Cavitation Erosion

[srs_mn]

I've notice that there is a mention of Cavitation Erosion buried in a current thread on 450C steering clutches; I think that it's a topic deserving of its own thread....

Quite often, on this site, and others, the subject of antifreeze in the oil comes up... One of the reasons can be due to Cavitation Erosion - it occurs when constant vibration of wet sleeve cylinder liners causes tiny bubbles in the coolant to collapse and erode the metal of the liner, and/or block, resulting in pinholes being eaten through the liners...This, of course, wrecks the liners, and in extreme cases wrecks the block, too. This problem is not limited to JD engines... it has been a major problem for ALL diesel engine manufacturers that use wet sleeve liners in their engines. Notice it has nothing to do with electrical leaks, or shorts, like some mechanics will lead you to believe.
As I have posted before - I am appalled that the owners manuals do not stress the importance of coolant conditioners more strongly - this problem deserves more than a line or two in the manual that tells you to change the antifreeze. I am even more appalled that John Deere did not install Coolant Conditioner/Filter units on ALL their small diesel engines as standard equipment even after the problem was identified, and a cure for the problem was well known. I know that they did use them on some engines, such as the 770B grader, but I never saw one on any of the 350C, 450C, or 544B models that I owned. I would bet that adding them to each machine sold in the 70's would cost them less than thirty bucks each, if that much.
I learned the hard, expensive, way about cavitation with the first 350 I owned... I ended up replacing the liners, and was just barely able to avoid buying a new block as it was pitted quite badly in the sealing ring area. An old Cat mechanic steered me to the cause of the pitting, as it had also been a problem in their engines.
After that lesson I installed Coolant Conditioner/Filter units on every engine I had, and purchased thereafter. I used the same kind that was on my Cummins engine in my dump truck, Baldwin, but I am sure there are other kinds, too.
There is an excellent article on this problem at http://www.baldwinfilter.com/engineer/00_1.html
I have nothing to do with Baldwin, (I just hate to see engines wrecked for no reason) but I highly recommend investing in a filter base and filter with conditioner chemical pellets, like on the web site above... they're not very expensive and are easy to add on to your engine.
As an alternative, you can manually add coolant conditioner to your radiator at regular intervals.
At the very least, don't neglect to change the antifreeze like you're supposed to, and never run with straight water in the cooling system.
srs_mn

[digitup2]

I bought one of my neighbours 310D hoes that he ran with creek water for a couple of days in that is all it takes yes it is an ever occuring thing as heat from the engine makes the bubbles but I find that with coolant management and addative adding that you can slow this down to the point when the seals are done as the rings are done We use the P.H.kit you get at any of the good diesel shops and you can only try to keep liner deterieration to a minimum These old Deeres that we want to keep are an other thing as we have pitting and cooland degradeing over time as well But old ignored coolant is the big killer I am told that water quality changes quickly and regionaly and this makes sense .I always take a coolant test kit with me when looking at any machine and I buy a few used machines in a year .I have noticed some high P.H.levels and walked away from the unit several times .We have the water conditioning filters on the large equipment also but these are false security they dont work 100%.I always keep lots of JDcoolant conditioner and we have two or three P.H. test kits around for testing .When the P.H. level gets higher add some conditioner .But schedualed replacement is the only thing to do .My only Cummins is probably the worst for P.H.change in coolant quickly and it has a filter[ A 2002,600 hp pice of crap ] .Dont think that sleeved motors are the only affected ones we have an older 7.3 litre Ford pickup behind the shop with an eaten out block between the 6th and 8th cylenders but this was driver neglect at around 350,000 miles That Drivers trucks never last any way as big brother just drives floats and his pickup so we just send his pickup to the truck shop with the float tractors and other larger trucks .As long as you have heat you have cavitation simple as that just keep it under control is what I say ! .Digitup.

[FarmLife]

That would be a great recomendation to add the filter with the conditioning pellets. All the fire trucks I work on have them and alot of other big trucks have them. Seem to really make a difference.