View Single Post
Old 09-28-2015, 09:03 AM   #1
Baker
TF Site Team/Forum Founder
 
Baker's Avatar
 
City: League City, Tx
Vessel Name: Floatsome & Jetsome
Vessel Model: Meridian 411
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 7,332
Cummins 6BTA drop in RPM

I was out yesterday in VERY rough weather. The girlfriend was on board and I told her my main concern was the plugging of the fuel filters in this kind of weather. What concerned me more was I was feeding both engines out of the same tank. In any event, we turned around. The weather was pretty hairy and there was no good reason to continue. When we turned away from the weather to run downwind, I noticed the right engine would ocassionally lose 200 RPMs. It very well could have been doing that up to this point but I would not have noticed due to the mayhem that was going on. Anyway, the weather was too rough for me to go look at the vacuum gauges and leave lil mama at the helm. SO I went with it and made it back to our (new) destination. I had already called ahead of a landside pick up so by the time I had the boat squared away, we left.

So....obviously...the first culprit would be the fuel filters. Would you just immediately go down and slap new filters on or would you go out and test them to confirm on the suction gauge before replacing?

And also, if that is not the case, what else could it be?

PS...there is probably about 75 hours on the filters. They have been running out of their respective tanks. All I am trying to say is that while both engines were feeding out of the same tank at the time, the filters have had different lives and have been exposed to different tanks over their lifetime.

PSS....I am not terribly worried as I think there is a very good chance it is the filters. But just asking to arm myself with more info when I get back down to the boat.
__________________
Prairie 29...Perkins 4236...Sold
Mainship Pilot 30...Yanmar 4LHA-STP...Sold
Carver 356...T-Cummins 330B...Sold
Meridian 411...T-Cummins 450C
Baker is offline   Reply With Quote