Big Ship Engine Tour - Random Post

[64GunPilot]

Not related to racing, but thought I'd share. Maybe interesting if your a wrench monkey gearhead like me.

Been at the port of Busan receiving 24 of the latest E Model Apache helicopters into South Korea. Getting them off the ship, unfolding the blades, and getting them caught up on inspections, and then a test flight to ensure they are ready for the flight to Camp Humphreys. All of those helicopters have now arrived and its time to retrograde 24 older D Model aircraft out. We will receive them at the port and fold them and strap them into place on the ship. Its lot of work. But along the way got to meet some great guys on the ship who were nice to give us food in their dining hall deck everyday (better than MRE's) and always there to run a forklift when we needed it (above and beyond their contract, to the point of actually taking on liability...something that I just never see with contractors these days).

The engine tour was pretty crazy. Here are some pictures. Basically its a 9 cylinder 2 stroke compression ignition turbo charged engine (with a cam driven exhaust valve) that runs heavy fuel (tar like substance with a little kerosene mixed in and has to be heated to 200* before it'll even flow through the pipes). The stroke is 2.5 meters or 8.2ft. Each crank journal has its own door that you can crawl into the crankcase, and the intake pipes have their own crawl spaces (crazy story of how a dude went missing and was found in there later). Direct drive to a 15 foot propeller with a max RPM of 98. Generally best efficiency is acheived at 90rpms.

Please don't laugh at me in the pics, I only wanted me next to the items to show some kind of scale.

This is the exhaust valve / head:

IMG_0950.jpg

IMG_0940.jpg

The crankcase:

IMG_0954.jpg

IMG_0953.jpg



The Turbos (there are 3 of these...3cylinders per turbo each producing around 28psi but massive CFM):

IMG_0951.jpg