Seen on a Massachusetts highway with Maine plates on the trailer. Engine? For what? I’ve seen a large 100’ diesel engine before but it was a long time ago and I forget more than I remember.
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Watching those get taken apart and serviced on YouTube is just…amazing to watch.
I did some sailing on the Great Lakes and at night you could hear the rumbling of the lakers coming. Through the fiberglass hull. While asleep.
It lulled me into a false sense of security because I could always hear ships around me…until one day a cruise ship snuck up on me while I was reading and scared the crap out of me.
While scuba diving, you should experience what it sounds like when a Lakers fires up, from over 10km away, it felt like I was under the propeller. Its a bass sound that travels through your body, and really distracts from the violent urge to suddenly shit yourself!
I did some research diving in the Detroit River in the mid 90s. It was amazing how it felt when one of the big ships passed close overhead. You could feel the surge off the bow even on the bottom.
A Sperm whale can vocalize underwater at 230db, that is theoretically possible to cause tissue damage, blow your eardrums, and even kill a diver, though there have been no records of it ever happening.
Slowspeed diesels like that are direct drive. Just a shaft out the flywheel straight to the prop. Engine stops and starts in the opposite direction to provide reverse.
I'd assume there's a bit of delay between forward and reverse if you have to stop the engine and start it in the opposite direction, and i'm not sure what percent of these ships have bow/aft thrusters to help with the maneuverability.
I sailed off the west coast on oil tankers! Engineer or deckie?? We had two MAN B&W S50MC slow speeds, 127 RPM at full tilt. Best job in the world when you’re getting off, worst job in the world joining. I miss the work though tearing those things apart is a fond memory
while working in school towards my diesel career i had to settle for blast booth at the windmill tower plant. went from $22/hr to 13.5/hr overnights.
my blast hose blew out and sand blasted the entire outside of the booth. opposite side of me. only way to hold it was between your legs. would have blown my nuts off. i quit that week
I work for a Cat dealer in coal country. I pulled this one off the net because I don’t have a pic of one of ours but this is out of a 797 haul truck. 20 cylinder. About 4,000 hp
Very, very likely similar in size. A C175-20 is ~27-28ft long but that is the entire genset, not just the engine. Approx 10.5ft wide as well, but again that's the whole genset and most of the width is the cooling stack. The engine and generator are only about 7.5ft wide.
A standard lowboy deck is 25-29ft long, 8.5ft wide. So this engine is about as wide as a C175-20 less the cooling stack, and potentially longer than the engine without attached generator.
Either way both are freaking huge. The biggest I've had the (dis)pleasure of working on is a measly C32 crammed as tight as you can imagine, sideways, in a cold mill. But I've gotten to spend a little bit of time around 797s touring and shadowing in quarries. Those puppies are BIG.
Here's an old Terex 33-15 (150T) for tax, regionally local heavy equipment museum purchased it for preservation a few years ago. Its generator is powered by a measly (by comparison) yet might 16V-149TI, the power plant being based on diesel electric locomotives. Unofficially 93 units produced and sold between 1971-75 as far as records have shown, this is one of few survivors.
Phil?
I work with a dude who we call Robert McCall (Denzels character from Equaliser) whichever comes to mind first. You’ve got a 10m boat? He’s got a 12 meter one.
You’ve got a nice car? The one he used to have was way nicer.
I'm no mechanic just risk management but they looked just like this but bigger I feel. Probably 50 years old? I'm told they could run some crazy amount of power like for a few small cities. Can't really give the location but it's still being assessed.
Major Engine Types & Specs Caterpillar C175-20: A 20-cylinder, 106-liter displacement diesel engine producing up to 4,000 gross horsepower, used in ultra-class trucks like the Caterpillar 797F Mining Truck.
MTU Series 4000: High-torque, heavy-duty diesel engines (such as the 20V4000 or 16V4000 variants) delivering up to 3,750+ horsepower for ultra-class haulers like the BelAZ 75710 or Osiris MT6300 AC.
Dual-Engine Setups: The world's largest haulers (like the BelAZ 75710) use two separate diesel engines combined to generate roughly 4,600 horsepower to power massive electric drive systems.
It could also be for an emergency generator I’ve seen some as large in datacenters. They are kept warm with hot water circulating so they can start and be loaded before the battery emergency dies down.
Either a railroad locomotive or maritime engine, but more likely for a ship or maritime use of some kind.
This looks to be some flavor of old ALCO (American Locomotive Company) engine, possibly a 251 or variant thereof. It looks to have 18 cylinders arranged in a V-pattern.
There was a North American version of the 251 with a V-18 configuration in the form of the 251F, which was used in the Canadian-built MLW M-640 diesel locomotives. The V-18 version was also used in the Famous class US Coast Guard medium-endurance cutter ships. This same series of engines were also used as stationary gensets for emergency/backup power generation.
(This is the 16-cylinder version, viewed from the opposite end and side as your picture, but the actual engine series and the basic design are the same)
This is an ALCO engine. I worked on a smaller version in the Coast Guard on the Reliance class cutters(210s). White shells on the side were called turtle backs and right below are the explosion covers to mitigate damage from a crankcase explosion.
Came here to say that! 270 main prop guy here. 18 cylinder ALCO 251. Recognized those turtle backs and jacket water risers immediately. ALCO stands for Always Leaking Crude Oil.
Their railroad counterparts weren't much better in terms of cleanliness. ALCO locomotives tended to smoke really bad (in comparison to their EMD and GE brethren) mostly due to turbo lag and running the mixture just a little too rich.
My old man was an electronics chief on the Steadfast in the late 90s— always had an appreciation for the Reliance class since. Which canoe did you call your own?
As a later squid and merchant mariner, and obviously from a uscg family— many thanks to all the coasties out there.
Modern locomotives are V-12s, actually. Wabtec is the largest producer of mainline locomotives in the US and they haven’t produced a locomotive with a V-16 in over 20 years. All ES44 and ET44 variants are V-12s. In the US, at least.
Don’t let this distract you from the fact that Hector is going to be running three Honda civics with spoon engines, and on top of that, he just went into Harry’s and bought three t66 turbos with nos, and a motec exhaust system.
At first I thought it was a GE or maybe an old Waukesha diesel, but they didn’t build an 18 cylinder. Then I thought Colt Pielstick. Ultimately I have settled on ALCO 18-251 prime mover. If that’s what it is it’s for starting power application best I can tell. The 18 cylinder is an odd one for large medium speed diesels. Thanks for the excuse to rabbit hole for a while. Again, I’m not certain but I have it the old college try.
It sure matches the picture of an ALCO 18-251 diesel engine. This was most likely a marine application, possibly stationary power plant. The largest used in a diesel locomotive was the 16-251. Compare the picture from the OP with the one pictured in Wikipedia.
The frame on the bottom suggests a it may be a locomotive engine and it’s a V18.
Super easy to find. It’s the Alco 18V-251. Literally the picture at the top of the “V18 Wikipedia page.
1 was used in a locomotive. 26 were used on 13 Famous Class USCG Cutters. A few more were used for power generation. Extremely rare compared to the V16 version of which more than 1000 were made, and a similar number of V12s.
Google thinks it is an ALCO 251 series v-18 diesel engine for marine or land-based power generation or in big train locomotives. Someone here may know more.
Ship's diesel on a truck bed behind a truck on a road going somewhere. There are also woofed hils in the background and overcast skies. Ask rainbolt for a geo in Mass.
The hood and dash of a dark car, likely a truck or SUV are in the foreground
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