Editor’s note: This article is Part 2 of a special three-part series on 2007 and 2010 EPA-compliant engines and their impact on the fire service. Read Part 1 here.
In 2007, new EPA-compliant diesel engines were introduced to the fire service. As fire departments across the country began taking delivery of apparatus with these new engines, some began seeing problems with the engines’ regeneration process. In this article, we’ll look at three departments experiencing issues.
San Diego Fire-Rescue Department
The San Diego Fire-Rescue Department (SDFRD) has experienced head on the complexities of keeping their rigs in service while dealing with the strict new emission regulations. It faced a double whammy: When it was first dealing with the 2007 engines, up to eight front-line rigs were out of service on any given day due to budget cuts. The department has since been restored to full strength, but San Diego is still far below the national average for fire stations and firefighters, based on population density, and this is likely making the problem worse. “Less stations and less firefighters does keep the crews more active (emergencies and non-emergencies); thus it is logical to assume that the apparatus are operating more than they would if there were more stations and crews available,” says SDFRD Assistant Chief Brian Fennessy, who is also a member of FireRescue/FirefighterNation.com’s editorial board. “It would seem that our apparatus would be out of service due to regen issues more than they would if they were less active.”
According to SDFRD records, more than 500 regen-related events took place in the past 20 months. In 2009, from Feb. 6 to the end of the year, 195 regen events were recorded. From Jan. 1 to Oct. 9 of this year, 355 regen events occurred. Although the department’s 2007-compliant engines are mostly CAT, it does use some Detroit Diesel and Navistar; because CAT is no longer making over-the-road engines, its 2010-compliant engines (which are not yet in service) are Detroit Diesel.
One particular call illustrates the impact that the regen issues have had on the department: a house fire sparked by a marijuana growing operation. Despite the fact that the house was located just minutes from four fire stations, the fire grew rapidly in part because four engines in the response area were out of service–one due to brownouts and three due to regen issues. Dispatchers quickly assigned other apparatus to the call, and first-in apparatus arrived 10 minutes after the alarm was sounded–a significantly longer response time than the department’s average of 5 minutes and 13 seconds. Firefighters were able to confine the fire to the structure, but it suffered hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.
Battalion Chief Kevin Ester, who is the SDFRD’s Fleet Liaison Officer overseeing repair services and new apparatus acquisition, is at the front lines of the department’s response to the regen issue. He explains that the need for a regen is signaled by a series of dashboard lights. The first two lights give the crew a few minutes of continued operation and driving time, but the third and fourth lights dictate the need for an immediate regen procedure. And that means bringing the rig into Ester’s repair facility.
The procedure is not an easy, flip-the-switch kind of thing. Someone certified in the process, and using a computer, must send the system through its paces before sending the apparatus back into service. There is no way to know the regen is complete without a computer. As such, a rig and its firefighters can be out of service for one to three hours–more if they have to move into a reserve rig. Further, Ester has discovered that the process doesn’t always go as planned.
“Up until now, Fleet Services has had a mechanic perform all of our regens via laptop so they could monitor system performance and intercede if needed,” he says. “Often mechanics found that regens were incomplete, due to a host of issues.”
During a recent City Council meeting, Ester revealed that a new regen procedure will soon be implemented that will allow apparatus to stay in the field rather than be driven to the repair facility for the lower levels of regen. “At this point we feel the systems are reliable enough that field regens can occur,” Ester says. “We have established a matrix that will direct the vehicle operator to the proper procedure.” The highest levels will still require the rig to travel to the repair facility. Either way, the rig would still have to go out of service, but could remain in district. Training the operators in the field will be the key to success of this approach (for more on how San Diego is training its drivers to recognize and react to regen, see Part 3 of this special report).
Fort Worth (Texas) Fire Department
Although San Diego’s problems are more recent, the Fort Worth Fire Department (FWFD) started experiencing problems soon after taking delivery of its first apparatus with a 2007-compliant engine. “We had a host of issues starting in 2007,” says Capt. Homer Robertson, who manages the department’s fleet and is a FireRescue/FirefighterNation.com editorial board member.
Engine manufacturers designed the EPA-compliant engines with modifications for the fire service, allowing them to be able to bypass the normal regeneration process and go into manual regen to account for the engines not reaching high temperatures through the normal course of operation, as well as the possibility of needing to delay regen to respond to a call. In theory, the apparatus can be forced into the regen process. “If the light comes on, you don’t back it into the station; you can put it on the apron and force it to regen,” says Bill Foster, vice president and co-founder of Spartan Motors. “It will come back down to idle when it’s done.”
But the FWFD found that the process was not so simple. “The problems started almost immediately, on our first apparatus [delivered with a 2007 engine]. We hadn’t had the truck in service a month and we started having regen issues,” says Tommy Moak, the FWFD’s shop supervisor. “The truck would not do a regen cycle, because of some problem, we didn’t know what.” Several years later, the department still doesn’t know exactly why the truck won’t manually regen, and other apparatus are experiencing similar issues.
One particular apparatus, Engine 2, has become a thorn in Moak’s side due to how often it’s out of service. “It flashes a light indicating that it needs to do a regen, but even when you try to do a manual regen, it won’t do it, and it won’t tell you why unless you hook up software,” Moak says. “The average operator can’t do that, so it takes the truck out of service.” Although most engine manufacturers suggest that the diesel particulate filter (DPF) shouldn’t need to be cleaned professionally for at least 100,000 miles, Engine 2 needed the cleaning after just 18,000 or 20,000 miles.
Robertson believes the regen issues are exacerbated on Engine 2 because the apparatus responds only in a small downtown area. “It makes a lot of runs, but they’re short runs; it doesn’t have a large response area,” he says. Moak agrees: “These engines, they like highway miles to do a regen, and Engine 2 just doesn’t get on the freeway that much.”
For departments that don’t use the highway as part of their regular response path, Foster notes that departments can also drive the apparatus at lower gears to get the engine above 1,400 rpm to generate heat, which should in turn initiate regen.
About 95 percent of the FWFD’s 2007 EPA-compliant engines are CAT engines, but Robertson believes the problem isn’t limited to CAT. “I think every manufacturer is having trouble,” he says. “The whole engine world is kind of held captive because not that many people make fire truck engines–CAT, Cummins, Detroit Diesel (now owned by Mercedes Benz) and International [Navistar] is all.”
Although a department like the FWFD is large enough to cover calls with other apparatus when one is out of service, it does have an effect on the department’s overall operations. “You’ve got to remember that anytime you take an engine out of service, or into maintenance, it leaves a hole there,” Robertson says. He believes the issues are affecting responses times simply due to the sheer number of apparatus out of service and how often they’re out due to these engine-related issues.
Another impact: cost. Like other departments, the FWFD has worked with engine manufacturers at length to reprogram the engines. But that requires the engine manufacturer representative to come out to the department or for the apparatus to be sent to the manufacturer’s facility to be reprogrammed. “Even when it’s covered under warranty, if we have to call them out after hours, it’s $250 or $300 per call,” Moak says.
As the engines rapidly approach the end of their five-year service warranty, Robertson and Moak are even more concerned. “What’s going to happen when these engines are out of warranty? Some of these trucks are approaching five years and we still don’t have the issues resolved and we’re going to start taking in that cost,” Roberston says. “When they talked about going to this EPA mandate back in 2005, 2006, we were very confident that with all the intelligent engineers at the big engine manufacturers, they would find an acceptable solution. Much to our disappointment, they clearly haven’t.”
Charlotte (N.C.) Fire Department
Charlotte is another place with regen woes. Although San Diego and Fort Worth have mostly CAT engines, Charlotte is experiencing problems with Detroit Diesel engines that are 2007-compliant. “We have issues with sensors going bad, the truck not going into regen and not being able to manually regen,” says Capt. Buddy Caldwell, who is in charge of the department’s fleet. He says the warning light that notifies the operator that the truck needs a regen comes on about every 20 hours of driving time or 200 miles. Operators in the field are instructed to put the truck into regen as soon as possible after the light comes on.
“We haven’t had a case when truck has become inoperable,” Caldwell says. But the regen process often takes the truck out of service. “If the truck will not regen, it is driven to the shop for repairs. It usually has to go to the Detroit dealer for a forced regen or parts replacement.” He stresses that the problems are not related to lack of maintenance.
But Brian Chaput, senior application engineer for Detroit Diesel Corporation, says that the company’s engines, both EPA 2007- and EPA2010-compliant, “have performed very well in fire apparatus applications. The warranty and service history on engines in fire apparatus show no increase in after-treatment related issues than over-the-road trucks, or any other application.”
Like other departments, Caldwell has been working with the engine manufacturer since experiencing these issues. “It is a known problem industry-wide, with no known solutions other than to keep repairing them,” he says. “They are continuing to work on it.”
The bottom line for Caldwell: “The down time this is causing will continue to have major impacts on response times and down time for departments.”
North of the Border
The regen issue is not limited to U.S. fire departments. John Witt, president of Safetek Emergency Vehicles, a Smeal dealer that delivers trucks all across Canada, says he’s hearing of numerous problems as well.
“I’ve been told by my service techs that we are running the gambit from rough idle, hard starting and constant regen which is consuming large amounts of fuel and [causing] inconvenience,” Witt says. He notes that one department he works with recently installed a software update on a large order of engines that were experiencing this issue; it’s too soon to tell whether the reprogramming will solve the problem. Witt believes most of the problems are software-related and occur with all of the major engine manufacturers.
Complicating the issue, most regen problems develop only after delivery and are not consistent. “Some have come up in the UL Pump Test, but mostly during delivery and once into service,” Witt says. “In some cases apparatus have been back and forth to the engine dealer a number of times, but it’s a sporadic issue–not all trucks [have problems].”
Interestingly, although the regen issue has focused on heavy-duty engines found in fire apparatus, Witt notes that one of his customers is having problems with its battalion chief vehicles, which are Ford F-Series vehicles with 6.4-liter diesel engines. “They have experienced excessive white smoke during regen,” Witt says. Ford has said this can happen if the regen process isn’t allowed to complete. “That can take up to 20 minutes at around 48 km/hr (30 mph),” Witt says. “It’s rare you can drive [at that speed] for that long in this major city. This fire department experienced high crankcase oil levels as a result of fuel entering the lubrication system, so they’ve increased maintenance by a shorter PM interval–which costs time and money and impacts operations as they have to change over the BC vehicle.”
Is Education the Key?
Bill Foster of Spartan Motors believes that most department’s regen issues can be solved with the right education. He notes that things like the type of fuel, the type of oil and whether the apparatus is allowed to idle on calls can all affect the engine’s performance (for more on these strategies, see Part 3 of this special report).
Detroit Diesel’s Chaput also stresses the importance of education. “Detroit Diesel took a proactive approach to preventing issues in the fire service,” he says. “Our plan was to educate the OEMs on all of the new components and operator-required interactions and then encourage the OEMs to pass that education to their dealers, who would then train the end customers on what the new requirements were. The intent was to develop an after-treatment system that met all of the emission-related requirements while minimizing the impact on the day to day operation of fire apparatus.”
Caldwell agrees that some departments can benefit from education. “Departments call me for instructions/advice on regen,” he says. “This information was not relayed to them by the dealer and/or manufacturer of their apparatus. I have not experienced this myself. All of this was explained by my dealer and manufacturer upon delivery, and this information is passed along during initial driver check-outs. It is important that everyone understand what regen is and does. They must also understand how delaying the process will affect their apparatus. This will not help with any of the problems we’re currently experiencing, but it will educate people on the regen process and what their role in it should be.”
Like Caldwell, Robertson and Moak doubt education would make a difference for their department. “It may be an education issue, but we work at it every day, and it’s not working for us,” Robertson says.
Read Part 3 of this special report.
