Our Customer with a Large Bakery and 2 large generators 2016-present
In 2016, one of our early Lubricheck and engine oil customers was a company with a large bakery, they make, daily, almost 1 million cupcakes and other baked products. The bakery operates 24 hrs a day with 3 eight our shifts. They ran 2 large generators: a 165 Kva and they had just bought a 500 Kva as demand grew for their products. Both generator ran on a 200 hours oil change cycle.
Their CEO had years of experience in developed countries and did not understand why generators had such a short oil change cycle in Nigeria 200 to 300 hours, when abroad you could have generators run over 2000 hours on one oil change.
The CEO asked us why generator engines have such a short life time 5 to 10 years in Nigeria when they last between 20 to 40 years.
We explained that in Nigeria backup generators in many cases are the primary power source for many industries and homes, many companies and homes have 2 generators as standard and many run between 8 to 20 hours a day. So they are used more, daily, than in the developed world. So they would last a shorter time than those used abroad.
Another factor that reduced the life of petrol and diesel generators was that almost 99% of the generators in Nigeria use the wrong oil. Oils such as the 15W40 for diesel engines and SAE 40 or 20W50 in petrol generators.
With the 15W40 oils used in diesel engines most of these oils failed between 50 to 120 hours when tested with the Lubricheck device. So generator owners that follow their manufacturers 200 or 300 hour oil change cycle are already wearing out their engine after 120 hours. The generators engines that use these short life oils, tend to have short lives of 3 to 6 years before an overhaul or replacement is needed.
We introduced our Mobil Delvac 1 5W40 fully synthetic oil to the bakery as we knew that the oil tested regularly with the Lubricheck would easily run 1000 to 1200 hours before oil needed to be changed. We had many customers already running their engines with long oil change intervals.
After about 3 months of our oil being in use, we received a call that the 500 Kva generator was not running well and that a Lubricheck oil test had been done after 60 hours and the oil was a number 10, and our oil had damaged the engine.
This was very surprising as historically the oil always would last a minimum of 1000 hours especially in a new engine. We sent our engineer to site to run some more oil tests and collect a sample to send to Mobil.
When our engineer got to site he noticed black oil had been streaming/leaking out all round the cylinder head of the generator. This was a sign that the cylinder head gasket had blown. He tested the oil with 3 Lubricheck devices they all gave a 10 (Red Fast flashing LED) reading. He decided to look in the radiator to see if there was any water and check to see if the engine had any water in the cooling system. He immediately noticed that the radiator cover was missing and you could see directly into the radiator. He asked the person managing the generator on site, why the radiator cap was missing.
It was then that we were told that a few weeks earlier they had noticed a water leak from the large hose that connected the radiator to the engine block. They called the company that sold them the generator and an engineer was sent to site to fix the issue.
The engineer had put some tape round the leaking hose and removed the radiator cap and told the generator manager that they could use the generator like that till he came back with a new hose. The engineer never came back. They had since needed to constantly top up the radiator with water, a few weeks later the generator stopped working.
Our engineer decided to take an oil sample to send to Mobil and opened one of the bleeding taps connected to the oil sump. To his surprise a few liters of crystal clear water came running out. Once the water had run out the oil began to come out and a sample was collected.
Our engineer also tested the 165 Kva generator with the lubricheck. The oil had only done 192 hours in the engine and was still a number 1 on all 3 Lubricheck devices, which was normal. A sample was taken and sent to Mobil.
The Oil analysis results are shown below for both generators:
We were able to quickly confirm the engine oil quality in both generators. Since the oil in both generators came from the same 208 L drum of oil we were concerned initially that if the oil was used in both generators and there was something wrong with the oil it would affect both engine. Our quick visit to site and the Lubricheck testing of the oil in: the drum (a No. 1 on the Lubricheck), the 165 Kva generator (a No. 1 on the Lubricheck) and the 500 Kva (a No. 10 on the Lubricheck) allowed us to quickly confirm the quality of all samples of oil before they were all sent off to the Mobil laboratory for analysis.
What was also discovered was that the person managing the generator never escalated the problem of the constant radiator water top up and missing radiator cap to management.