Southern
Pacific
1218
Turbosupercharger Aftercooler Cleaning
The air coming from the turbocharger can get quite hot and must be
cooled before it enters the cylinders. This is done by
forcing the air to pass around and through a sort of radiator that has
engine cooling water inside it. The cooler is located inside
a chamber in the block, under the intake air passages to the heads.
When we had the heads off, we noticed what looked
like greasy lumps beneath 3 of the intake passages. These greasy
lumps revealed themselves to be areas on the aftercooler that should
look like radiator fins. This crud on the cooler came from
the turbocharger
which we
previously rebuilt. In order to correct the problem, the
aftercooler needed to be removed and cleaned. We had to remove 3
doors and cut out 2 door posts so there would be room to pull the oil
filters and the cooler.
Once everything was out of the way, we removed the cooler cover .
And
then carefully removed the cooler which turned out to be quite heavy,
both from its construction and the greasy crap clogging its vanes.
Jon,
Rich and Gerry loaded it onto a pallet and then into the back of
Rich's truck for a trip to a radiator repair shop for a good cleaning.
Gerry applied his considerable cleaning skills to the greasy crud in the inlet air
passage vacated by the cooler.
Once
back from the cleaners, the cooler looked significantly different.
We got busy putting it back into the block, reinstalling the oil
filter housings, making all the connections and filling the engine with water.
Now
that this job is done, the door posts were welded back into place
and then we intend to start running the locomotive with some cars in
order to test it and break in the engine. If all goes well, the
next job will be painting.
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