Poor Quality Control Main Cause of Diesel Engine Failures

Peter Filcek, Senior Principal Surveyor in the Lloyds Register, Technical Investigation Department, gave his award winning lecture on diesel engine failures to the branch at the National Grid Offices in Warwick. This was the last lecture of the 2012/13 lecture season and it was well attended, including by a number of members of the neighboring North Midlands branch.

The lecture examined nine failure incidents, which were mainly due to fatigue cracking of the connecting rod lower ends or the crankshafts. It was encouraging that the causes of the failures were due to poor quality control in the manufacture and/or the assembly of parts and not to design problems. The use of non OEM parts by maintainers or licencees in the engine build were the source of most of the problems but poor lube oil hygiene, coolant maintenance and engine operation were responsible for cracking of a cylinder head through overheating.

There were many questions on reliability trends, the role of owners, the lessons learned, the impact of condition monitoring and various other aspects. Mr Filcek commented on the changing role of the ship’s staff, who were no longer as ‘hands on’ or as skilled in repair or maintenance as hitherto, partly due to the increasing complexity of modern engines and their control systems, which made onboard diagnosis and repair more difficult. The lecture was very well received and the Secretary expressed particular gratitude to Mr Filcek for generously standing in at short notice with a most interesting lecture that provided a fitting finale to the lecture programme for 2012/13.

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Press Release, April 22, 2013;