What can stop my engine?

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LOL! On behalf of the moderators let me say, Thanks for the plug RTF! We,ve been up to our collective rear ends vanquishing spammers lately. A little self moderation would be greatly appreciated around now:):flowers:

Gentleness with newbies is always welcome but I can't help but feel like whiskey peddler by leading folks to that section. New folks to that section would do well to read that sign on the door twice and heed the warning prior to entering though.:angel::hide:
 
Greetings,
Maybe the sign should be replaced with something like this....

tumblr_l652fvCjiA1qzdf0go1_400.gif



or this...


4C9r1.gif
 
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Dammit!!! I just finished making popcorn and pulled up a chair! Now I've got to move aaaallllllll that way over to the OTDE neighborhood to follow the fight? Whatever!!!
 
CPseudonym; New folks to that section would do well to read that sign on the door twice and heed the warning prior to entering though.:angel::hide:[/QUOTE said:
I agree and as one that was somewhat active there before the new format I can say that from what I can tell not one useful boating item has come from that section. I'm including the posts by myself in that statement as well.

Comments there and opinions of some were carried over to other sections as well. That has seemed to been tempered in the new format. We need to keep it that way.
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Goodness gracious, we are now so sensitive. It must be the Benghazi syndrome. Taking a step back, why is a discussion about Chinese boats, which most of have, not topical? And puhleeze don't say it was egregious thread creep without looking at other threads.

Back to what can stop marine diesel engines, inferior non Chinese design and vendors such as Cummins specific Sherwood pumps, DD 8.2 cooling systems, Cat intercoolers, wrong sized Racor filters, Cummins specific exhaust manifold leaks putting soot onto air filters, all things Iveco, poor Volvo parts availablity, Perkins exhaust elbows and John Deere wiring harnesses.
 
sunchaser;114049Back to what can stop marine diesel engines said:
Sometime it isn't even the vendors. Sometime the vendors such as Yanmar, Cummins, CAT or whomever design a perfectly good engine and exhaust system. Then someone, in this case Mainship, installs the engine, in this case Cat, on a set of mounts that set the engine exhaust just a few inches above the waterline. Then when said boats were at anchor and bobbed about the sea water filled the muffler and ran into the exhaust, then into the turbo which caused way more fun than it was worth.

There is plenty of blame to go around for sure.
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sunchaser: Perkins exhaust elbows

Yes! My engine operated for 1 hr with a dime-size hole blown in the top of the exhaust elbow. I didn't get any water in the ER, but the whole ER was covered in diesel soot!! It took me a month of weekends to clean it up before starting the repair. I've never seen so much black EVERYWHERE!!! I still find some here and there like when I removed my shower sump pump last week. It's the gift that keeps on giving!
 
FlyWright said:
sunchaser: Perkins exhaust elbows

Yes! My engine operated for 1 hr with a dime-size hole blown in the top of the exhaust elbow. I didn't get any water in the ER, but the whole ER was covered in diesel soot!! It took me a month of weekends to clean it up before starting the repair. I've never seen so much black EVERYWHERE!!! I still find some here and there like when I removed my shower sump pump last week. It's the gift that keeps on giving!
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if your engine is running correctly it shouldnt be that black and sooty. Maybe u need to service your injectors or check fuel presure?
 
A good friend who was the founder of Kenmore Air had a beautiful steel hull deFever, one of the few built this way. It was powered by a pair of smallish Cat diesels. He used the boat every summer to go to SE Alaska and up into BC. During one of these cruises it one of his engines did much the same as FlyWright's with the exact same results. Soot everywhere in the engine room that took weeks to clean up completely.

The engines in this boat were meticulously maintained--- Bob was an outstanding mechanic as well as a pilot. So I suspect FlyWright's experience was "normal" for this kind of failure.
 
Marin said:
A good friend who was the founder of Kenmore Air had a beautiful steel hull deFever, one of the few built this way. It was powered by a pair of smallish Cat diesels. He used the boat every summer to go to SE Alaska and up into BC. During one of these cruises it one of his engines did much the same as FlyWright's with the exact same results. Soot everywhere in the engine room that took weeks to clean up completely.

The engines in this boat were meticulously maintained--- Bob was an outstanding mechanic as well as a pilot. So I suspect FlyWright's experience was "normal" for this kind of failure.
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It is.....
 
Greetings,
I inquired about a steel hulled Defever back in the day. Made in Mexico and powered by a Waukesha diesel. Passed on it because Waukesha only marinised 22 of these engine and parts were ????
Sorry, thread creep.
 
Marin

Your and Flywright's stories struck a chord. IMHO, exhaust elbows are throw away items. But few among us will throw away a perfectly good looking expensive elbow just to stay "a step ahead." Two years ago and 8 years after new, one of mine developed a slight salt water drip, very slight.

Spending big bucks to throw them both away was not an easy decision. But when removed they were a few brief months from blowing externally or worse yet plugging and potentially putting some water into the engines.

BTW, soot is present in the best running diesel exhaust bfloyd. It is called a product of combustion.
 
Marin said:
A good friend who was the founder of Kenmore Air had a beautiful steel hull deFever, one of the few built this way. It was powered by a pair of smallish Cat diesels. He used the boat every summer to go to SE Alaska and up into BC. During one of these cruises it one of his engines did much the same as FlyWright's with the exact same results. Soot everywhere in the engine room that took weeks to clean up completely.

The engines in this boat were meticulously maintained--- Bob was an outstanding mechanic as well as a pilot. So I suspect FlyWright's experience was "normal" for this kind of failure.
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my experiance is limited to trucks and tractors not trawlers. In California if a diesel engine smokes more than a ringleman 1, 20% for more than twenty seconds it is a violation that can result in a citation. The California Air Resources Board says that if a Diesel engine is operated within its rpm range and with less than the rated maximum load the engine shall not smoke. Smoke, black smoke in particular is caused by the incomplete combustion of fuel resulting in the emission of hydrocarbon particulate matter which is exactly what these boats experianced.
However these standards were adotped as a result of on and off road diesel engine testing not marine. When i left we were beginning to look at standards for marine D engines.
I would kinda like to find a bargin boat with bad engines to play with. Railroads say they can move 2000 pounds 500 miles with one gallon of D fuel but they do it with electric engines. For years the idea of an electric boat engine has been rattleing around in my mind I think diesel electric is gonna be the thing of the future
 
RTF--- Bob's boat, named the Sea Beaver, had been built in Mexico and had Cats in it, I believe 4-cylinder. The boat was either 42 o4 44 feet long with a steel hull and wood topsides. I don't know if the Cats were original or were the result of a repower. Bob acquired the boat from a customer of the Air Harbor who I believe offered the boat in lieu of a monetary payment for a major aircraft repair bill.

When Bob passed on in 2000 the family gave my wife and I first refusal on the boat, but by then we had our GB and did not want to move up to an even more labor-intense and larger boat (Bob kept it in a boathouse at the Kenmore Air base on Lake Washington).

It was subsequently sold to a fellow who took it to SFO Bay. Enroute down the coast the new owner was running it pretty hard and blew an engine. He had the boat repowered (don't know with what) and the last I heard it was back up here in Seattle for sale.
 
bfloyd4445 said:
or years the idea of an electric boat engine has been rattleing around in my mind I think diesel electric is gonna be the thing of the future
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You're kind of late to the party. This has been done a number of times with various recreational cruisers, including at least one GB. While the conversions have been operationally successful, the cost made them prohibitive as a practical means of propulsion. For the cost of the diesel-electric setup you could run the same boat on diesel even at six, eight, ten bucks a gallon until you were dead.

Many of the big Washington State ferries were diesel-electric powered in the 50s and 60s. Some of these boats ran until just a few years ago when the last one was scrapped. Their powerplants were straight out of a diesel-electric railroad locomotive.

The ferries in service today are all direct-drive diesel with variable pitch propellers and computer control.
 
Marin said:
The ferries in service today are all direct-drive diesel with variable pitch propellers and computer control.
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You might want to rethink that statement, Marin. Most of the WSF fleet is diesel-electric.
 
west marine has electric power systems for sale. Would be fun to try one with a small diesel gen set adequately sized to provide enough watts in a small craft.
 
RickB said:
You might want to rethink that statement, Marin. Most of the WSF fleet is diesel-electric.
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Then why did the newsmedia and WSF make a big deal a few years ago about the retirement of the last diesel-electric boat in the system? They very specifically talked about "the end of the diesel-electric era."

PS--- I just looked it up and the diesel-electric boats were not pulled out of service because of problems with their propulsion systems. All them were so old that they had developed severe issues with rust and corrosion in their hulls. It was deemed too expensive to fix them so one by one they were removed from service. If I remember what I just read correctly, the last one was removed from service in 2009.
 
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Perhaps the big deal was being made over the retirement of the so-called "steel-electric" boats that dated from the late 1920s. But I remember the head of the WSF saying on TV something like "Today we announce the retirement of our last diesel-electric ferry." Given the total ineptitude of the whole WSF system it doesn't surprise me that they don't have a clue what makes their boats go.
 
Bfloyd4445, my engines smoke on a cold start until they warm up, but burn very cleanly after that...well, as clean as an old school, 1977-technology Perkins can. What filled my ER was the normal products of diesel combustion. I'd venture to say that if any modern day diesel had its exhaust released directly into the ER, they'd find similar results after an hour.

I learned a lot about cleaning diesel soot in the month that followed. Rule 1: Keep it dry and remove it dry as much as possible before resorting to spray solutions. After Rule 1, the rest of the rules don't matter much.
 
FlyWright said:
sunchaser: Perkins exhaust elbows

Yes! My engine operated for 1 hr with a dime-size hole blown in the top of the exhaust elbow. I didn't get any water in the ER, but the whole ER was covered in diesel soot!! It took me a month of weekends to clean it up...
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Sorry to be practical when you really deserve sympathy a stiff scotch and a new scrubbing brush, and to TC with "how you might keep your engine running". I kept my leaky Lehman elbows going while importing replacements, by patching with that hard epoxy (sets under water) putty you get in 2 sticks and somehow blend together( I used a dinner fork). Filled the developing holes,reinforced the rest, lasted `til replacements arrived.
 
A much faster and more versatile method to perform emergency repairs is the stuff like this:

Products : Pipeline Repair and Reinforcement Technologies - Neptune Research Inc | NRI

There are several suppliers, this one just happens to be one I use to obtain kits for our boats that are off on world cruises.

And just for the sake of discussion, a typical older mechanical diesel puts out about .25 grams of particulates (soot) per cubic meter of exhaust gas. Even a new modern super clean engine puts out around .1 g/m3 so it doesn't take much to blacken a small engine room or even a large one. I have personally seen a failed exhaust line turn an engine room into a completely dark black cave in less time that it takes to say WTF was that.
 
FlyWright said:
Bfloyd4445, my engines smoke on a cold start until they warm up, but burn very cleanly after that...well, as clean as an old school, 1977-technology Perkins can. What filled my ER was the normal products of diesel combustion. I'd venture to say that if any modern day diesel had its exhaust released directly into the ER, they'd find similar results after an hour.

I learned a lot about cleaning diesel soot in the month that followed. Rule 1: Keep it dry and remove it dry as much as possible before resorting to spray solutions. After Rule 1, the rest of the rules don't matter much.
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opps. I forgot to mention the engine must first be warmed up to operating temperature.
I don't think the standard for marine diesels has changed since your perkins was built unfortunately.
The new ones with the particulate filters create almost no particulate matter if functioning properly. My 2007 combine engined diesel truck is stickered under the hood with a federal epa tag listing it as a ULEV, ultra low emmisions vehicle. CARB developed the standard and the fed epa adopted them.
I wish the standards applied to water craft as they have always resulted in more fuel efficient engines that last longer and pollute less

What did you find worked best to clean up the mess?
 
bfloyd4445 said:
I wish the standards applied to water craft as they have always resulted in more fuel efficient engines that last longer and pollute less
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I wish people didn't say such silly things. BSFC is actually lower than it could be as a result of NOx regulations.
 
bfloyd4445 said:
What did you find worked best to clean up the mess?
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Before I touched anything, I researched soot removal to learn from the guys who preceded me down this path. There's great info on the web from the pros.

I started with an industrial-sized shop vac with a loooong 2.5 - 3 inch hose and a brush accessory. I kept the shop vac above in the cockpit (saving me from the noise and vac exhaust) and descended into the black abyss with full disposable coveralls, gloves, booties and headgear. Going in I looked like a cleanup technician at a toxic spill site; coming out the first time I resembled a coal miner.

The shop vac removed probably 80% of the soot and took about 40% of the time. Then I sprayed small areas at a time with a biodegradable, water-safe orange citrus product intended for bio-safe degreasing, scrubbed with brushes and microfiber pads, then rinsed liberally with fresh water. A final wipe down was completed with disposable towels. The toughest areas to remove the soot were wire bundles, old foil-backed fiberglass insulation, inaccessible areas outboard of the fuel tanks and small crevices around the engines and plumbing.

You learn a lot about your engine room when you have to clean every square inch of it by hand. :eek: Sometimes there are things I wish I didn't know!!! :socool:
 
RickB said:
A much faster and more versatile method to perform emergency repairs is the stuff like this:

Products : Pipeline Repair and Reinforcement Technologies - Neptune Research Inc | NRI
Click to expand...

That looks like a wholesale operation -- where can an average boater obtain those products in small quantities? I've used different forms of two part epoxy to repair plumbing and hoses in emergencies, but some of the tape products that harden when they come in contact with water seem like they should be present on every boat.
 
Not entirely sure Egregious but if I needed to source an otherwise un-available product, my first two tries for sourcing it would be Ferguson and Grainger. Both of which can special order me anything I need if provided a link to the desired products website.

Understand of course there may be a minimum order needed. Both of those companies are national wholesalers and willing to accept cash purchases from non account holders. I'm certain there are other more expedient sources, but I deal with these two(as an account holder)daily.
 
After this happened to me, I decided to make more frequent ER checks and have purchased the cameras, cables and switches needed to install a multi-camera ER monitor system. Installation is pending. (hey...it's fishing season!)

I also carry several rolls of Rescue Tape in 1 inch/20 mil and 2 inch/30 mil sizes. If you can get a series of wraps around the hose, elbow or line, you can seal it to 700 PSI and temps to 260 degrees C. If I had identified the problem and sealed it then and there with the tape, I would have saved many, many hours of labor.
 
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