Watch the diesels run at the 2008 Cobia Reunion

[Lance Dean]

Chuck Cutherbertson aka "kikn79" on this forum, attended the 2008 Cobia Reunion.  He got some great video footage of the diesels being fired up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWCsP8CmKP8&fmt=18

[Mark Sarsfield]

Thanks for sharing that link with us, Lance.  Very impressive.

Does anyone have any idea how long that they ran the engine for?  I can't imagine that they would have started it just to shut it down 5 minutes later.  I would think that short-cycling the engine would probably cause damage and that you'd want it to operate at running temperature for a while - prevents coking and what-not.

[Darrin]

Without sea water injection on the Diesel's you can only run them between 5-10 minutes for fear of hurting the engine if they over heat, while they may be good up to 15 minutes with limited chill water cooling them down it is IMHO better to run them between that 5-10 minute window. That and a F/M 38 1/8D burns 30 GPH (Gallons Per Hour) on a full load, Cobia if I remember right is running GM diesels and not Fairbanks and Morse.

The amount of work to restore an engine back to full running order is huge and if you get an overly zealus person who wants to restore it back to the bare bones to make it able to take a full load without problems it turns a LOT of people off because of the amount of work that is required knowing that we or anyone else will never put a full load back on our diesels, while I am NOT condoning short cutting by any means there is a time to put it to the common sense test and see if it passes it.

The plan for the FER restoration on Torsk is over kill in more ways then I would even like to discuss at all and I am revising it to make everything work and work correctly without having to send the scavange air blower back to the factory to be restored by them, it will be removed and cleaned and the tollerances checked and then reinstalled once everything is in tollerances.

BTW GREAT VIDEO, it made my day

Darrin

[Mark Sarsfield]

So, they weren't injecting any sea water on the Cobia's engine?

[Lance Dean]

Well, this is what Chuck said about it in his original post.  I was hoping he'd come here and talk about it some more.

I just had one of the most thrilling adventures of my life. I was invited to go on board the USS COBIA in Manitowoc, WI while they started the engines on her for the 2008 COBIA reunion. What a thrill to be standing next to that monster as she started up. This thing moves some air, let me tell you. I put my hand up to the air intake and it sucks your hand onto the screen.

It was something that I will probably never forget. There was only one running and it was LOUD! The video I have doesn't convey the volume of just that one beast. I can only imagine having all four running and slicing through the Pacific in pursuit of a juicy target.

For those of you that would like to see the video, I posted it on Youtube.

It ran only for about 6 or 7 minutes due to the fact that they can't pull water from the river to cool it, so they have to use what is in the engine. The vibrations of those 16 cylinders humming along is absolutely fantastic!! I edited out most of the engine running and posted the condensed version of about 3-4 minutes.

I hope you enjoy it!!

Chuck

http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6421019045/m/3711003286

[kikn79]

I am here.  I lost my bookmark for this site and I've been looking for it for a couple of days.  I knew the guys here would like to see the video.     

The raw video footage from inside the sub shows that it ran for about 6.5 minutes.  The rest of the footage from inside and outside is fairly boring for the average person, so I cut it down to just show the highlights on youtube.  I can't even imagine the amount of air being drawn in if you had all four of the diesels running.   With only one running, there was a fair breeze coming through.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions that anyone has if I can.   

[Mark Sarsfield]

I guess you didn't notice much of a difference in room temperature since the engine was only running for 6 minutes.

What is the issue with not being able to pump in river water for engine cooling?  Is it a mechanical issue or more of an environmental issue?

[Darrin]

Most if not all of the tanks have been blocked off to sea water, the reasoning behind it is from what I understand is 1. and insurance issue and 2. NAVSEA doesn't want us to make our boats fully operational.
I can't blame either component for the reasoning behind not having the tanks open to sea water because then you do have the issue's with the boats as they age (gracefully I hope) that after time the lines do rot out and then they will start to leak and then you have the issue of flooding and that on a submarine or any vessel is a BAD thing. Not to mention someone that isn't truly familiar with all of the systems onboard opening up one of the tanks up and letting water into the people tank, that in itself is a nightmare because Fire and Emergency Services are not for the most part qualified on submarines... For me while I am qualified on Submarines I am not qualified on the Tench Class boats nor am I qualified on the Balao's or anything other then the first flight 688's so the learning curve for me is a pretty steep one just like taking a Tench Class sailor and asking him to qualifiy on the first flight 688's, while it can be done it takes a LOT to learn these systems and fully understand how they work and what it takes to make them operational again without hurting anything or anyone.
My advice to anyone wanting to restore museum boat to a semi operational status is first do the mandatory hand over hand inspection of the wiring or piping to verify that ALL of it is place and make a drawing of what you have in place and then verify it off of the ships schematics IF you have them. And if it is an electrical system again do the hand over hand verification on the wiring and then run a tone generator down the line to make sure that there are no shorts or openings in the line before power is applied, this process is time consuming but it is a necessary step to make sure that you don't burn your boat to the waterline or do anything else to damage your boat that you have put so much time into restoring.

[Paul Farace]

Ditto for the sage advice above.  You have to really, really check everything many times before putting air to the starting circuit.  But getting your mechanical systems operational is vital to the preservation of the ship. People just respect an operational piece of equipment MORE than a pile of parts!    COD's GM 8-268 dinky is operational (but not generating), and our mains are about two months from running - as soon as Diesel Dave gets home from his active duty status -- at least, that is what this human diesel dynamo tells me -- and he has never been wrong when it comes to things diesel!

COBIA was drydocked in 1996 (or thereabouts) and at that time her hull openings were extensively reworked. Now I am not sure what sea chests were left open and which were blanked.  COD is COBIA's closest sister (both are EB GATOs built at the same time, that is they were the last Gatos build on their slips before BALAO hulls were laid.  That said, COBIA has GM 16-278s and COD has 16-248 engines (BEEEG DIFFERENCE in spare parts, but they look and operate the same). Both subs had an open sea chest to supply cooling water to allow reservists to run one main and the related dinky. That makes it critical to have BOTH of your overboard valves working!  And it also makes rigging for a cold iron winter very critical in COD's case.  Again, I am not sure what Russ Booth and the Wisconsin Maritime Director Isco (cain't remember Isco's last name!!) decided to do about the sea chests. At the time no diesels were operational.

If you have cooling water for the coolers, you can run the diesels forever... as we hope to (yea, with diesel at $5/gal that is not likely!)...

What we hope to do with COD is to have the three mains run on their inboard cooling water and let the fourth and dinky use lake water for cooling (isn't that right Dave?)...

But in any case, a MAJOR BRAVO ZULU to our friends aboard COBIA!!!    We gotta treat them nice... I hear they have COD's ANCHOR!!!!!


 
Paul

[kikn79]

But in any case, a MAJOR BRAVO ZULU to our friends aboard COBIA!!!    We gotta treat them nice... I hear they have COD's ANCHOR!!!!!

I just heard that this past weekend, which prompted me to ask, "Whose does the COD have, then?"   LOL

Chuck

[Paul Farace]

Whose anchor do we have??  That is a GOOD question. I just have not been able to convince anyone that we need them to hang overboard in a bosun's chair to find out!   We may try this weekend during our big Labor Day Cleveland Airshow Bivouac...

If it's BATFISH's I'll mail it postage due to Muskogee!

PF
 

[Mark Sarsfield]

We have an anchor.  Not sure who's name is on it, but it will do.