Picked up 6 MEP-802A gensets and will be documenting making them all runners here

[JRM]

This was all caused by the missing flapper? Yikes!

 

[pclausen]

Hmm, sounds like I might need to keep honing then to see if I can get the rest of the pits out... I'll see if I can take some closeup pics of what the cylinder walls looks like.

When I was taking this particular unit apart, I noticed this assembly lube on one of the governor springs:


http://www.cstone.net/~dk/MEP802-6-19-05.JPG

It's a shame it (and one other unit) were allowed to sit exposed to the elements for an extended period of time and get all rusted up on the inside like this. But I suppose that is at least part of the reason why they went up on GL in the first place.

Of the 2 units I got running so far, the one where I painted the engine Ford blue, it does not smoke at all, not even under 100% load, before being fully warmed up. This is the one that got a light hone job and had rusted cylinder walls (but no pits). The 2nd unit puts out a little bit of black smoke at 100%, but after it gets to operating temp, it is barely noticeable. This unit was never torn down, as it was in pretty good shape to begin with.

All 5 of these units are fairly new, having build dates ranging from 2006 - 2010.

 

[Guyfang]

The reason all the TQG's are being hocked off is because the military is going to a new generation of generators. Bottom line.

 

[pclausen]

Yeah, the AMMPS are pretty sweet.

http://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/cs-css-advanced-medium-mobile-power-source-ammps/

21% more fuel efficient and 10% less weight, and they all feature automatic paralleling and synchronization. What's not to like, except maybe the price?

 

[Guyfang]

A very senior TACOM, (Tank and Automotive Command) rep I know, shares the same problem I have with the AMMPS generators. You used to be able to fix a gen set with a general mechanic's tool box, and a very simple multimeter. You can't anymore. Everything is inclosed in a box, with some kind of goop filling it in, so you can't test or repair anything. And the boxes are big time expensive. Almost every troubleshooting procedure in the TM's, takes you to a large circuit card, or to the Backplane, (the computer/brain) or the display, (Looks like a computer monitor but is packed with another computer) on the MEP-805B and MEP-806B gen set. No real way to test them, "pluck and chuck". I don't know what these things cost now, but in 2010 or 2011, all of them were well over 1500 dollars. No, I lied. You could test them by doing a "system check". Putting them in a known good gen set and seeing if they work. The display was easy to remove, but the circuit board and Backplane was something else.

The AMMPS is suposed to be similar complicated. Also harder to work on, do to the very crowded layout of the set. I haven't worked on one, but that's what I heard.

Automatic paralleling and synchronizing, (the same thing) is just something else to go wrong. Since time began, the old way, hook up the gen sets. Start one, put on line. Start the second one, flip both sets paralleling switches up. Watch the paralleling lights on the second set. Adjust the synchronization, by increasing or decreasing the engine speed,(hertz) throw the second set on line when the lights go out. Done. Easy. Maybe I am just too much the dinosaur. But KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, works for me. Just my view of the subject.

 

[Triple Jim]

Maybe I am just too much the dinosaur. But KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, works for me. Just my view of the subject.

I feel the same way, but I'm a dinosaur too. The world is progressing toward operators of equipment not needing to know anything about how the equipment works. Modern cars are a good example. This makes it easy to find an operator, since he doesn't need any significant training, but it also means when something goes wrong, all the operator knows how to do is pay someone who does know how it works to fix it. I can't count the number of times I've made roadside repairs and been back on my way in a short time, rather than have to call a tow truck, wait for a repair shop to be open, and then pay big money for the repair. I suspect there are a lot of guys like us on this board.

 

[Guyfang]

One of the reasons the Army needed contractors, was the lack of training among repair personnel. Please don't get me wrong, I saw real good people out there. But they were few and far between. The problem starts with a system that worked well for several generations. In the begining, soldiers got a very good backround education. Then they went to units with a solid core of good mechanics led by a solid core of excellent NCO's. The old time Maintenance Warrant officers were simply outstanding. They came up through the ranks, guided by the NCO's. When you wanted to apply for W.O. School, you had to have at least 12-13 years to get selected. In my mind, there was no difference in an old school Motor Sergeant and a Warrant, other then pay. They knew their *hit. Young mechanics were mentored. Really a very good way to create a sound maintenance program, and train superior mechanics.

Then came the mid to late 70's. To save money, AIT, Advanced Individual Training, was shortened. The instructors taught less theorie. Less of everything. Everyone expected that the rest of the system would pick up the slack. And for a while it did. Then the old school guys got out or retired. The AIT's taught students on equipment that was long gone. Test equipment that was long outdated or had been replaced. The knowledge pool got ever shallower. The up and coming young mechanics and NCO's simply had no one to mentor them. Tricks and shortcuts were forgotten. And of course, the technology got ever more complicated.

That's the reason we came into the pluck and chuck mentality. You do not have to be smart to simply change boxes until it works. The much vaunted PATRIOT missile system is a fine example. When the radar is not properly functioning, you do a self check. The computer gives you a "brew list" of chassis's or boxes to change, that MIGHT have something to do with the problem. You simply replace them all, and if its fixed, ship the swapped out chassis's to Mother Raytheon, who runs them on a tester, (to fix what was bad and certify the ones still good) that the army did not buy, and sends them back to the army. But not cost free. They charge the army for them every time they send them back.

The manuals got ever simpler. You don't need to know how and why it works, just what box to change. Ever more warnings filling up the manual pages. Like the manuals were written for 9 year olds. I don't know about you, but if I hear that I should disconnect the batteries before repairing or testing once or twice, that should do it for me. Read a new manual. If 99% of the warnings were taken out, the book would be 50 pages shorter.

Ask yourself why we have a diagnostic receptacle on the TQG's? The army never bought the test equipment to go along with it. Why? The army spends money like drunken sailors. So I don't think it was to save money. I think it was because of the sad experience of the STE ICE test equipment. Test equipment used to troubleshoot military vehicles. No one ever knew how to work it right. It looked like a bunch of monkeys standing around a banana tree. Everyone had a guess about how it worked, but no one ever made it work right. I sat down with one and read the book. IF all the adapters were there. IF you could read and comprehend what the manual explained, it worked well. I used it a few time on my truck. But getting someone to read the book and play with it? Forget it. Easier to just change parts.

OK, its time to get off my soap box. I have been retired 23 years and this still makes me mad. I need to run to the Bodebsee in the AM to pick up my wife. Five hour drive and its 23:00. You gents have a nice saturday.

 

[kloppk]

.. The much vaunted PATRIOT missile system is a fine example. When the radar is not properly functioning, you do a self check. The computer gives you a "brew list" of chassis's or boxes to change, that MIGHT have something to do with the problem. You simply replace them all, and if its fixed, ship the swapped out chassis's to Mother Raytheon, who runs them on a tester, (to fix what was bad and certify the ones still good) that the army did not buy, and sends them back to the army. But not cost free. They charge the army for them every time they send them back.

I worked my career at Raytheon and dealing with those returned chassis and circuit cards was part of my job. Spent many years designing and developing the test equipment used to test those assemblies in both production and to test the ones that came back from the field. True sometimes the BRU list (Battery Replaceable Unit) did list a number of items. As you said the systems have gotten much more sophisticated over the years and because of that diagnosing problems with the Patriot system (an others) became exponentially difficult. As a result some faults could be caused by a large number of items.
When designing systems such as Patriot it's always a tradeoff of how good the system design for self testing is and how precise the diagnostics can be. Better designs and more robust diagnostics cost $ to develop. It's a cost tradeoff.... cheaper system=less precise diagnostics but higher maintenance costs. More expensive system design up front= more precise diagnostics and lower maintenance costs. Ultimately it's up to the customer which they want as they specify to us how precise the self test need to be.

Testing, troubleshooting and recertifying the circuit cards and chassis is labor intensive and requires very costly test equipment, some many millions of dollars. We had to assume every part returned from the field was defective. Each was tested at various conditions to verify if the item was bad or indeed good. If it passes initial test it went on to more extreme testing conditions to try and get the item to display a possible failure. If we could get the item to fail during test it then required us to diagnose it down to the failed component, have the repairs done with certified repair persons and then the item had to be cycled back thru the full battery of test to re-certify the item before returning it back to the customer.
We took our job very seriously as we knew the lives of the warfighter relied on the quality of our work and the reliability of our products.

 

[Guyfang]

You are right of course. There are always two sides of the coin. I was standing on my soap box ranting, and tend to sometimes lose prospective. I grew up in the army in ADA. Was in Basic HAWK, Improved HAWK and then went to PATRIOT. But I am NOT a Duck Hunter!! In basic HAWK the mechanics were real mechanics. They used to repair some of the chassis's at unit level. Even in Improved, they were able to repair things to some extent. But it just got too complicated after that. I meant no insult to Mother Raytheon. Good company, good equipment. And the Tech Reps were very good! And that's what I meant when I ranted about contractors. And I was one. But when the army relied on contractors, the solders didn't need to learn anything. Did you just work for Raytheon? Or start out in ADA?

 

[kloppk]

Guy, I only worked for Raytheon in Massachusetts. Did 35 years there doing design, development and field support until I retired last year.
No offense taken.
Just wanted to give a little perspective from the supplier side.

 

[87Nassaublue]

A very senior TACOM, (Tank and Automotive Command) rep I know, shares the same problem I have with the AMMPS generators. You used to be able to fix a gen set with a general mechanic's tool box, and a very simple multimeter. You can't anymore. Everything is inclosed in a box, with some kind of goop filling it in, so you can't test or repair anything. And the boxes are big time expensive. Almost every troubleshooting procedure in the TM's, takes you to a large circuit card, or to the Backplane, (the computer/brain) or the display, (Looks like a computer monitor but is packed with another computer) on the MEP-805B and MEP-806B gen set. No real way to test them, "pluck and chuck". I don't know what these things cost now, but in 2010 or 2011, all of them were well over 1500 dollars. No, I lied. You could test them by doing a "system check". Putting them in a known good gen set and seeing if they work. The display was easy to remove, but the circuit board and Backplane was something else.

The AMMPS is suposed to be similar complicated. Also harder to work on, do to the very crowded layout of the set. I haven't worked on one, but that's what I heard.

Automatic paralleling and synchronizing, (the same thing) is just something else to go wrong. Since time began, the old way, hook up the gen sets. Start one, put on line. Start the second one, flip both sets paralleling switches up. Watch the paralleling lights on the second set. Adjust the synchronization, by increasing or decreasing the engine speed,(hertz) throw the second set on line when the lights go out. Done. Easy. Maybe I am just too much the dinosaur. But KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, works for me. Just my view of the subject.

I totally agree with you on this one. That's why I got out of medical xray. You can't really test or fix anything on the new stuff. You just throw parts at it and those parts are very expensive. Even if you do put the part in a known good machine for test, sometimes the issues are intermittent and you can't tell for sure if its good or bad. In earlier days if I left a customer site, I knew I fixed the problem and the customer was happy, now with a lot of the newer stuff you really never know. It sure takes the power from a good engineer/technician. Even after everything went to black box, I was better and troubleshooting and diagnosing than the younger guys because I'd seen the old stuff work and could visualize virtually how the new stuff worked. I would not want to go back and try to get a handle on the new stuff in the field.

 

[Guyfang]

You never made it to germany? Miesau? We did the DS/GS back up for HAWK and PATRIOT. I met lots of good folks there.

 

[87Nassaublue]

You never made it to germany? Miesau? We did the DS/GS back up for HAWK and PATRIOT. I met lots of good folks there.

I did make it to Erlangen for a training course at Siemens AG in 1994. We visited a few cities such as Kronach and Forcheim. I was just starting to enjoy it when it was time to come home.

 

[87Nassaublue]

Guy, I only worked for Raytheon in Massachusetts. Did 35 years there doing design, development and field support until I retired last year.
No offense taken.
Just wanted to give a little perspective from the supplier side.

I lived through the migration to black box while working in the medical X-Ray diagnostic field. The private companies thought it was a good idea to drive it to a black box method of maintenance because they intended to dumb down the job to the point any delivery guy with no training or experience could do my job and save money. I was an experienced electronics engineer. Siemens upper management actually believed they could execute this plan. There was a rumor of "monkey cam". We thought it was a joke. Basically they had an idea that they could come up with a helmet with a camera attached where a remote tech support guy (such as me) would monitor and direct up to 16 different video feeds and delivery people in how to change out parts in X-Ray machines. One day while in a training class we were joking about it and a senior manager stepped in and in a very serious tone asked, how we found out about "Monkey Cam". I was in shock that they were actually serious this brain phart. I had just made a comment about how we worked with high voltage and there was danger in the job. I made a comment that the first time, you hear a support guy yell, no, no not that one! and then you hears ZZZZSSSSSTTT!!! and the video goes blank, that will be the end of Monkey Cam. After this guy overheard my comment about the risks of Monkey Cam, we never heard about Monkey Cam again.

Unfortunately, the black boxes are here to stay.

 

[Guyfang]

I live 15 min from Kronach. You need to come back. I can show you the REAL germany!

Monkey cam. we tried that at work. Or I should say, one of the young guys tried it. I do not have a smart phone. Don't want it. Anyway, we were on a barn, about in the middle of nowhere. On the roof, and working a problem with a photoelectric system. The young guy was using his phone to show our "master" electrician what we were up to, and to perhaps get a clue as to what the heck we should do. All the sudden, the sky got black and the thunder and lighting started to pop and snap! I wanted nothing better then to get down off the roof. As we were working slowly down the roof, a bolt of thunder went off it seemed about in our back pocket! My partner dropped the phone, it slid down the roof, and dropped about 9 meters to the ground where upon it broke. The master electrician thought we had been zapped! My phone would not work as the cell repeaters went down shortly there after. It was hours before we could get a call through to the company. Everyone thought we were dead! I never laughed so much in my life!!!!

 

[87Nassaublue]

Wow, now that's pretty scarry! I have a lot of respect for Lightning since I used to work with high voltage. It does what it wants to!

 

[Guyfang]

I keep a extra set of underwear in my rucksack for work. I wasn't laughing when we were on the roof, nor for a while after we got down. But when I heard about the company thinking we were dead? Yeah.

Once I was on a big barn roof replacing a Photoelectric, (PV) panel. Don't know what you call them in english. Anyway, some dumb *ss had used safety wire to rig up a camera to a drone, (One of the first drones to come out over here) to take pictures of his PV setup on the barn roof. The drone took a nosedive from about 100 meters, and had punched through a PV panel. It was a very large barn, with the roof packed with the panels. That means you can't just climb up and remove one, and when its in the middle of the roof, well, its a lot of work! So I had to stand on a 9 meter ladder, and remove each board in a row, and take them down, one at a time, until I got up about 3/4 ways of the roof. I removed about 6-7 boards, when a thunderstorm started to form near me. Made me more than jumpy. After thinking about it a few nano seconds, I began to inch my way down. Metal roof, rain, hail and thunder and lighting! I could not move fast enough! AND, I had a panel in my hands! You have to be real careful of the panels, or you can damage them easy. I had crept about a meter down, trying to hold the panel, with the rain, hail and then high winds trying to make me take wing, when a clap of thunder from hel* came out of nowhere and made be need some new pants! I dropped that panel and made myself about 3 millimeters thin and slid down to the ladder and almost off the roof! The panel preceded me by a second or two. It did NOT hang up on the rain gutter. It shot off the roof and hit the ground at a high rate of speed! Didn't bother me in the least. Thats the last time I went up when the weather was crap. We have lots of thunderstorms here, and that was the straw that broke the camels back. Not me, not anymore!!

 

[rustystud]

I totally agree with you guys about the dangers of high voltage. We had the first hybrid bus in public transit. It was the Breda bus . Made by Breda in Italy. It ran on diesel until it went into the tunnels, then it switched to 700 volts DC on the overhead power lines. One of the regular maintenance jobs was cleaning the switch-over contacts. You where suppose to make sure the capacitors where drained before touching them. I forgot one day and put my file across them to clean them up. I got a zap that made my arm hurt so bad I thought someone stabbed me ! Thankfully it wasn't near a full charge or I'd be dead ! As it was it gave me a good scare !
Our new buses are true hybrids and to work on the high voltage side you need special rubber gloves and rubber coated tools.

 

[Guyfang]

When we do transformers, I let the young guys take care of the testing. We do transformer replacements, upgrades and new installations. I like the work, but don't trust myself to keep my knob dickers away from the wrong things. I told the kids to check it twice, and then check it again! Seen what can happen, when things don't go well. I am too close to retirement now.

 

[Another Ahab]

I totally agree with you guys about the dangers of high voltage. We had the first hybrid bus in public transit. It was the Breda bus . Made by Breda in Italy. It ran on diesel until it went into the tunnels, then it switched to 700 volts DC on the overhead power lines. One of the regular maintenance jobs was cleaning the switch-over contacts..

Years back when we were all kids, we (foolishly) played on trains; moving trains. One of our "group" (we all played ice hockey together in the winters), learned a horrible lesson about those overhead power lines in tunnels.

He's still alive, and fine really, but he's a sight at the beach and the pool.; people stare (it's hard not to). And his attitude about that is "it's not my problem; it's their problem". He gave up worrying about that a long time ago. He's all good with it.

His burns were third-degree. Over 75% of his body. Statistically, he's not supposed to be alive. Some people beat the odds.

It's funny, his nickname among all of us before the accident was "Chease" (his socks never smelled too good). And after the accident (once he recovered) we all called him "Fondue". We were kids; boys. you know. He knew we loved him. It was OK. Parents didn't like that though.