Polar Vortex Update

[HighPlainsGrifter]

It's been cold lately. News and Notes:

1: Electric Vehicles are still not viable in this part of the country. At least, not for year-round use. We have an EV from a wind generation company we are supposed to use when providing service to their units. We don't do a lot with this company but we wanted to build a relationship with them and grow into their primary materials hauler, assuming my monkeys could manage to deliver reels of cable without crashing into a turbine. The EV worked fine this summer and autumn. It was almost too fancy. I felt like I should be taking my boots off before getting into it. Probably the way guests feel when they walk into Mikey's palatial estate. It's too clean, too shiny, to much...everything. Fucker tows like a diesel though. Impressive performance. Awful on the snow. Battery life is shit at -20F. Won't charge for shit at -20F. Had to park it indoors to charge it. Read about "preconditioning" the battery before charging. Yeah, that only works if there's enough charge in the battery to start with. Had to drag this turd onto a rollback twice in a week. It's staying parked until March...wait that's mud season. It's staying parked until June.

2. Everything breaks in the cold. Equipment is not built to withstand these temperatures. Sheaves sheared, pivot pins shattered, hydraulics froze up, air lines froze up. Bought a whole pallet of lead acid batteries. You know...the usual.

3. This morning's weather map confirmed a long standing rumor. Nebraska really does suck.

That's about it. Good to be back. I'm at my desk reviewing January's invoices. Might watch that Tank movie Sudden Sam recommended while I put papers into stacks.

[Sudden Sam]

Make sure at least one eye is paying attention to the movie.

[Meat Head]

Colder than a frozen fart in a dead eskimo.

[FiatLux]

Fuck yeah it's cold. 59 degrees right now and getting down to 50 for the low. I'm done with this shit. Bring on spring.

[kcdave]

1: Electric Vehicles are still not viable in this part of the country. At least, not for year-round use.

How well are the diesels performing right now?
We are still in the early days of EV's. Likely equivalent to the Model T
in gas powered autos. I do not anticipate ever owning one myself but
they certainly have a value to some folks. Time will likely reveal that
we pushed EV's acceptance a little to hard early on (meaning now) and
that the world and technology were not quite ready for mass usage.
But, necessity is the mother on invention.

[Sudden Sam]

We’ve hit 13 and 14 the last few days. This weekend will be around 17-20. This is not what I signed up for when I was born in Alabama. I figured I could walk a block yesterday without a jacket. I won’t do that again when temp is in the teens.

Hasn’t been too bad, but would it really cost builders too much to fucking wrap pipes with insulation when they build a house?! Got mostly PEX in this 10 year old house, but it still requires insulation.

[HighPlainsGrifter]

1: Electric Vehicles are still not viable in this part of the country. At least, not for year-round use.

How well are the diesels performing right now?

I can get a diesel started in any temperature. I have a really good heater I put on the air box and chuggachuggavroom! Well...more like ruhruhruhruhruh... ruhruhruhruh cahchug cahchug cahchug ruhruhruhruhrugh cahchug cadchug ruhruhruh cahchug knackachugcahchug knacka knacka knacka knacka knacka knacka vroooom. Point being, it's possible. Or never shut 'em off.

We are still in the early days of EV's. Likely equivalent to the Model T
in gas powered autos. I do not anticipate ever owning one myself but
they certainly have a value to some folks. Time will likely reveal that
we pushed EV's acceptance a little to hard early on (meaning now) and
that the world and technology were not quite ready for mass usage.
But, necessity is the mother on invention.

Agreed on all fronts but the "necessity" you speak of is being driven from the top down through mandates, not bottom up through consumer demand.
If we banded together and demanded the zero point energy Lockheed reverse engineered from those downed UFOs all these arguments would be moot. allegedly

[Screw_Michigan]

-20 deg F in Montana. Isn't that where you live, HPG?

[HighPlainsGrifter]

-20 deg F in Montana. Isn't that where you live, HPG?

Bakken oil fields.

[d-townmike]

Grif, you don't use starting fluid in the manifold of your diesels?

After letting the glow plugs turn on and off for a while (Freightliner says "intake heater", International says "wait to start"), there were times when someone would to a quick spray or two into the manifold while someone turned the key. Got it started pretty much every time.

That was at the previous water company I worked for in Denver. All 25 trucks are parked outside, year round, no matter what the temperature. About half needed to be plugged in at night. And even then the ones that needed to be plugged in still needed extra assistance getting started. All trucks needed something to get started on cold mornings (plugged in, starting fluid....the lucky ones just needed several intake heater runs to get going).

My current water company here in St Louis, trucks are parked inside the warehouse. All we need to do is add the diesel fuel additive to prevent gelling on the ultra cold days.

[HighPlainsGrifter]

Diesels need three things to start:
Heat
Compression
Fuel in the proper amount, delivered on time.

Cold weather causes problems with heat and compression. Compression's job is to create heat so we have multiple problems compounding each other in the cold.
Cold batteries convert electrolytes into electrons slowly and therefore engines crank slower. Slow crank = weak squeeze.
Cold engine oil saps also cranking speed. Slow crank = weak squeeze.
Cold engine parts have lower compression. Even with a fast cranking engine sometimes we won't build enough heat to ignite.

Ether (starting fluid) detonates at a lower temperature than diesel so it takes less compression to ignite it. Sometimes Ether is the only way to get a diesel to kick over fast enough for the cylinders to compress air hard enough to build temperature high enough to detonate Rudolph Diesel's fuel.
How-Ev-Errr... it's not without risk.

If you have a grid heater or glow plugs, ether can ignite too early and blow your shit up. Big trucks and equipment usually don't have a heater system so they're easy to ether. Some equipment has an ether injector spliced into the air intake especially two strokers. The operator can press a button in the cab and spritz it straight into the intake. I've started a D10 by punching a hole in a can of ether and throwing it in the air filter housing. The engine will try to run away for about 20 seconds but then settle down and run. But again, that bigass dozer doesn't have an intake heater so there's minor risk of blowing your shit up. On a Cummins with grid heater or an International with glow plugs, you have to disable the heater before adding ether. My guess is your fleet in Denver had broken/worn out heater systems and the bosses didn't bother to fix them and used ether instead.

All that being said, I don't ether unless it's the last tool in the drawer. I prefer to preheat the air going into the engine with a bigass heat exchanger on a trailer and most anything will light off after a few cranking attempts.

[mvscal]

Slow crank = weak squeeze.

I have a very strong squeeze. The strongest really. Everybody agrees that it is a fantastic squeeze. Crank?...70 percent of the time it never fails to start.

[Meat Head]

The engine will try to run away for about 20 seconds but then settle down and run.

Instant high rpm on an ice cold engine with No or Slow oil flow?

Do the cylinder walls screech and bearings cry out loud, does the oil filter fill with steel shavings?

[Mikey]

Should get down to the high 40s tonight, much better than the low 30s we were getting last week. Supposed to rain most of the weekend though but, fortunately, my EV doesn’t seem to have much problem with these extreme conditions.