produced by Tianjin - or how many Chinese Cat Perkins engines were produced with poor assembly or build quality.
With this kind of problem, it can still be appearing 10 or 15 yrs down the track, as the low hour engines crash due to the Chinese faults in manufacture or assembly that aren't discovered until many years later.

However, Cat should still be standing behind their product, and if you have a premature failure and make a lot of noise in the dealership managers office, they usually admit to any known problem/s.
The standard initial reply is, "you're the only one having this problem". This has been the Cat standard reply since I bought my first new Cat D6C in 1966 - and the D333 had heads coming off valves within 4000hrs.

Of course, after the standard Cat reply, I found out that other local Cat owners were having the same problem! It was only when a head fell off a valve less than a week after the dealer did an engine rebuild (and they were up for another rebuild under warranty), that the dealer grudgingly admitted, "Yes, we had a batch of faulty valves - so we'll give you a full new set for free".
Now, the stupidity of the whole deal was - if the dealer had admitted the problem, first up, they would have saved themselves the cost of a full engine rebuild. :duh

Back to the Chinese Cat Perkins saga. As of December 2007, Cat built an entire new engine factory in China, and went into Joint Venture with IHI-Shibaura, the Japanese engine & tractor company, to run the Chinese Perkins engine production facility.
Shibaura has a long record of building Perkins engines under licence, and there are no Chinese involved in the QC or the management of the new JV.
The assembly-line workers are Chinese, of course - but they are working under tight Cat/Shibaura control, and QC is equivalent to any other top Cat or Shibaura manufacturing facility. This factory came on stream in late 2008.

http://china.cat.com/cda/layout?m=315919&x=7&id=1629444

http://www.ihi-shibaura.com/english/aboutus/history.html

Great information. The primary engine that has been the problem is the 2.2L engine which is of the Shibura design. CAT, Case, New Holland and ASV all used this same 2.2L engine and had massive head gasket failures and pick-up tube problems.
 

OzDozer

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Jan 18, 2007
Messages
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Perth, Western Australia.
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Semi-Retired ..
Digdeep - Yeah, I seem to recall my nephew having trouble with the head gasket in the Perkins in his Cat 277. The engine failed at low hours, I think it was about 18 mths - 2 yrs ago.
However, he said Cat admitted there was problem and they fixed it without arguing. It might help that he runs about 50 Cats - a lot of them big dozers - so when he complains about something to Cat, they sit up and listen! :)
 

Steve Frazier

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Messages
6,599
Location
LaGrangeville, N.Y.
This engine is 4 cylinders and according to the id tag is 2.9 litres, Perkins 2600 series engine. It seems very similar to the description given above. The governor and oil pump are housed in the front engine cover which is cast aluminum. The oil pump is gear driven off the crank. Half of the oil pump housing is machined into the backside of this cover and a cast aluminum piece forms the other half. This piece is bolted to the cover and sandwiches the oil pump rotor and revolving chamber between it.

This cast housing cover is what broke and the pump lost its suction and pressure as a result. There is no damage to the rotor or the revolving chamber to indicate excessive pressures or debris in the pump, it appears this casting just broke for no reason. I'm pretty upset about this as the engine has just 1500 hours on it. I'll be making some more phone calls to Caterpillar.
 

Digdeep

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Joined
Mar 6, 2007
Messages
704
Location
Wisconsin
This engine is 4 cylinders and according to the id tag is 2.9 litres, Perkins 2600 series engine. It seems very similar to the description given above. The governor and oil pump are housed in the front engine cover which is cast aluminum. The oil pump is gear driven off the crank. Half of the oil pump housing is machined into the backside of this cover and a cast aluminum piece forms the other half. This piece is bolted to the cover and sandwiches the oil pump rotor and revolving chamber between it.

This cast housing cover is what broke and the pump lost its suction and pressure as a result. There is no damage to the rotor or the revolving chamber to indicate excessive pressures or debris in the pump, it appears this casting just broke for no reason. I'm pretty upset about this as the engine has just 1500 hours on it. I'll be making some more phone calls to Caterpillar.

Steve...I'm not aware of CAT using a 2.6L engine in any of their skid steers. Only a Perkins 3L (3034) engine when the first 248 came out and the CAT branded Mitsubishi 3.3L in the B series.
 
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