Jeremy Rowland wrote:Hi there Ian and John,
Just having a quick scan through this thread and I must say that it would be very unusual if not unique to have a pre-combustion chamber in such a large diesel engine. Pre-combustion chambers were for smaller high revving diesel engines like those fitted into cars and thats why they all sound so dammed "rattly" when they are running.
Jeremy
Hello Jeremy,
I would like if I may to take issue with the above statement. You probably didn't have the dubious pleasure of working on the diesels of the late 50's and early 60's as I did. At that time direct injection engines were the "wonderfull newly designed instant starting diesels."
Among the indirect injection engines with precomb. or swirl chambers were not only the Cats with the screw in chambers mentioned, but International from the small right up to the 180 h.p. TD24. Their chambers were iserted into the head through, and held in place by large diameter injector housings. I had one break up once and drop into the engine destroying the head and piston.
Lots of Allis Chalmers engines had precomb chambers too, including the 204 h.p. HD21P which I ran in the 1970's.
Moving on to road transport, the Perkins P3,4 and P6 the L4 and R6 all had precomb chambers, together with Thornycrofts.
Other engines addopted the Ricardo designed and patented precomb. chambers. These were marketed with the Ricardo name. Two which spring to mind are Dorman Ricardo and Sentinel Ricardo.
The Sentinel was a horizontal 6 cyl. engine designed to sit under the bed of Sentinel lorrys. A company I worked for in the mid 1960's had four of these on 60KVA generators driving electric screening plants.
Best wishes.
Fred.