Fuel Burn Tracking

[John C.]

The electronics packages now days are showing new metrics all the time. What I'm seeing and hearing now is the fuel burn readings that show up in the maintenance and diagnostic menus in the monitor systems on all recent equipment. I'm exploring whether or not that should be incorporated in my appraisal reporting. I still have some friends at the Cat dealer that are telling me that Cat is now recommending rebuilds based on total fuel burn and they have recommendations for each engine model. What I have seen in the Cat systems is a total fuel reading and an actual fuel consumed reading. Does anyone have any input into what this means? Are there similar metrics in Deere, Komatsu, Volvo, Cummins and so on? I'm going to assume that information is also communicated to the dealer levels and back to the manufacturer through the telematics systems as well. How would you interpret this type of information in the decision process when considering purchase of a used piece of equipment?

Thanks for any info and I'm interested in all your opinions as well.

John C.

 

[funwithfuel]

I've seen "total gallons" or liters in parameters of both cummins and volvo. I seem to recall seeing it on old DD60 series as well. Never heard of that being used as a wear indicator though.

 

[DMiller]

Fuel consumed is a good metric to engine operational time. Lower consumption for a given amount of hours could indicate excessive idle time where the majority of engine wear occurs, lower oil pressure, slobbering past rings, turbocharger seals not as tight, considerable head and piston carbon buildup. Considered Higher consumption for a given volume of hours indicate significant loaded time with little engine recovery time. I can see both ends if can determine the base average to a known value for consistent Normal operations.

 

[Nige]

Cat have been recommending engine overhauls based on fuel burn for probably 20 years now, especially on the larger engines in mining equipment, but I've seen it quoted a lot recently for machines powered by C-Series engines.

If you have a Product Status Report with the fuel readings on you are welcome to email or PM it to me and I'll take a look and report back.

PSR's also list idle time, idle fuel, overall Load Factors, etc, etc.

 

[Nige]

Fuel consumed is a good metric to engine operational time. Lower consumption for a given amount of hours could indicate excessive idle time where the majority of engine wear occurs, lower oil pressure, slobbering past rings, turbocharger seals not as tight, considerable head and piston carbon buildup. Considered Higher consumption for a given volume of hours indicate significant loaded time with little engine recovery time. I can see both ends if can determine the base average to a known value for consistent Normal operations.

As far as I see it fuel burn allows two engines (let's say one that has an overall LF of 70% and the other with an LF of 30%) that are in distinctly different operational cycles to have a common factor determining when they should be overhauled. Because in the broadest terms the engine with lowest load factor should go far further in terms of operating hours between overhauls.

 

[Queenslander]

Nige, these are the numbers from our C9 that is returning the high soot levels.
When we were discussing that issue I meant to ask you about the definition of total fuel and total max fuel.
I would have thought that total fuel should have been the higher figure.

 

[DMiller]

Had NO Idea they had gone this far with engine data streams. Very nice to have.

 

[Nige]

It's actually quite simple.
The engine performance specification is that it burns 10.864 gallons/hr at full load. "Max fuel" is therefore a calculated theoretical value of how much fuel the engine would have burned if it had been operated at full load for the 5604 hours registered in the ECM. 5604 * 10.864 = 60882. Close enough.

Total Fuel = Total quantity of fuel actually burned by the engine.
Overall Load Factor = 36529/60883 = 60% as near as damnit.
Idle Fuel is included in the Total Fuel Number but is listed separately so you can get hinky and calculate a Load Factor for when the machine is actually working - when it's not Idling in other words.

Working Load Factor = (36529-1466)/(5604-1467) = 35063/4137 = 8.4755 galls/hr or a Load Factor of 78%.

 

[Nige]

Had NO Idea they had gone this far with engine data streams. Very nice to have.

You haven't seen the half of it. A typical PSR can run to 10 or more pages, especially if the machine has a fair bit of electronics on it.

Try the attached .................

 

[Truck Shop]

Idle time is a killer, fuel costs and maintenance on OTR. I think the seat should have a sensor {if it doesn't have at least a 120 lb load the engine won't run}.

 

[Nige]

Idle time is a killer, fuel costs and maintenance on OTR. I think the seat should have a sensor {if it doesn't have at least a 120 lb load the engine won't run}.

Or a 4lb hammer in the cab roof to remind the driver he's been idling too long.........

A lot of equipment nowadays has a programmable idle shutdown timer that will stop the engine without any operator input if the engine has been at Idle Speed and the machine has not moved for say 2 minutes.

 

[Truck Shop]

All of ours have optimum idle {start stop}. I just think it would be fun for people to try and figure why it runs when setting in the seat only.

And the driver would just try and eat the hammer!

 

[DMiller]

Must be speaking of lobotomy

 

[Truck Shop]

Pretty much all of them.

 

[John C.]

Thank you Nige for the explanations. It looks like something I'm going to have to address in the near future.

It was the advent of electronic control where this type and amount of data began to be kept. My issue with it is when and how am I going to get access to it when a customer requests it or I feel it is pertinent to something I can see in the operational inspection of the machine. I know how to get to it in Cat and Komatsu machines and I've seen it done on Hitachi/Deere units. The other piece of information that would make all this mean something is the manufacturer's specification for the amount of fuel burned when an overhaul or rebuild is recommended. Where can I find that information?
Th issue of idle time has come up in a big way with the advent of telematics. Owners now can get alerts on their smart phones if a machine idles beyond a specified metric set up to the owner's request. The same goes for loads factors, brake applications, coasting in neutral and so on.

 

[Queenslander]

Try the attached .................

That loader must have an interesting backstory.
72% idle time and 54 hrs coasting in neutral for starters.

 

[mg2361]

Are there similar metrics in Deere

Through Service Advisor we have total fuel used (on some models) and a reading of fuel used (gal/hr) at that moment (which can be handy for troubleshooting). With Service Advisor we can also pull down what is called a load profile which is how many hours the unit has run at a given load vs a given engine speed. Through the telematics JDLink we can pull down reports similar to what Nige posted but that can only be done if the end user has a current JDLink subscription. Through Service Advisor we have nothing as extensive as what Nige posted. I also am not aware of engine overhaul guidelines based on fuel burned through Deere. I guess I'll have to dig into that now that I am curious.

 

[Nige]

Cat’s version of JDLink is called Product Link and the latest iterations of it will broadcast information to a cell phone if required.

Used in the right way operators have no hiding place these days. The problem is that there is so much information being broadcast that the one snippet you really need to know about gets lost in the white noise of all the rest of the info. My 2c.

 

[DMiller]

You haven't seen the half of it. A typical PSR can run to 10 or more pages, especially if the machine has a fair bit of electronics on it.

Try the attached .................

Machine working a stockpile/ore wall loading trucks? Not moving much almost as much Rev as For, and idle time high with higher diff temps could indicate that as typical life in a short path.

 

[Nige]

This was actually a used machine that rocked up with us. This was the PSR as downloaded before it was put to work.
I have no idea where it worked before so can't comment on the operational side of it. I simply posted it to give an idea of what's out there.

That loader must have an interesting backstory.
72% idle time and 54 hrs coasting in neutral for starters.

Coasting in neutral - aka Mexican Overdrive.