Detroit Diesel 12v71's

We have a similar but stationary and containerized system (combination of centrifugal cleaning and filtering) for our trucks in the logistics branch of our business. Every larger truck depot has one of those lub oil cleaning and exchange systems. When the trucks come home for the weekend at friday night, they stop at this station, get refuelled, serviced and cleaned and the lub oil is pumped out at the oil sump and exchanged with recycled oil from the storage tank. Only the used oil is topped off in the storage tank. The oil filter on the trucks only have to be changed every 100.000 to 150.000 km, means every 6 to 8 month. With this system, we have reduced the lub oil and maintenance costs on our trucks tremendously and the engines live much longer. One would be surprised to see the amount of slush a modern high performance common-rail diesel truck engine still produces, working hard on the roads. And this with SCR cats and AdBlue injection. And the AdBlue consumption is pretty high when working hard (normally 1 to 3%, with heavy load and a lot of hilly terrain up to 7%). But big black smoke is a thing of the past (mostly ). The slush from the recycling plant is really poisonous stuff. Dioxin, heavy metals and many other ingridients from devils kitchen is included in this black mud.

I do not see any reason, why a smaller scaled mobile system like this should not work on a yacht. But for a small pleasure boat with its typical 500 engine hours a year, it would be an overkill. For commercial vessels with large two strokes it is standard equipment, as the same type of centrifugal separators are used for the HFO preparation.

Thanks Lepke, great info, I really appreciate it, it's all new to me!!

Fascinating...... would have to sit down and do a lot of math to find the break even point for a pair of, say, 8V71TI's.......in hours with a lot of assumptions, like taking the hours from 3-5 to 8-10K........

Because I bet having sparkling clean oil ALL the time makes a HUGE difference.

At least with marine engines we have fairly clean air compared to hyway trucks. Where I operate in the PNW, the wind has a few thousand miles to drop debris. A little radiation in the water, but clean air. In the early 1960s, when I first saw a Frantz toilet paper oil filter, the concept of really clean oil fascinated me with the possibilities of longer engine life. At a time when American car engines needed overhaul at 80,000 miles, the engine I saw was nearly twice that and still sounded and acted like a low mileage engine. As time went on, I tried most bypass filters, but as engines changed, they became less effective. I always remembered the Big DeLavel centrifuges we used in ships, but the price would pay for several overhauls. I think the centrifuge I have now was designed and built in a garage. A few years ago the web site and name changed, so I suppose someone bigger bought it. For me it's not about making it pay. My engines will outlast me and maybe the boat. They'll probably never be overhauled again.

It depends, half of the engines I see needing a major are from a screw up.....bad injector washed a liner, turbo sent pieces into the cylinders, overheated, 92 o-rings leaked, dropped a valve etc.