After 25 years as a U.S. Navy marine engineer, I retired and opened my own maintenance and repair business. Your August Uptime column, especially the portion on oil analysis, really caught my interest.
The validity and use of oil analysis as a maintenance tool is a point of contention with my commercial customers. By the numbers in your article, there appears to be a fleet-wide problem.
The last 17 years of my career were spent as a machinery condition analysis officer, serving on everything from frigates to aircraft carriers. Coolant, oil and vibrations are just as vital to commercial fleets as they are to ships. Once you get baseline data on this, the scheduling of Reliability Centered Maintenance and high-time usage change out of components can be managed for reduced cost and downtime.
Many of my medium and heavy duty truck customers are operations with lots of start/stop operations, which are more severe than trucks doing long haul. Hence, the more vital these analysis indicators are.
Many people do not realize how powerful the information from analysis programs can be. This information is admissible in court for warranty claims – if required.
- John R., John's Gas & Diesel Service, Jacksonville, Fla.
