Now this is the kind of thing that BangShift readers LOVE. You are about to see a short video showing the maintenance on a 5,000hp locomotive engine and it’s not some long drawn out affair. You’ll see three minutes of stuff that will have you going, “really?!” more than once. The size of the head studs, the use of an overhead crane to pull the heads, the dude literally hanging on the end of a four foot long bar to compress the valve springs, and a whole lot more.
Maintenance is a vital part of any transportation enterprise. Whether we’re talking about the car or truck that gets you to work or the trucks and locomotives that haul commodities and products around the world, stuff needs to keep running. While we are not sure what the interval is to service a 5,000hp locomotive engine, we assume that it is pretty spacious. Whatever train this thing is powering is down as the mechanics do their work. So not only is the job huge, we’re assuming that it has to be done fast.
One of the things that made us chuckle was watching the mechanic measure the small end of the connecting rod. Obviously it is massive and the tool he is using is the right size for the job if you know what we mean.
Despite the huge size of the engine, this is precision work to the same level that any of us understand building a reliable engine is. You cannot get sloppy on the assembly, measurement, or tolerances even though the stuff is big if you want the engine to run for the intervals this one needs to work for.
Good stuff here!
