My Fluidamper saga.

[darkhorse_05]

Thanks Prairie Dog.

 

[Spooled05]

My truck has the exact same noise as yours , i think the fliudamper quitens the engine and this noise becomes more prominent. Nothing to worry about imho

 

[Prairie Dog]

I've listened to it both ways and don't think the eng is anymore quiet at idle with the FD. The noise is so sharp and pronounced it can be heard above anything else, even a Cummins spinning at 2000RPMs in neutral with the hood up. If you listen to it in person at 2K it's almost scary it's so obnoxious.
It clearly went away when I put the stocker back on.

 

[dieselmechanic101084]

could it be clutch chatter or geartrain noise?

 

[Prairie Dog]

could it be clutch chatter or geartrain noise?

No, I'm familiar with clutch and trans noises and my truck has very little of it. The noise is loudest directly in front of the balancer. It's actually hard to hear from beside of on top of the eng. As far as the gear train behind the timing cover, that's possible but when I put a mechanics stethoscope on it, I hear nothing but I don't think that means a whole lot.

 

[Regcabguy]

I bought an FD 2. 5 yrs ago in anticipation of G-56 gear noise when I dumped the DMF. It went right in a month ago with no noticible reduction in transmission noise(which is minimal) but it did smooth out my idle a lot. No additional engine noises whatsoever.



Wonder if mine had aged to perfection in the shed prior to install?

 

[HerculesEngine]

Have any folks received any updates on the FD findings? Thanks.

 

[Prairie Dog]

Yes, FD put one of the "bad" HB's on a truck but it has other issues, maybe a bad injector Ivan said.
I installed a 6. 7 HO damper (+fan pulley) and the noises are gone. Eng is more quiet than it has ever been before. I think I can actually hear the subtle sound of the timing gears whirring or maybe it's the CP3. I have to be standing right in front of the grill to hear this though - it's very low pitched.
I'm not convinced the FD was actually hurting anything or even that the noise was coming from it. It may have been just a case of something else reacting to it for some reason. The quality of the FD is every bit as good as the Cummins part and in some regards, better.

 

[Yo Hoot]

Hi Guys.

I know you are all anxious to hear our findings. We are in the process of trying to install one of the returned dampers on an engine. The problem right now is that we have a few trucks with this engine, however, none have ever seen winter and they are in garages. We can install them but have no way to run the trucks on the road or under any kind of load. We may install and see what we can hear in the garage but wanted to run them too. We are also waiting for Geno's to install one of the returned units they had on an engine there, then compare our results.

I promise you we have not forgot you and will update as soon as we can.

Thanks,
Ivan

What? Winter? Garage? Can't load one? How did you ever design it in the first place? Must not be anything urgent

What about all of the years and millions of miles with stock dampers? How can that be?

 

[HerculesEngine]

Thanks for the reply. I'm sure it will all get resolved, it just takes time and good investigation work like any problem.

 

[sid325]

So, whats everyone doing in the meantime? Just run it, no harm? Concerned enough to pull it? I'm thinking of using this as an excuse to do the 6. 7 damper... .



sid

 

[Dieselnerd]

I'm going to put my OEM damper back in this week to see if my "tinking" goes away.

 

[Dieselnerd]

OEM Damper, noise gone

I put my OEM damper back on today. The "Tinking" noise is gone. I'm going to leave the OEM damper on until I hear what the problem resolution is.

 

[fluidampr1]

After reading another thread, I know a few of you are upset this has taken this long. Here is where we currently stand:



I received a damper back from one of the TDR members. We took that damper and immediately put it on our test bench which shows if the damper is properly functioning. It was, nothing out of the ordinary, the internal inertia ring shearing through the silicone properly. No noise. Again, this is just our test bench not a cummins engine.



We then installed the damper on a 2006 Cummins. We first started the engine and there was a funny sound. we immediately thought this is it. However, this ended up being a bad fuel pump which was almost new. We replaced the pump under warranty and gave it another shot. Now- No Noise! The truck was then driven around town, still no noise. Our employee who owns the truck had to make a run to Texas to pick up a differant truck they purchased for pulling. He drove the 2006 to Texas from New York with no issues. Then hauled a trailer home with the "new" truck, still no noise.



I am going to post a video, hopefully tomorrow, of the returned damper installed for TDR to listen to. This will ensure we are not missing a noise you may be hearing.



Where do we go from here:



Since we do not hear the noise on an engine in front of us it is very hard to determine what the issue is. I have tried to break down each scenario to determine if there is common factor(s) that may be leading to the noise. Unfortunately there is not. I thought at first maybe it is this engine with our damper, but then I received an earlier 5. 9 complaint. Then I thought maybe a batch we manufactured, then a complaint from a damper that has been sitting on a guys shelf for 3 years. Then I looked at similiar performance mods. or all stock complaints, again no common denominator. Just a few noise issues out of the hundreds of dampers we have sold over the past 4-6 months.



We work with some top diesel engine builders and are going to try to use these resources to help determine what is going on. I know Scheid diesel has used a Fluidampr on many of these engines including thier own rail car which is under much more stress levels than a stock engine. Again, no complaints that I know of from any of thier builds or sales. I am going to email them a link to this thread and your videos to see if they may have any suggestions. I also have asked the help of a couple other diesel shops.



We are also waiting for Genos to install another damper we received back on on one of thier trucks to see if they still feel there is noise.



I want to stress we after answers just as you are. Not having a root cause is very frustrating for both you the customer and Fluidampr. We will continue to work on this.



Thank you,

Ivan

 

[leaky gasket]

I thought I read a couple weeks back that one member solved his tinking sound by readjusting his belt alignment. if I remember correctly when he compared the two balancers the FD did not have as high a back ridge or no ridge to help keep the belt in its path. he said his belt was jumping back one grove making the sound.

 

[RustyJC]

Just a thought - why not go to a rig that has the noise problem and torsiograph the engine? It may be that one or two weak or "fat" cylinders/injectors are causing torsional spikes that are beyond the normal operating range of the damper.



I'm not trying to diagnose the problem over the Internet - just sharing what we would do with the large industrial engines we build if a customer had a suspected torsional vibration problem.



Good luck!!



Rusty

 

[Prairie Dog]

I thought I read a couple weeks back that one member solved his tinking sound by readjusting his belt alignment. if I remember correctly when he compared the two balancers the FD did not have as high a back ridge or no ridge to help keep the belt in its path. he said his belt was jumping back one grove making the sound.

I remember that post and I don't think that was the same symptoms or sound. Also, none of the rest of us that have had the noise issue had any problems with the belt running true. Didn't that poster end up having a problem someplace else? Like a WP or something?

 

[cerberusiam]

Power steering pump pulley was walking out causing the belt to jump a groove.

 

[Dieselnerd]

That was me with the power steering pulley problem. First it was too far back and the belt jumped back and rubbed on the tone ring. Dealer aligned pulley but then it jumped forward and rubbed on the front flange of the damper making a squeal.



That's fixed now and had nothing to do with the damper. It all started after I had the latest power steering pump installed.



My fluid damper also had the tinking noise that went away when I put the stock damper back on.

 

[fluidampr1]

Video links from the damper I received back and installed on an employees truck. There are 2 links as we shot 2 seperate videos.



video 1 - YouTube



video 2 - YouTube





Please let us know your thoughts or if there are any issues viewing the video.



Thank you,

Ivan

Fluidampr