Baggiolini wrote:
Anyway, beyond checking that the engine room isn't filled with water or on fire, what should I be looking at every hour?
Whatever you want.* Some people like checking engine rooms hourly, some of them do well if they check them yearly.
We have a pre-start checklist that includes items in the engine room.**Underway, I usually take a mid-run look in the engine room to check transmission temperature (by hand), shaft log temperatures (by hand), and determine if anything is leaking that shouldn't be leaking.
If the run is short-- say only a couple of hours or so--- I generally do not do an underway engine room check unless I haven't done one for awhile.
I do not do a post-shutdown engine room check unless I think there is a problem or want to confirm that there isn't one.
One thing we started doing*a number of years ago*is using a simple little*push-button*oven timer at the helm that we set for a five minute countdown.* So it starts beeping every five minutes which is a reminder to check all the engine gauges.* Then whoever is at the helm hits the button to reset it and it starts counting down again.* We do this because it is very easy to get distracted at the helm by stuff in the water, nav displays, the scenery in general, conversation,*or the whale off the port quarter.* The timer reminds us to pay attention to the instruments.
The two we are most interested in are oil pressure and coolant temperature.* There is no faster way to kill a Ford Lehman 120 than to let it overheat.* Monitoring the gauges has on three occasions to date*enabled us to catch a gradual*temperature rise in an engine in plenty of time to do a precautionary shutdown long before the temperature got high enough to do any damage.* Both engines are fitted with oil pressure and coolant temperature alarms but I place no faith in these sorts of things whatsoever.* Particularly alarm systems dating from 1973.
I should add that we were not smart enough to come up with the oven timer idea ourselves.* We stole it from Carey of this forum, as well as Australia's trans-continental railroad which does or did the same thing but for a*different reason.
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