Quote:
Originally Posted by Sherman
I was the Jun. Enginer on the 8/12 on the M.V. "Wanstead" (Doxford engine). I was looking at the engine water temps when a spark hit me on the arm, stung a bit. I told the 4th but he didn't belive me but I insisted. He told the 2nd and I got the 3rd degree from him again The bridge rang, it was the 3rd mate asking what we were doing as there was clouds of smoke coming out of the funnel. It was a fire in the generator exhaust. I also had a small burn on my arm. The 2nd said just let it burn out
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What seems like 100 years ago ( but was actually only just over 50!), we had been cobbling together the repair to a fractured 75LB6 Doxford crankshaft and we were preparing for the first engine trial. We had been stopped 3 or 4 weeks and had the same T47 Allan generator running with very little load.
Being a 2-stroke, it didn't like that very much and in protest pumped lub. oil into the exhaust manifold which lay there quite happily until the load leaped when we started the two big starting air compressors. At this point the exhaust bellows decided to fracture and a stream of oil came out which, by now, was on fire. This narrowly missed the Lloyds surveyor who was already a bit nervous but he was quite impressed when the 3/E very quickly produce a oil drum in one hand to catch and contain the oil and a fire extinguisher in the other. He did ask however if this was a regular occurrence as it seemed to be a well practiced response!
Many years later we had an anchor handler with four Wichmann 9AXAG 2-stroke engines that had been idling for hours and then went to full load. Same problem as above but a different result - the burning oil in the exhaust manifold on one engine turned the turbocharger into a gas turbine. It took quite a few minutes to blank off the air intakes to extinguish the fire.