Perkins gen. shuts down after 10 min.

BIG CAT said:

Loosen the injection line nut where it connects to the injectors then crank it over till you see steady fuel without bubbles then tighten the down.

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Be careful to not waterlock the engine while cranking engine to bleed. You might want to shut the seacock first.

BIG CAT said:

Loosen the injection line nut where it connects to the injectors then crank it over till you see steady fuel without bubbles then tighten the down.

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I did that last night. I did not want to crank it too long. There was no fuel coming out.

Bare Necessities said:

The link above may help. The "O"ring you have been changing is not the one I am . Did you check to see if your engine mounted filter had fuel in it?l, you have a blockage. You can call me if you would like to and if we are allowed to share phone numbers.

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Great link, thanks.
I saw fuel at the engine mount filter. It was not dry.
I could pump the primer and bleed it the line.
I did not see fuel at the injector, though.
I will try to take apart the Racor tomorrow. First, I need to buy the kit for the rings.

The Racor should be mounted higher than the engine filter. When you changed the Racor, did you fill it with fuel so as to eliminate as much air as possible? If the Racor is full of fuel and the engine filter is full of fuel, you should be able to use your primer pump and get fuel to the injectors if the primer pump is working.

Bare Necessities said:

The Racor should be mounted higher than the engine filter. When you changed the Racor, did you fill it with fuel so as to eliminate as much air as possible? If the Racor is full of fuel and the engine filter is full of fuel, you should be able to use your primer pump and get fuel to the injectors if the primer pump is working.

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Did you really mean to say the Racor should be mounted higher than the on-engine fuel filter? The Racor that feeds my Perkins-powered generator is mounted four feet below the engine filter and it runs just fine. And, many boats, if not most boats, have the Racor main engine filters mounted way below the on-engine filters.

My Racor is in fact mounted higher than the engine filter. It appears to be in the original location (1989 model). My main point is that if those two filters are full of fuel and his primer pump is working, he should be able to get fuel to his injectors.

LeoKa said:

I did that last night. I did not want to crank it too long. There was no fuel coming out.

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Disconnect the fuel supply line at the pump. And see if you get fuel when you spin it over. If you do. You need to check the fuel solenoid and make sure it's working. Some are energized to run some are energized to stop. If you can remove it and see if fuels flowing to it. If you're getting fuel up to that point and it still isn't pumping anything out the injector line side you going to need to pull the pump and get it to a pump shop and have them go through it.

djmarchand said:

You have replaced all of the fuel lines, replaced fuel filters, etc. But how about the fuel pickup pipe. Sometimes they have an inlet screen or check valve that plugs.David

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Happened to me....Blow some compressed air through the lines to the tank. You might have some blockage at the pick-up...

Heron said:

Happened to me....Blow some compressed air through the lines to the tank. You might have some blockage at the pick-up...

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Wow, a brilliant suggestion! Why did not I think about this? I certainly will try this.

BIG CAT said:

Disconnect the fuel supply line at the pump. And see if you get fuel when you spin it over. If you do. You need to check the fuel solenoid and make sure it's working. Some are energized to run some are energized to stop. If you can remove it and see if fuels flowing to it. If you're getting fuel up to that point and it still isn't pumping anything out the injector line side you going to need to pull the pump and get it to a pump shop and have them go through it.

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I will try this, too, on Saturday. I still work all week.

How do I test the solenoid?

LeoKa said:

I will try this, too, on Saturday. I still work all week.

How do I test the solenoid?

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With mine it was as simple as touch a wire from + battery to + solenoid.
Big click and plunger pulls in

LeoKa said:

I will try this, too, on Saturday. I still work all week.

How do I test the solenoid?

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Like Simi 60 said. It's pretty simple. It's just a DC coil. If you have a meter. Check for DC power when cranking (energized to run). If it's got that you should have the coil pull in. Or if you have a energized to stop. You shouldn't see any power to the coil till you hit the stop button.

Today, I went through the fuel line again, starting from the tank. There is good flow of fuel from the tank, steady flow from the Racor, and I can pump/bleed the line at the injector pump. However, there is no fuel coming out of the pipe at the injector. I open it and crank the engine, but only a small amount of vapor shows. No fuel. I tested the solenoid, which is attached to the injector pump and it moves fine. Do you think I should remove the injector fuel lines and see why the fuel is not coming through?

Just another stab in the dark here...

My Perkins requires high pressure fuel pump bleeding at 2 locations. Have you consulted the maintenance manual for bleeding the pump?

FlyWright said:

Just another stab in the dark here...

My Perkins requires high pressure fuel pump bleeding at 2 locations. Have you consulted the maintenance manual for bleeding the pump?

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Yes, I am suppose to use the small handle pump on the engine to bleed.

Again, I did bleed the line. The bleeding screw is on the top of the injector pump, so there is fuel there. It just does not move towards the injectors.
Is there to test the injector pump, other then opening the pipe at an injector and crank the engine?

Are you sure there's only one bleed screw? Do you have a manual?

FlyWright said:

Are you sure there's only one bleed screw? Do you have a manual?

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Based on the Perkins Manual, yes. Only one. This engine was built in 1985.

FlyWright said:

Just another stab in the dark here...

My Perkins requires high pressure fuel pump bleeding at 2 locations. Have you consulted the maintenance manual for bleeding the pump?

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My manual is just the standard small booklet. It describes the bleeding steps. There is only one bleeding location in it.
I don't have a Repair Manual.

You have fuel to/in the injection pump. It needs to come off and go to the pump shop. You need to get the procedure for timing the engine before removing the pump. Most newer Perkins I've worked one had timing pins for the crank and cam. But some of the older ones had a keyway in the pump gear. So you just lined up the timing marks on the gears.

Generator shutdown

Russell Clifton said:

Maybe not a fuel problem. Check your owners manual and see if there are any safety shutdown features on this unit. Perhaps it is overheating and a sensor is shutting it down.

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. I have a Lugger that suffered the same symptoms and it was a overheating safety shutdown. Replaced the old impeller that had deteriorated vanes and no more issues.

generator

Is it pumping water? I haven't seen anyone ask this question. If the impeller is bad or the intake is plugged it will over heat and shut down. After it cools down it will run again and repeat the same issue. Pieces of old impellers could be plugging the system also.
How does the engine oil look? Could have a blown head gasket.

Just suggestion other than fuel issues.

Is it pumping water ? It could be overheating from a bad impeller, blown head gasket etc.
Therefore it would run for several minutes shut down cool off and repeat the same issue.

It sounds like an internal pump failure. I don't know if those IP's have pressure relief valves that can hang open and send the fuel back down the return fuel line to the tank.



Some guys have mentioned an engine mounted transfer pump. I haven't heard of those on Perkins. I have heard of engine mounted fuel lift pumps. They help pull fuel up from the tanks to the IP. Then the IP puts the fuel under high pressure and sends it to the injectors. There could be an internal pump leak preventing the IP from building pressure. I would think there would be leaking of the pump and it would be full of diesel instaed of lube oil, if it has it's own oil supply and not pressurized lube oil from the engine. I may have some of this wrong for marine engines. I've mainly dealt with Perks in the auto and equipment business.

jeff brown said:

Is it pumping water ? It could be overheating from a bad impeller, blown head gasket etc.
Therefore it would run for several minutes shut down cool off and repeat the same issue.

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Catch up Jeff. He stated that no fuel is getting from the IP to the injectors even though he has good fuel flow to the IP.

I wonder if this latest fuel issue has developed in parallel with the original shut down issue.

As to the idea that a safety circuit like the overheat shut-off or low oil pressure switch caused the shut down, I might add that I had an issue where a piece of a zinc broke off in my small 3.5 KW Nextgen generator and managed to lodge downstream at the interface of a hose/pipe connection blocking seawater cooling. The problem was SOME water managed to get by fooling me when I looked at the exhaust into believing I had enough cooling water.

When thoroughly cooled off, the engine ran about 15 minutes after start before shutting down. Nowadays, I run the engine on freshwater cooling when done for the day, and I have removed the single small zinc entirely.

generator

Sorry for the wrong diagnosis. Just sounded strange running out of fuel after 10 minutes then cool down and run another 10.
I'm a 2 cycle master mechanic don't know diesels. I'll just listen from now on.

I would check the fuel shutdown solenoid. I've experienced them getting weak with age. The magnet has enough strength at first, but heats up quickly and closes the valve. Sometimes they get fairly hot to the touch if this is the case.

Well, here is some result. I hired a diesel mechanic and he traced it down to the solenoid.
First, the solenoid is not getting power. He traced the wire back to the instrument panel and out of 3 yellow wires, this one does not get any. The two others do. He said that this wire goes to a control unit, so that has to be investigated next time.
He removed the solenoid and the engine runs fine. It ran it for half an hour and there was no shut down. Obviously, it has to be shut down manually now with a stick, since the turn on/off key controls the solenoid.
I know this is strange and might not makes sense, why was it running before, but shutting down after 10 minutes.
Any clue or input will be appreciated.

Does it start from its own battery charged by the genset alternator?

I recently had a stop solenoid act up and the issue was a dying engine start battery that was aggravated by being loaded down by a parasitic load from the alternator. It turned out the alternator diode was shorted out, causing the battery voltage to quickly drop below 12V. When the alternator was spooled up, it charged just fine. When slowed or stopped, it killed the battery charge.

LeoKa said:

Well, here is some result. I hired a diesel mechanic and he traced it down to the solenoid.
First, the solenoid is not getting power. He traced the wire back to the instrument panel and out of 3 yellow wires, this one does not get any. The two others do. He said that this wire goes to a control unit, so that has to be investigated next time.
He removed the solenoid and the engine runs fine. It ran it for half an hour and there was no shut down. Obviously, it has to be shut down manually now with a stick, since the turn on/off key controls the solenoid.
I know this is strange and might not makes sense, why was it running before, but shutting down after 10 minutes.
Any clue or input will be appreciated.

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This does not make sense to me. The solenoid is either power to run or power to shutdown. Since you now have to shut it down with a stick says power to shutdown. But if that was true and the solenoid power was bad, the engine would run forever.

Unless a sensor was going bad and telling the solenoid to shut the engine down. Or worse, an actual bad engine condition causing the engine to shutdown. So what your mechanic did was effectively bypass all of the protective trips. Ok for troubleshooting but a disaster waiting to happen if something bad exists.

So while the engine was running:
Adequate water flow out of the exhaust?
Coolant temp normal on gauge?
Exhaust riser temp <200F?
Normal oil pressure on gauge?

FlyWright said:

Does it start from its own battery charged by the genset alternator?

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I have separate crank batteries for the gen. and the main. They are charged by alternator from the main. It is a brand new alternator. Good brand.
We have checked the batteries several times. The voltage was normal 12.4V
They are also charged from shore power, as it is now.