MB17 questions

[hmburner]

We just bought these from a friend of mine who lives 4 hours away. He told me they were powered by Cummins 4BT engines and they are not. The back story on these is they were bought at auction for 3500 each about 20 years ago and were then stowed on the back of a 140 ft tug as standby power for a dead ship under tow. Both MB17s have less than a hundred hours on each of them. I have a 235 Cat with a 54 inch magnet that is powered by a genset. When we bought the crane two years ago the generator was powered by a Russian Belarus diesel which promply blew up in the first hour (the crane sat for 12 years before we got it) I go out and buy a Miller welder with a bad generator head,graft on my generator and away we go for two years until the Perkins powering the generator started to fill the rad with oil so we bought these two gensets with the thinking that a mil spec engine should last me a long time powering my mag generator. My question is about the stepper motor and other things on the injection pump. All I need to use it for my purposes is two wires ......one for the starter and one for the fuel solonoid. If i just leave the stepper motor on it, will it just run at governed speed ? I am going to have to get creative to shoehorn this engine into the space for the generator,but one question at a time for now

 

[NDT]

Looks like a Cummins C160. Usual PT pump. The stepper control was to adjust the throttle in response to additional load to keep the RPMs steady for 60 Hertz. You can likely get rid of that and attach a cable type throttle control, so you can start at idle, and raise the RPMs to suit your magnet generator.

 

[hmburner]

After watching a bunch of youtube videos of generators starting,they all seem to start at full throttle, my little miller did the same,so I am guessing that if I just disconnect the wires on the stepper motor it should be fine. I see three fuel solonoids .......one mounted on a seperate plate above the pump with fuel lines running to the pump that im guessing is a shutoff for aux fuel tank and two more on the pump itself.....any thoughts ?

 

[hmburner]

I happened to get another cummins engine in, that was mounted in a truck and transferred the fuel lines and fittings onto the MB17 engine and all was good. I put 24 volt to the starter,bled the fuel lines going to the injectors and away it went for about 45 minutes. It was pushing extreme blowby and started to overheat. I check the oil and it was the color of rust (I checked it before starting and it was brand new oil) I change the oil this morning and start it. She fires right up and runs about 5 minutes before it starts to overheat and then sieze up. I am not into rebuilding this old girl (If I can still buy parts) so now we are looking at a 371 Detroit to power my mag generator. Anyone interested in a pair of MB17s ?

 

[Tcevans817]

I happened to get another cummins engine in, that was mounted in a truck and transferred the fuel lines and fittings onto the MB17 engine and all was good. I put 24 volt to the starter,bled the fuel lines going to the injectors and away it went for about 45 minutes. It was pushing extreme blowby and started to overheat. I check the oil and it was the color of rust (I checked it before starting and it was brand new oil) I change the oil this morning and start it. She fires right up and runs about 5 minutes before it starts to overheat and then sieze up. I am not into rebuilding this old girl (If I can still buy parts) so now we are looking at a 371 Detroit to power my mag generator. Anyone interested in a pair of MB17s ?

So whatever happened to these? I have an MB-17 I need parts for

 

[Guyfang]

Then you need to start a parts wanted thread, IAW the forum rules.