dvd
Senior Member
Recently bought the boat - one sticking point was the genset which would not start (1987 Westerbeke 4.4KW, 2 cylinder with close to 1000 hours). As a condition of sale, they got it running. Cruised to a nearby port yesterday, picked up a mooring (after a 60 MPH squall came through and my anchor dragged) and went to start the genset the next morning for coffee (all electric galley). It started right up with the voltmeter showing 80-90 V. I figured it needed to warm up a little, so went out on deck to clean up a bit after the storm. A few minutes later it started knocking, running rough and volts went to zero. I hit the "stop" switch and nothing happened. I went down to the engine room and hit the emergency stop switch on the genset and nothing happened. The engine was obviously running (roughly) on only one cylinder. I turned off the fuel supply on the manifold and nothing happened. I shut down all electrical systems on the boat (genset has an auxiliary fuel pump) and nothing happened - it continued to run. I took out the in-line fuse to the pump (was it direct from the battery?) and nothing happened. I disconnected the fuel line at the secondary filter and it continued to run. I disconnected and duct-taped the air intake hose and it continued to run. All this took about 45 minutes (very difficult access to genset), and it was running along on one cylinder. I finally traced the fuel lines to the injectors and loosened the line going into the injector manifold and it finally stopped. Unfortunately I couldn't get to the individual injectors and loosen each one separately because then I could have identified the bad cylinder. Now it's up to the mechanic.
