All posts by fleetguard@admin

How a Fuel Filter Can Impact The Life of an Engine

Blog,

How a Fuel Filter Can Impact The Life of an Engine

A fuel filter is an integral part of the fuel system. Fuel filter ensures that only clean fuel, bereft of dirt, debris, and other contaminants, is supplied to the engine. A fuel filter works through its life, protecting the critical parts of the engine, by filtering out foreign particles that can potentially damage a fuel injector. There is a complex mechanism which goes behind the filtration of fuel as there are a number of impurities to be tackled. The Most common contaminants are water and debris which can have disastrous effects on your engine. Here’s how:

The Impact of Impure Fuel on Your Engine

With a diesel engine, one of the easiest mistakes to make is negligence in the maintenance of fuel. Impure fuel can severely damage your engine, resulting in costly repairs in the long run. There is a multitude of contaminants which can occur in the fuel. The effects of some of them can be fathomed below:

  • Effect of Water on Fuel

Water is one of the greatest enemies of any diesel-fueled equipment. All fuels contain some amount of water, but unlike others, diesel is less refined and will hold a much larger amount. Unless there’s a reliable diesel engine filter in place, it’s not possible to protect the engine fully. Fleetguard's three-stage fuel filter provides excellent water removal over the life of the filter.

  • Effect of Debris on Fuel

The presence of debris in fuel is notorious. Debris could be a result of rust or metals wearing off the components. The immediate effect is that they clog the fuel injectors, hence damaging the fuel pump. It is best to replace a fuel filter so that damage won’t be done to these expensive components of your fuel system.

The Important Role of a Fuel Filter

The fuel is adversely affected by a variety of impurities. If these substances are not removed before the fuel enters the system, they will cause rapid wear and tear of the fuel pump and injectors, due to the abrasive action of the particles. It then becomes necessary to filter the unpurified fuel and clear it off the existing contaminants. A fuel filter plays a vital role in today’s engine fuel systems such as:

   1. Cooling - The fuel filter provides cooling by retaining the undesired heat in the infusion framework

  2. Lubrication - It provides lubrication and avoids friction of the moving parts in the fuel bolster and infusion pumps. Thus, reducing the wear and tear of the components and ensuring smoothness in mobility.

  3. Cleansing - This is the key function of the filter wherein the external contaminants are stopped from reaching the critical component of the system and avoid undue damage. This in turn increases the efficiency, improves the quality and potentially decreases your expenses by avoiding or deferring system failures.

A fuel filtration system provides the best defense for sensitive fuel system components while enhancing the engine performance.

(You can now subscribe to our Fleetguard-Filtrum WhatsApp channel)

Trust & Reliability

Blog

Fleetguard - Blog Image

An incredible combination that works for all.

Friends,
I am very pleased to write a blog for the first time and equally excited about the re-launch of our corporate website. Naturally, this being the first occasion, I decided to select a topic which will draw congruence in to the learning I had from some exceptional personalities to date in my career. My topic is trust. With the intensifying & in-depth knowledge of the subject; they conquered every mountain of obstacles and marched towards their goals. I am mentioning few of their qualities below in my blog which I adore the most. It helped me in my professional and personal life too.  So, I thought, why not to share it with you all through this new platform of communication!

My first professional mentor was Mr Arun Kirloskar.  Mr. Arun Kirloskar, (fondly known as Arun Saheb) is one the founder member of Fleetguard Filters Private Limited.  When I started working under him, he always talked about one thing i.e. trusting your own people. Here, People mean everyone associated with the Organisation.  Whenever you give any critical work assignment to an associate; you must follow one rule i.e. 'Cross check & Trust'.  Yes!  “ Cross-check & Trust.”   

Mr Kirloskar explained the reason behind this in detail - ‘ We often tend to ignore the assumptions with which we try to do our assignments and therefore, many a time we face surprises which could result into 'missing of deadlines and timely deliveries'. So, checking the assumptions and progress in parallel could help you save on time and meeting due date of deliveries.’  I still follow this practice and trust me; it saved me from failing on deadlines in most of the situations.  If you are interacting with me for any assignment; I am sure, you would have realized this in a much better way by now, ain't you?

 

The second Persona, I would love to talk about is Dr Eli Goldratt. The founder, father of ‘Theory of Constraints' (TOC). You will see him almost on every wall of Fleetguard. He’s with us every time. Well, the reason why I admired him is he critically studied the pain points of organisations that eventually led to the damages to the organisational body. When I started studying TOC and interacted with Dr Goldratt, I realized that he often put stress on “Intertia Attitudes” which mean we take things ‘for granted’ or assume that our discoveries/solutions are simply unbeatable in nature. Here, TOC flags warnings for the organisation.  Over the time after studying TOC in depth and human thinking process, I realized that ‘trusting something which is not trustworthy’ is the critical barrier against organisational development and hence, eliminating inertia from the mind of your business associates is one of the crucial steps toward organisational progress. It has shown excellent results.

Lastly, I will talk about ‘Sage Patanjali.'When I read about Sage Patanjali and his guidelines on performing Yoga; I literally got influenced by his persuasions of  ‘Yog as a tool to eliminate errors of perception and identify the current reality.’  Our sense organs create a false impression /perception of the reality on our mind which may be deceptive in nature at most of the time.

Sage Patanjali puts focus on our 'sense organs' through a tool called as 'Samyama' [discrimination] - 'A technique that interprets the limitations of human sense organs.' It helps to eliminate errors of perception and identify the current reality as is.

Down the line, I realized that Arun Saheb, Dr Elli Goldratt and Sage Patanjali actually believed in and practiced the same fundamentals in their life, in their own unique way. Following their learning, I am aiming to bring 'reliability' in me as a being. I thus can be more and more trustworthy eventually and over the years.   With this, I am ending my first blog. However, every end is actually a new beginning.

Hope you all agree?
See you soon.
Best Regards,
Sadashiv Pandit

(You can now subscribe to our Fleetguard-Filtrum WhatsApp channel)

Importance and Working of Coolants in Heavy Duty Vehicles

Blog, ,

Fleetguard Working of Coolants in Heavy Duty Vehicles

Engine Coolant is a generic term used to describe fluids that remove excess heat from engine. An integral part of all HDV engines, the engine coolant remove excess heat from the Internal combustion engine by transferring heat into the atmosphere via the radiator. It maintains the temperature of the engine, thereby preventing major mechanical failures. The chemical composition of coolants have anti-freezing and anti-rust properties which protects the engine from oxidation, corrosion, pitting, scaling & plugging ensuring uptime of the equipment.

Composition of a Coolant

Coolant is primarily a mixture of de-ionized water, glycol (mainly ethylene glycol or propylene glycol) and chemical additives. It is incumbent to select a coolant according to your requirement. The choice depends on the kind of environment and temperatures the engine is frequently exposed to. In a hot climate, an ideal coolant protects itself from boiling off into air due to overheat and in a cold climate, it does not freeze. At least 40% of the engine problems are due to lack of sufficient cooling.

Types of Coolants:

Depending on the usage and applications, there are at least 3 types of coolants used in heavy duty vehicle engines. They are as follows

1. Traditional Coolant
These are the regular or conventional coolants having corrosion inhibiting properties that protect the metals such as steel, aluminum and copper from corrosion. In heavy duty engines, this coolant provides excellent protection against wet sleeve liner corrosion. These coolants are typically found in green or purple color. The corrosion inhibitors in the coolant have faster depletion rate and hence a limited lifespan.

2. OAT Coolant
OAT or Organic Acid Technology are silicate free and long life coolants. Unlike the traditional coolants, the carboxylate acid corrosion inhibitors used in them have very low depletion rates. Hence, frequent periodical fueling of Supplemental Coolant Additives is not required and one refill can often be used over the engine’s lifetime. They are typically red or orange in color. It also provides an outstanding protection of aluminum at high temperatures.

3. Hybrid Coolant
This coolant technology combines the benefits offered by traditional corrosion inhibitor technology and combines this with the benefits of OAT corrosion inhibitor technology. This coolant is found typically in yellow and red color. They are used in both light and heavy duty diesel applications. This hybrid technology is also referred to as HOAT technology.

Apart from the coolants, coolant filter are integrated in the automotive system to protect the coolants from external contaminants and clear them off the internal ones. They are also used to add chemicals such as SCA, to the coolant to recharge it’s resources which get depleted over time. If you are looking for the right solutions for your engine, It is better to purchase filters only from verified and known automotive filter manufacturers.

Why Coolant is Important in Heavy Duty Engines?

Coolants are used because simply water is not appropriate. The property of water makes it boil and evaporate at high temperatures and freeze at low temperatures, hence defeating the purpose of a coolant. Coolants are specifically designed to sustain extreme temperatures thereby protecting the heavy duty engines. It maintains the temperature using efficient heat transfer without which the engine would either freeze or burn out. Also, the anti-corrosion property of the coolants save the metal components of the engine from getting corroded and oxidized. Without an efficient cooling mechanism, the lifespan and efficiency of the engine will be reduced.