Some things we must bear in mind here. For those of you who don't know too much about diesels, and how they work, these engines don't have cold start devices like glow plugs. They rely entirely on the heat built up on compression to ignite fuel. So this is why sometimes on a very cold engine, it only fires on 1 or 2 cylinders to start with, until the rest get hot enough to ignite the fuel. This is also why there is so much white smoke, which is unburned fuel, and is further the cause of the knocking noise. Once all the cylinders actually are firing, all the knocking stops, and most of the smoke too. Those who are saying it was/is knackered, are very wrong.
Chiefly - the valenta was originally a marine engine still used in some royal naval ships. It's a large engine that uses high compression. In a marine environment the engine would have been turned over by air to build up heat before diesel was injected in. On the HST it lacks a continuous steady air supply. Therefore relies on an electric starter to do the donkey work of getting the cylinders and engine upto temperature.
chiefy1402 : no glow plugs for various reasons. Designed to run all the time, not like a car in personal use. No need really as it works without as you can see here. Glow plugs for this size to get a big fella hot would require massive electrical currents, you need massive batteries to provide that. Size, weight, cost... there we go, can do without.
Big diesels are usually not fitted with any kind of cold start equipment and supposed to be pre-heated as glow-plugs could not create a steady ignition in large cylinders like these at low temperatures. Therefor the whole engine block needs to be warmed up by heating the coolant. British bollocks however just crank their stuff till the bitter end as they commonly have no clou about engines.
That amount of smoke reminds me of some of the 37s i've had trouble starting in Old Oak back in the 90s.....and that was only after a Christmas shutdown!
This actually helped me stop my sleep paralysis that I had back in lockdown. As soon as I heard what sounded like some hissing demon trying to pull me out of my bed, I immediately thought of this video in my mind and ended it all
I worked with the marine version of the Paxman diesels used for the main generators. They were honestly unreliable and difficult to work on. The issue's got so bad that they replaced them. Ive never seen that before or since. These diesel were supposed to last the life of the ships they were on. The Lister Blackstone diesels that replaced them were much better. easy access to regular maintenance items. The Paxmans had such a bad reliability record an extra engineer was onboard and his sole job was to keep them running.
The Vulcan foundry became part of Ruston Paxman for marine diesel production by the late 1970s. When it closed a few went to Mirlees Blackstone who made the engines for the class 60s a far cleaner engine that didn’t gas drivers when starting from cold.
I’ve had one blow going on leave left oil all down first 2 carrage windows Later on I worked in navy at dml dockyard working on them Rough as far as access goes a right squeeze but subs had paxman venturas so no real biggie for most part no blower but same same always oil leaks always injector bank leaks ;)
Wont pretend to know the mechanics going on inside these but diesel locos on a cold start make some almost worrying clanking sounds until everything is fired up and its cleared its lungs....... The Valenta was the HSTs most characterful engine.what a sound.
VP185's aren't too bad either. Can't beat the original Paxman Valenta's of course. MTU's have no soul compared to those but they do sound pretty decent when throttling up.
I don't like the VP185. It sounds like a Valenta that had its soul sucked out. My favourite is the Valenta followed in decending order by the MTU, Mirrlees Blackstone MB190, and the VP185. The VP185 powercars have really sucky electronics too. The Mirrlees Blackstone engine i've only heard in recordings.
Although it can be heard here, it's not as obvious as some Valenta starts I've heard which is a 'clunk' as the engine starts to fire after the whining priming has been done. There's that whining for a few moments or even minutes, then there's a short 'clunk' and the engine starts to turn over. I don't know why but I just love that second between the priming and the engine firing with that 'clunk'. I don't know what or why that clunk is, perhaps someone who understands what I'm on about can enlighten me.
I thought it was Neville Hill seen a few of the old Valentas start like this when its really cold or if they have had a new power unit fitted but even tho folk claim the MTU engine is eco friendly there are just as bad on a cold start up or when a new unit has been fitted a few times i have walked down stores road at the Hill and been fogged out by a MTU starting lol.
+Luke Bennett MTU's don't cold start per say. They are not allowed to start if the temperature of the coolant in the block is less than (i think) 75C. If you do force start an MTU from cold, it invalidates the warranty.
Virgin units use to be stabled and serviced at Neville Hill once upon a time these days we look after the cross country fleet too but the EMT 43s have been MTU fitted for some time now the last velenta to visit us at Neville Hill was around 08 09 in a Grand Central power car prior to been swappd for MTU power untis.
They had better camera's in the late 90tis, and also digital. Look it is shot on a model layout with use of Adobe After Effects and/or a smoke unit in the train. The smoke color is not right.
the clag is very flammable,,,see at 1 min 25 sec a flame occur and some clag catch fire. And these locos may start outside,,,inside is impossible,,with this amount of clag that is toxic too.
"Inside is impossible" Impossible? No! Some people really are that stupid. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5omgoWuXl6c.html Let's fill our shed with explosive fumes! We'll still have jobs and limbs if the whole building blows up, right?
Amazed this was legal. Plumes and plumes. Whats actually happening inside the engine at the start as that heavy clap clap clap sounds nasty.....is it the fact that each piston needs freeing off in a tight bore.....i dont follow why the whole thing doesnt fire up on the press of the button....
Diesel engines don't have spark plugs. The fuel ignites because compressing the air in the cylinder makes it hot enough to spontaneously ignite the fuel when it's injected. However, when the engine is cold, the air doesn't get hot enough and the fuel is cold, too, so it doesn't ignite and gets pumped out of the exhaust. As the engine block starts to warm up, the cylinders start firing, one by one. The sounds you hear are just the normal sounds a diesel engine makes when it's running, but you don't normally hear them because they're masked by the sound of about 75 explosions per second when the engine's running at 1500rpm and all twelve cylinders are firing. Engines that are designed to be started in cold conditions have heaters installed in the engine block to avoid this, but it doesn't get cold enough in the UK to make this worthwhile. Also, these engines were designed just before the 1970s oil crisis, so the intention was that they'd be left idling 24/7, especially in cold weather, as diesel was super-cheap and climate change wasn't on the radar.
I wonder whether this is representative or was a knackered / faulty engine. I would have thought that the media would have been banging on about the pollution if this was a normal occurence. Even for an engine without `glow plug' preheating this sounds & looks terrible! It can be seen why MTU engines were necessary to clean up the IC125 for the 21st century. Notwithstanding the above the Valenta sounds great once hot.
+Martindyna By the end of the video, with the engine beginning to warm up, the exhaust should begin to show signs of cleaning up but if anything it's getting worse. Really hope this thing didn't go out into service that day - the engine was shot to hell.
+Simon Swain I noticed that just after 1.45 the engine at least started to sound more normal and the knocking had gone. Just as an aside it's amazing how poor the MOT is for Diesel engined cars in the UK, my 2006 Vauxhall Opel Astra 1.7 can smoke really badly due I believe to sticking vanes in the variable vane turbo. Yet, luckily for me it so far passes easily the on / off accelerator test used in the MOT. Whats needed in my view is a rolling road test to expose this type of fault (gradual increase of accelerator under load causes smoke). To stop it smoking excessively I drive it in a heavy footed fashion from low engine revs, this opens the (sticky) turbo vanes fully until the revs climb & then the vanes are progressively closed under the dictates of the air flow meter & inlet manifold pressure sensor.
We don't know how cold it was, of course. None of the older power units like this had preheat or other cold-start devices, and in very cold weather it'll take longer than 3 minutes or so to get warm enough to run clean (well, as clean as a valenta ever ran, which was not all that). As for "why re-engine the fleet" it's a damned good design all round, but the engines by the end had been in service for 30 years and covered millions of miles each and were worn out. The Valenta was also prone to self-destruct, and supplies of spares were running out, and Diesel engine design and fuelling had, by the end of the 20th century, changed quite a bit. So new, more efficient engines needed to happen anyway. It farts and bangs to begin with as, like all well worn diesels, not all the cylinders and injectors are equally worn, so it starts on probably only 3-4 cylinders and the others gradually chime in. I've got a 3-cylinder 1970 or so tractor that does the same, one cylinder doesn't start firing til well after the others, even with new injectors in it. The backfire/flames is due to build up of unburnt fuel in the exhaust from the cylinders that are slow to pick up, once the exhaust temperature gets high enough it lights that fuel up.
literally came across this video and right after the same train as EMT ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p13dydraGds.html that train must be really old now
Mostly scrapped, presumably. What else would you do with a life-expired 2250hp engine? Not like there's a huge second-hand market for that kind of thing
Because the engine block was very cold at the time, it's an old engine with no existing preheating system and can struggle like any big diesel engine in a cold start situation.
That is pollution l feel sorry for the people that lived near that depot or station. Maybe installing a marine engine to a train not such a bright idea
