The Importance of Clean Water
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CEW general haulage vehicles com
plete their life span having enjoyed clean water throughout. At dock or overhaul time, when water jacket doors are removed, radiator tanks opened, and so on, it is quite an eye opener to note the collected debris and visualize the source of supply in some earlier time of need. Quite often during a night journey (particularly in winter time) with an overblanketed radiator, water is boiled away to a point where falling oil pressure or smell alerts the driver to the need for coolant—the quality does not matter as long as it is cold and wet.
His next move is simple enough—find the nearest water. This can be in ditch, pond, roadworks excavation, and so 'on, and it can be very "dodgy "liquid. Apart from the straw, sand, gravel, and other material scooped up, the real danger is from acids or chemical solutions that can damage the engine in many ways. Water hose, pump glands, alloy jackets or pump housings, brass core plugs and copper injector seatings --all these can suffer. In one area with salt wells on each side of the road, any ditch water, however clean in appearance, can be heavily brine impregnated.
Salt Deposit
After one instance of a burst bottom hose and a roadside repair, salt deposit began to show at the centre of an alloy crankcase. In eight months that crankcase began to give way between the
centre block studs, despite many attempts to rub out the eroded area and kill the chemical action. A further series of stoppages on a 5-ton petrol vehicle, caused by the premature failure of steel core plugs or cups, ceased when that vehicle was withdrawn from its job in a chemical works. It was all too clear that the driver was in the habit of topping up from the abundant supply of apparently clean water around the works perimeter. Quite the worst form of water leak is where the sealing rings around wet liners are destroyed. Apart from seals that are found to be. "cooked" from lost water and overheating, there are occasions where the seals have been attacked by
the coolant and turned to useless pulp--a very strong indication that something
other than clean water has been in the System.
This form of water trouble involves the engineer in some considerable expense. particularly in labour, and such work has little connection with preventive maintenance. We are already feeling the loss of the older, all-round driver, who knew and did so much for his vehicle, and it is regretted that we shall never quite replace him in the coming years. Already, engineers who had the benefits of full driver interest in years past are finding the lack of it becoming more and more an expensive matter.