I think I’d put it in high gear and let out the clutch if I coudn’t shut off the air or discharge a CO-2 extinguisher into the intake:
Diesel Runaways
- Thread starter GeoHorn
- Start date
When I was a teen getting ready to go deep sea fishing, another boater was doing maintenance on his engine which was a Detroit Diesel. On restart, it went full rack and he had disconnected and not bothered to reconnect the air shutoff flap. For some reason he had a city phone book nearby and he blocked the air intake with that which did stop it before it went Chernobyl.
The funniest part was a recognizable piece of the back cover of the phone book made it out the exhaust, perhaps a testament to the simplicity of those two cycle engines. They were favorite engines of many of the commercial shrimpers because as the saying went, no other engine will continue running so well with so many things wrong with it. And that is an important characteristic when out in the gulf with weather prone to very rapid change.
Rodger
The funniest part was a recognizable piece of the back cover of the phone book made it out the exhaust, perhaps a testament to the simplicity of those two cycle engines. They were favorite engines of many of the commercial shrimpers because as the saying went, no other engine will continue running so well with so many things wrong with it. And that is an important characteristic when out in the gulf with weather prone to very rapid change.
Rodger
The Army's old M88 tank recovery vehicle ran on gas, an air cooled V-12 displacing 1500 cubic inches. The intake was about 8 or 9 inches in diameter, I'd guess. I was nearby when one was ground hopped (started while on the ground) and it ran away. (throttle linkage not hooked up). A clipboard stopped it pretty quickly.
Later one of the mechanics told me that he had seen one suck a field jacket in pretty far down the intake, and they had learned not to use anything that wasn't rigid.
In every one of those instances I'd be terrified of the flywheel shattering. You only have to see that once to gain a healthy respect for it.
Joe
Joe
Magicman
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I know of a situation where a diesel powered trencher broke a natural gas line. They did not get it stopped.
Foxrunfarms
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That happened in my area about 2 years ago. 3 younger farmers in their 30s starting families where out installing tile and hit a natural gas line. Very sad situation.
About 10 years ago my dad was working at a grain elevator. The lp driver was filling up the truck from the giant tank. The truck wasnt chocked, rolled back and snapped the hose causing the lp to hiss everywhere and get sucked into the truck. The emergency shut off didn't work on the big tank, and the truck was old and didn't have any safety features to stop it from reving up. The truck caught on fire which caused the main tank to blow. Luckily the driver ran into the office and got everyone out before the facility turned into a crater.