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The City of Tallahassee has 5 W50SG machines. Four of them have been in service for about 18 months, and the 5th engine has been in service for a couple of months. The engines seriously vibrate. We are beginning to see this vibration cause all kinds of breakage. We’ve had various bolts shear off, turning gear handle shear off, pipes break, wiring connections vibrating loose, the UNIC door latches literally saw themselves in two. The filings have fallen down into the control boards causing them to fail. We are looking at a host of possible solutions like moving some items off engine, using flexible connections, changing rigid piping to flexible hoses, etc.. I’m sure other users are experiencing the same issues. If you can will you share some of the things that you’ve done to isolate control boxes and piping from the engine vibration.
Looks like you have some serious vibrations. We have 12 50SG and so far around 8k hours on them. We have had vibration issues as well but seems that you have more than us.
We went to all the control cabinets and added extra zip ties. That has helped a lot. One thing we also found is that the output cables of the generator had some vibration problems as well so we add extra sleeves protection and heavy duty zip ties, you might want to take a look in yours. Our oil mist separators VFD had issues as well the base cracked and the displays constantly were moving out of place causing an ALM in the units. We added some pads behind the VFD to minimize the vibrations, so far no more issues.
All, the bellows connections from the auxiliary to the engine plus the axiflex clamps were constantly getting loose causing coolant or oil leaks so we kept tightening them until the leaks have stopped lately.
Another one that has been affecting us is the flex hoses of the Gas Ramp that connect to the engine but we have our compact gas ramps in the auxiliary side, not sure if you have them in the same place. We have added some extra supports to the pipes and is helping to extend their life but has not eliminated the problem completely.
You might be able to take some vibration readings and compare with a base line from Wartsila but vibrations is a very complex issue. Not sure if you have the same type of mounting as we have in our engines.
I might be able to share some pictures if you are interested to see how ours are mounted.
Ruben Tellez.
I would love to see some pictures of what you’ve done. I may be easier to send pictures to my email. I also have a couple of videos that are really good a seeing just how bad the vibration is.
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