Modified sled pullers require a positive engine kill in the cab and at the rear of the unit.
If you get out of control, the sled operator can & will hit the panic button that pulls the engine kill.

another note;
NEVER use a halon extinguisher around a diesel engine. Engine sucks up the halon (freon) breaks it down to release the oxygen and releases the rest as phosgene.

 

i don't think halon extingushers should ever be used PERIOD!. they work great, but they are extremely harmful to the ozone layer. i am not an enviromentalist, but i do my part to not make things worse [proper waste disposal, recycling...]

r12 is the base standard for ODP [ozone depleting potential] as 1.0
r134a has a ±0.08 odp..
halon depending on makeup, is between 4.0 and 5.0 odp...

 

Say you get your wish and all halons extingushers are banned. Feel pretty good huh? You did a good thing for the ozone right? Then when you are flying commercially or privately and there is a fire in the cockpit and you pick up your dry powder and fill the cockpit with blinding, corrosive dust. The plane crashes and you die because you cannot see to land. But you helped save the freakin ozone didn't you. Ozone is a renewable substance, human life is not.


Be afraid of what you wish for, it just might come true.

Maybe you should think of using halon fire extinguishers responsibly? At over $150 for a 2 pounder I don't think people are shooting them off for fun. They are using them to SAVE LIVES!

 

Several years ago I met a man that had been horribly burned. He told me he was driving a gasoline tanker and had stopped. I don't remember the circumstances but he got out of the truck with it running and suddenly the engine began to run away. Somehow gas fumes had gotten into the intake and the the engine quickly exploded which set off the tanker and the driver was soaked in burning gasoline. His ears were almost gone, he had no hair and his face was horribly disfigured. He spent many months in rehab and had many surgeries. I don't remember the percentage of his body that was burned, most of it, but he said most people burned that badly don't survive. After all this the man was still driving trucks.

If there is any source of flamable vapor around it is much safer to turn off the engine. You may not be hauling gasoline and face an explosion but replacing an engine is not cheap.

 

I understand where the sled pullers are coming from, they can attach the cable to the sled. I've seen trucks and tractors come loose from the sled and its a very good thing to see the engine die in that scenario.

I just didn't initially see the same purpose for trucks running 120mph at the end of the quarter- who's gonna reach out and grab their shutoff? Ian had a good point with what happens after a crash, the safety team has a specified place to pull the shut off.

brandon.

 

The baby Cummins is virtually impossible to get to run away. The design of the ceramic seals and bushings in the turbo can wet the intake air tubes with oil upon failure, but the intercooler will cool and occlude the oil before it can reach the intake of the engine.

The engines that most commonly run away are the old tried and true GM 2 strokers with mechanical injectors operated by the camshaft. Those engines were all equipped with a big air shutoff baffle and trip mechanism, so the operator could trip it and choke off the air.

Highway and industrial tractors can run away when they are equipped with oil bath air filters and get upside down, as enough oil can then reach the engine and result in combustion. Most all of the industrial engines that have upstream oil supplies have an air control safety shutoff to choke them out if they run away.

The issue of an engine run away with starting fluid, ether, is simply an urban myth. The explosive detonation problem with starting fluid is manifold explosions from the grid heaters in the baby Cummins, or from glow plugs in precombustion chamber type engines when they blow back through an open exhaust valve. The real problem with ether is what is known as uncontrolled detonation in the cylinder itself. That process creates short term excessive cylinder pressure and torques the top ring down like a torsion bar, and scrubs off the upper edge of the ring itself, and can lower starting compression enough so that an engine will no longer start by itself. This latter condition is common on old technology diesels with high hours, and is known as "ether dependency." They simply will no longer start without ether.

 

your wrong there, I have had two runaways in the last two years.... one was a ISB turbo failure with the driver continuing to drive the bus and ISL with a turbo failure in a garbage truck. both with a rod out the side of the block. it does happen.

 

What an entertaining thread lol. If I didn't know better I would think I was driving a ticking time bomb. I think RCW is perty **** close. If there were odds that an ISB would run away that were anything greater than your chance to win the lotto , we would not even be able to buy them. Regarding ether... I have used "tiny" shots of ether for years to start my 1845C when temps drop below 50F or so. It just takes a smidgen on the air cleaner to get it to fire. We used to start an old Briggs mini bike with ether. I don't remember what was wrong(7yr old) with it but about the only way the thing would run with was constantly hitting the air cleaner with ether lol. Good thing I still have my nads with that piston right underneath running on ether lmao.

I guess if one day I'm on board when my ISB runs away then it will be all hands abandon ship and every man for himself!

 

Every diesel made can be a runaway. Yes driving down the highway it is very unlikey. But in an oil and gas environment it is a lot more likely.
Look at this link it explains it way better than me. Intake Air Shutoff valve If you aren't working in these conditions it isn't as likely but it can happen, as indicated by some of the examples given in the posts above.

 

As far as I know ANY compression ignition engine has the potential to become a runaway.

And using ether on a modern day diesel engine is just plain silly to me. Block heaters, grid heater in the intake, glow plug have drastically improved the reliability of diesels starting up in cold wweather without the use of ether. I realize though ether does have its uses like old tractors and old engines.

 

Had to read this twice. LOL

 

I had a few near runaways with my old 81 toyota 4banger diesel... This engine had over 80k hard miles and the blowby was high enough while running at 75mph+ to keep the OHC valve train's lube oil from properly draining back down into the crankcase. The valvecover's crankcase vent line was factory plumbed directly into the air intake manifold!

SO... After running for quite a while on the interstate at ~75+mph, there was sufficient pooling of oil to reach the vent tube. It then slurped a pretty good slug of hot Delo400 and suddenly wanted to accelerate and blackout the road behind!
It sure clattered a lot and was HIGHLY unnerving when lifting the foot off the go-pedal didn't cut back on the "go"...
I knew better than to hit the clutch or I'd be thumbing it back to Texas with Japanese cast iron scattered all over the highway...
After abt 10 seconds, it had quit drinking Delo400 and decided to go back to metered #2 oil... I gently gave it some pedal and it acted like nothing had ever happened...
Needless to say, the first time it did that, I nearly had to stop to check the shorts!
It did it a couple more times on that trip, although I found if I could get off the pedal quicker when it first started getting some Delo400 it wouldn't last near as long. If I hit the brakes, it would slosh the hot oil away from the vent tube and quit ingesting lube oil even quicker.
I figured out what was happening by the time I got to Denver and I jerked that hose off and ran it into a hastily created knockout pot/breather bottle and it's exhaust went down to the road just like our Cummins. No more runaways...
I'll never forget those cars behind me that suddenly decided to dive for cover when that huge gray/black cloud came out of that little bitty pickup...

Keith