Engine Smoke

I put catch containers on the 2 smaller tubes, I don't care for the mess it leaves behind, and once it warms up I shut it down drain the containers before I go. If I then use the high idle when resting or momentarily stopping for whatever reason NOTHING will reaccumulate in the jars. At an idle I have a pretty constant drip. I would like to believe that if we used it more that charicteristic would also be less.

I might add I empty those containers right back into the engine, it helps give me a better indication as to just how much oil its actually burning.

Currently we are right at 100000 miles on a rebuild that I am unsure of as to what was exactly done.

Dido Jons comment about the normal flow of heavy traffic being O/K for normal idle and dido Dales comment too. If I idled our bus for 15 minutes before rolling, even the best techinque with the throtle, and it would SMOKE. If ya just stepped on it it would be worse. The high idle automaticly goes off when you release the parking brake. I just leave mine on until I want to shut the engine off. Even though the strait-6 handles the long term idle well I believe it would be better to idle them up or shut um down.

On my Coach with the Detroit 60 Series the Manual says; " after starting , low idle for two minutes, to provide lubrication of the turbocharger. Before driving Coach, run engine at high idle and then check oil pressure."
It also states " with DDEC engines, the accelerator pedal must not be pressed down before starting. This will cause malfunction with the fuel system control. " It goes on to say " wait 30 seconds before starting engine if accidently depressed"
I go out and run my engine every 2 to 3 weeks for about 45 minutes. Gary

Gary, ye know, both mine are mechanical the Cat and the Detriot as well.

At work as well as the club I'm surronded by computer controled stuff.

I always wanted to make a bumper sticker that said,

The best engines have throttle CABLES.:eek:

I started this post several days ago because of an incident with engine smoke after an extended period (15 minutes) at slow idle. I took the bus to Detroit Diesel in Mobile, AL on Monday and got it back today. They performed numerous tests including cylinder cut-out test, injector response times, oil check valves, DDEC codes, etc.

They said the nature of the 8V92 2 cycle engine is to allow some oil to build up in the air box at slow idle, and then flush that oil through the check valves when under a load. In summary, they said my engine is working properly. Unless someone who has this engine tells me differently, I suppose I will take the DD's word as being the real facts in my case. The shop foreman also said they could reprogram my DDEC to smoke a little less from fuel, but said in every case they have done this, there is a significant power loss. One good thing is that they only charged me $166 for the diagnostic work. Thanks to everyone for your input.