fryedaze
Guru
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2011
- Messages
- 1,722
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Fryedaze
- Vessel Make
- MC 42 (Overseas Co) Monk 42
The boat I purchased a couple years ago has a 6KW Northern Lights M673L2 generator on board. The previous owner disclosed the generator had water intrusion on 2-3 ocassions. When he replaced the previous Panda generator he kept the Panda water muffler system. The Mechanic who did the last work on the generator told me that the water muffler was located too high relative to the Northern Lights exhaust and the issue the previous own had was if the generator did not start quickly it would suck seawater back into the generator via the exhaust. He moved the water muffler lower in the boat and since then the generator had appeared to run great. Starts almost immediately and runs very smooth however, the only thing I really every used it for was changing the batteries and light loads. A few weeks ago we were anchored out for several days so we actually tryed to load the generator by using the microwave and the AC. As the load increased the generator would load, bogg down to where you would expect it to die, the voltage supplying the invertor/charger would drop to ~70V, the invertor/charger would trip and the generator would recover. I followed the troubleshooting guide in the Owners Manual and did not find a solution. The marina has performed some troubleshooting and reported that the generator is only running on 2 or the 3 cylinders. They believe it is using oil however the smoke coming out of the exhaust is just a couple shades off white. They determined the injector pump is bad and 2 different shops said they could not rebuild the injector pump. A new one is around 1200. The questions are
1) My immediate thought was to just purchase a replacement injector pump and install it, however, the marina recommended very strongly that rebuilding the orginal injector pump was better because of a timing issue that I do not understand. Is there any reason why a new injector pump cannot be successfully installed.
2) Can this generator be successfully repaired and reliable for the long term or should I be tossing it overboard and replacing it. It only has about 425 hours on it at this point.
3) The marina was also concerned that the generator was using oil. Is the oil use just a function of the issue of only operating on 2 of the 3 cylinders or do I have a real issue.
Looking for recommendations with the key goal of having a realiable piece of equipment.
1) My immediate thought was to just purchase a replacement injector pump and install it, however, the marina recommended very strongly that rebuilding the orginal injector pump was better because of a timing issue that I do not understand. Is there any reason why a new injector pump cannot be successfully installed.
2) Can this generator be successfully repaired and reliable for the long term or should I be tossing it overboard and replacing it. It only has about 425 hours on it at this point.
3) The marina was also concerned that the generator was using oil. Is the oil use just a function of the issue of only operating on 2 of the 3 cylinders or do I have a real issue.
Looking for recommendations with the key goal of having a realiable piece of equipment.