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I believe CAT is mainly into medium speed and high speed engines. Slow speed diesel engines are the ones that normally power these ocean going behemoths. There I would say its MAN and Wartsila that slug it out. But MAN should be leading by a fair margin. If I am not mistaken they have more than 60% market share world wide.

Wartsila however is now into much more than just engines. They are taking over a lot of companies in the marine industry offering a wide range of solutions.

Both companies have been caught cheating, with test results, software etc. Now where did we hear that before?

http://shippingwatch.com/suppliers/article8493130.ece

I found some of my old photo’s. Note, these are nearly forty year old prints that I scanned with google photo’s, so not the best of quality, but the best I can do for now.

This happens to be the very first ship I served on. In fact it was my apprenticeship year during 1979-1980. The way it worked in those days; two years naval college, followed by a full year apprenticeship, fourth year back at university to graduate.

This is 1979-1980, the vessel is the Nedlloyd Florida. A general cargo ship, about 12.500 tonnes. She was equipped with five holds, freezer rooms and clean oil tanks to transport oil as well. She was designed for a crew of around 80. When I sailed her that was “decimated" to about 55! Later I sailed on ships with as little as a crew of 7!

These were some of the best ships to be assigned to, because they went from port to port all over the world. Even in extremely efficient ports such as Singapore, HongKong, Japen it would take several days of unloading and loading. In other places you would find yourself in port for sometimes weeks at a time. Lots of shore time.

This is also an era where ships still look beautiful and graceful. She was pretty fast, well over 20 knots! Even dead slow was 6 knots, which presented some problems during slow manoeuvring




The engine was a 12.000 BHP two stroke, B&W. (Burmeister & Wain). I found an original 1;10 drawing. This is me holding it up, I’m 1.96 so this engine was close to 20 meters high!

Actually, this type of engine was very common in those days. If you look closely you can see the turbo in the top left corner. It had two of those. You can also clearly see the piston, piston rod and cross head.




Here is how things look at the cilinder head plate. Apologies for picture quality, but here’s what we are looking at:

This picture was taken from the front of engine room, so we are facing towards the rear of the ship. Clearly visible are five valve rocker assemblies.

We had just pulled piston number 1 and you can see it hanging from the crane. Look at the size, there is a guy in front of it. At the left you see one of the two turbo’s.

At the rear bulkhead you will see a spare cilinder head. It’s the piece with the huge studs sticking out. At the very front you will see cilinder number 1, the cilinder head was taking off and you will actually see the studs used to hold the cilinder head in place. The cilinderhead was lifted off, with the rocker assembly and everything else, e.g. injectors, still in place.

You need to look carefully but in the right hand corner you will actually see another piston. It has it’s rod attached as well. This was a specially designed and constructed place. We could lower a piston with a piston rod poking downward like thesl so we could work on the piston itself. Cleaning it, measuring the piston grooves, rings, replacing piston rings etc.



Here is a better picture of what is going on with cilinder 1. The cilinder head is removed and one of our crew is inside the cilinder liner doing some cleaning or measuring. I’m not a hundred percent sure of the size but I recall the bore was about 90 cm and the stroke about 1.80m or thereabouts!

To the left of the other crew member is one of the fuel pumps and you can see the turbo air intake really well



Jeroen

I just came across this excellent video about the museum ship Cap San Diego in Germany. Gorgeous looking ship! It is very high on my list of trips to do. Build in 1961 she is now moored in Hamburg.

Excellent tour of the complete engine room and some good explanations! This ship is very well maintained and is open to the public. It is still in full sailing condition and makes regular trips that you can sign up for.


https://www.capsandiego.de/

Enjoy!


https://youtu.be/rZkW4A_cOfU

Most LNG carriers still use steam as their means of propulsion. Would anybody be interested to know about the working of a KAWASAKI UA-360 Cross compound, impulse, double reduction geared Marine steam turbine aided by two massive MITSUBISHI MB-K4 boilers?

Since its a thread on Marine Diesel Engines, won't I be digressing? ;)

Perhaps, start a thread on marine steam engines? Kindly post a link here so we can find you.

As Thad suggest, start a thread on marine steam engines! I would be very interested and I might have a few things to share too.

Jeroen

Thank you for your interest, looking forward to your queries & inputs.
Please check the thread on Working of a Marine steam turbine on board a merchant ship in the commercial vehicles sub-forum.