Did the ferry boat engine mechanics mention anything about neutralizing the acids that might form in the engine oil due to combustion processes? If so, what do they do about the salt that forms as part of the acid neutralization process?
Sid Wood Tri-gear KR-2 N6242 Mechanicsville, MD, USA smw...@md.metrocast.net --------------------------------------------------------- >Just for informational purposes ! There are huge auto ferries that travel from Galveston TX to Bolivar Peninsula. When I am in Galveston I usually walk on to one of these ferries and ride across and back just to smell the salt air and see the ships etc. On one trip across a couple years back I was standing by the stairway which led down into the below deck engine room. I struck up a conversation with one of the full time engine mechanics who had topped the stairway to get some cool fresh air. My questions surrounded the diesel engines, the oil, how much oil they required, and how often it was changed. All of this because the engines are diesel and I drive a diesel pickup truck. My truck requires 15 quarts of oil, the ferries require many many gallons of oil. I asked this fellow how often they change the oil in those engines, his reply caught me off guard. He said very rarely, since I am supposed to change my oil every 5 to 7 thousand miles I inquired further. I asked, "so if you had to put it into road miles, how often" he said probably a little over a million road miles ! I said how do you do that without damaging the engines. He said they had super filters that the oil was continually pumped through that completely cleaned the oil before it was pumped back into the engine. I thought that was pretty neat. Ever since then, I thought, since oil is not cheap, neither are filters for my truck that I needed to figure out how to filter my oil better so I could extend my oil changes. I remember back at one time that Amsoil Company used to sell an external oil filtering system that had little paper filters that looked kinda like a coffee pot filter that filtered smaller particles than a regular oil filter. These little filters cost 5 cents at the time. I ran into a guy in the Atlanta Georgia area around 1993 that had put this system on his V6 Ford powered home-built. His was the first time I had ever heard of this particular system. He told me that he changed the filter every time he flew the plane and had never changed his oil to that point. He pulled out the dip stick to show me and the oil looked brand new. I have thought all along that I would at least change my oil filter more regularly to extend the oil changes but I find myself just changing the oil at the same time. This is something to seriously think about though if oil were to become scarce or over priced as we have seen in the past months. Larry H. ________________________________ > 3 months @ 212 degrees F (100 degrees C) > For every 10 degrees F (10 degrees C) oil temperature increases, the > lubricants expected life is halved This is great news! Now I don't have to change my oil but every 1080 hours! That's assuming my average oil temp is about 222F during the summer. I guess my point is this may not be exactly accurate without a few caveats like duty cycle and that sort of thing. But your point is well taken....I'm just pokin' fun at the numbers... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL mail: N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website: www.N56ML.com
