DrWatson
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Posts posted by DrWatson
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The skeptic in me doubts it....
That they suggest a sea trial with the Tech onboard suggests they were not able to replicate the problem and that they don’t actually know what was/is wrong ...
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An update!
Good afternoon,
Our agent Volvo Penta Service xxx xxxxxx has been on board your vessel
They made several checks and they made running the engine during 30 minutes
they have changed alternator belt which was too much tensionned.They have also drained a few lube oil in the saildrive because oil level was too high
Then they runned again the engine and trouble di not appear anymore
Nethertheless, what i suggest you is when you're back around our location is to contact Jet marine, and make a sea trial with them
like this, you'll have an engineer on board and if troubl appear again, he will know where to go throught
May you be ok with it?Waiting for your feedback,
Regards,To note: belt was adjusted but professional Volvo certified service tech at 38h
Sail drive oil level checked by same ... if he didn’t add any oil then there was too much at commissioning.
No mention of the tech was able to replicate the issue...
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16 minutes ago, Fish said:
Should I mention about now, my new Beta purrs like a kitten, and I can always get hold of the agent when I need to?
Starting to like the idea of 1000Ah of 48V Li and a DC motor slapped on the top of the saildrive...
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On 17/08/2020 at 2:02 AM, John B said:
Any news?
Don't tell me, Volvo has seen the video and said gosh, that's serious, we'll get there with a van and 2 men to solve this problem immediately.
Yep, that's pretty much exactly the situation at the moment, everything except for the two guys and the van thing...
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13 minutes ago, Aleana said:
You could well be onto it with that. Especially if the stanchion is a leaker. Diesel meets water and all that...
Yeah except they are unrelated incidents....
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1 minute ago, Aleana said:
Trying to engage gear? Is it saildrive? Slipping clutch cones?
There's a dude popping down to the boat this week sometime to swap out a stanchion... might ask him to just have a little poke around...
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6 hours ago, jim s said:
The clank happens 15 times in a whisker over 13 seconds - i did some calculations based on idle speed of 800rpm . that gave a clank near to exactly every 12 turns of the crank. we need to know what that engines idle speed is set at to be sure . Doc? . heres a good question though ... what would make an engine try to twist on its mounts the same direction as its rotation and also make a clank sound? we need to have a barbeque in Brittany to find out...
engine idle is 800 (more or less).
BBQ is ready...
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Why not simply a small winch? then it can be used as a winch as well.. Then you can load it to pretension your halyards before blowing the jammer...
Or would it be too heavy?
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Capping every through fixed bolt/nut with a polyethylene dome nut cover works nicely.
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Surprised you get so much condensation in a wooden boat. That grey carpety stuff seems to eliminate condensation more or less - it's the smooth polished (painted9 surfaces that allow it, IMO.
Being a foam boat, Firefly only gets condensation on the windows except for the deck/hull joint, which is just solid glass. Seems to me that a layer of 3mm LD foam included just inside the inside-most layer of cloth would have pretty much solved that as it would insulate the joint as well. All through bolts could easily be recessed those 3mm...
Brittany has a similar climate to NP in the summer, and Hamilton in the winter, so I'm thinking of getting a dehumidifier to leave running while in the marina this winter. Any thoughts on the dangers?
Previously we have used lots of drypack dehumid. boxes and change them mid winter. But it's messy and I wonder about their effectiveness.
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22 hours ago, Aleana said:
Have you got a holding tank? Could it blocked? Maybe every 14.3 engine rotations it tries to clear a stubborn blockage and gets a blowback?
What a faecetious suggestion ...
But a guest did manage to “flush so much she couldn’t flush any more...”
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18 minutes ago, jim s said:
The sail drive is 2.3 : 1 or thereabouts so that becomes less likely. a warm engine will react to (ignite) a stray amount of fuel much more readily than a cold engine. Pity you aren't in NZ we could have a Crew barbeque with a sweepstake while we sort it...
Hahah, we could still do the sweepstake, and the winner gets to sail Firefly to Jersey and back to France at the end of October...
She needs to leave the EU for at least a night, and what with various quarantines and work commitments, I'm not sure it's gonna work out.
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haha,
well I don't think "Hopeless at helping" is accurate
but we might soon be exhausting our reservoir of explanations.
The breadth of experience here on the forum is exceptional, and each suggestion has been based on a member's previous experience. Some of those experiences include the strangest things which others of us would never have considered, but the suggestions are made on first hand examples, and all made with reason. It's not like people
To date:
- Buggered injector pump/buggered injector (not being a mechanic this was my first guess)
- Burnt or sticking valve
- Broken crank
- Obstruction on the prop
- Broken engine mount
- Broken/occluded cam
- Alternator
- Wiring loom issue (Lordy I hope not, there's about 2km of wiring on this boat)
- Black box
- Clutch cone grabbing
- Oil level in gearbox
- Morse cable adjustment
- Engine drive plate
- Starter motor/flywheel
- Engine dampner plate
One thing to consider is that it only happens when the whole set up is warm and restarted... (might happen when it's warm immediately, but I normally don't leave it running in neutral after I've finished motoring somewhere.) It also didn't do it earlier in the trip when we ran the motor in Neutral for 40 min or so to charge batteries while making water - so when the motor is warm and the gearbox not.
So it's intermittent and very regular... about once every 12th revolution (Thanks JimS for counting), so it's likely to be geared issue, but not something related to the engine firing or engine timing itself? I'm guessing a sticking valve would not occur "exactly" every 6th action.
8 minutes ago, Island Time said:If it does not do it down a cylinder, what happens if you remove the air cleaner?
haven't tried...
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10 hours ago, Island Time said:
Looks and sounds like a sticking valve - sometimes a valve not completely sealing and blowing out compression via the intake system. When the tech got it to drop to 2 cylinders it was the same regardless of the cylinder stopped? Be interesting to see what volvo say...
It dropped down the same regardless of the cylinder. But it didn’t make that kick.
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I’m starting to think we should run a poll,...
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Is pantaenius not active in the nz market?
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On 4/08/2020 at 4:12 AM, Aleana said:
Have you watched how the engine behaves when you shift from neutral into gear? Does it look & sound the same?
My previous sail-drive set-up used to jump incredibly every time I engaged gear,
As the others suggest, it does almost look like the engine is trying to jump into gear itself causing the clunk?
I think this is a plausibility. Vid was sent to Volvo immediately. And to some other relevant parties incl. original mechanic (so he can see the issue that we were trying to replicate). Pogo Structures have also jumped in on their own initiative on our behalf and written to Volvo France head office to encourage speedy resolution.
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lastly a few pics of the boom tent in operation. And scenery.
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Although our engine/transmission issue kind of marred the end of our cruise, it did give us a chance (and motivation) to really try out the light air performance. We're running heavy with all the cruising crap on board (3 anchors etc etc. plus humungous amounts of French wine and food all packaged in glass...), and we have no A2 (yet), but we were able to keep ticking along at about 1.5-2 knts with 2-3 knts pretty much flat off, and coming around to about 125 TWA in about 4 knots we could sit for relatively long periods (4-5 min at a time) nominally above windspeed. We did have about 0.3 knt current in our favour, and I haven't done the calculation yet to determine how that would affect the actual TWS, but note the boat speed is through the water, so TWA will be further aft. Nonetheless, pretty happy with light air performance.
(yeah it's not a great photo)
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This is in neutral
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To be fair to the mechanic, it refused to make that sound and shake in his presence.
Prop is two blades folding. Propspeed applied on 1july. Boat launched on 12 July. Worked fine for nearly the two weeks of our trip so I doubt it’s the prop. ESP as it doesn’t seem to happen once fully in gear and motoring.
I’m going with something engaging or trYing to engage. Either way I expect an error like this could result in considerable wear and damage if not rectified.
No flash in the back ground. It’s raining and some rain coming down the hatch. Maybe a trick of the light.
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1 hour ago, jim s said:
Hmmm it's very regular... and by the way the engine shudders on its mounts its not pretty. I suspect there may be issues with the injector pump. let us know what the tech finds - good luck!
Yeah the regularity and the shudder got me and I shut it down within 20 sec. I started it again 5 min later in Neutral to check and same thing so shutdown after 10 sec. In my experience, sounds like this warrant immediate shutdown.
Was thinking it could be a tooth on the timing catching, a cam hitting something, or a partial seize? I dunno. Considered the blocked injector or injector pump issue. I've relatively little experience with diesels, but the way it was kicking reminded me of an old escort engine missing on a cylinder or two, So I considered maybe those injection related issues. But the tech eased each of the the injector nuts to depressurise each and she simply dropped down to two cylinders and ran smooth - no kick. For it to be an injector issue and regularly failing a cylinder I would expect the frequency of the error to be higher, perhaps 400 per minute (at 800 rpm).
Tech mussed and fussed around for 20 minuted checking everything fuel supply related and eventually, grasping at straws, suggested that maybe we'd got some "winter coolant in the fuel line" (wtf!!) or drawn a little air into the fuel line when heeled over, as the fuel tank was only half full, to which I conceded might be possible if we were heeled at 90° and running the motor which we weren't. He left, satisfied the engine was fine, and then I got a call from the Volvo Action service centre telling me the case had now been closed be cause the tech had determined we'd run out of fuel!!! I told them in no uncertain terms that that certainly wasn't the case. But in a call this morning the call centre guy still referred to us running out of fuel.
Now that I have a video of it I can re examine it a few times and make a different prognosis. The way it went away when gearbox engaged and up at 1200 rpm suggests that it might be something between the gearbox and the engine which is miss-aligned and trying to engage but missing...
In any case, a knock like that will certainly wear stuff out pretty quick.
46 minutes ago, Dtwo said:What sort of prop setup do you have? Coupling tight?
It's a s120 sail drive ( I think that's the model). Standard drive leg and prop.
Motor was serviced at 38 hours (first service) a few hours earlier than the recommended 50 but it was the end of the season and the start of winter so not a bad idea to do it a little early.
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So, the last two days of our cruise were a little marred by the following effect. Intermittent but can be reproduced sort of. Run motor and potter along the coast for 2-3 hours. sail for 3h or so, then start motor for manouvering. Does this in idle at neutral and when engaged in FWD but at idle, at least sometimes, then went away when increased to 1200 rpm...
It's not a sound and effect I enjoy so we stopped using the engine and only manoeuvred under sail after this. Called the Volvo service centre, they sent a tech, and of course we couldn't reproduce it. Didn't have the video to show him at that time. But recorded this after he left. Case now reopened but let's see.
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Went sailing
Clunks... What's going on here?
in TechTalk
Posted
You did indeed say to check it. unfortunately I was 1000km away by then
Nonetheless, I'm kinda pissed about the level that was in there. I don't have a measure on how much was "too much" (I will ask). Was it 1L too much ? 0.5L? just 100 mL? no specifics...
Mostly i'm annoyed because I paid professionals to take care of it while I'm miles away from the boat. True, I didn't check the oil level in the saildrive (I did the engine, cooling, battery etc. ) before this trip, as I expected (wrongly?) that the initial service guy would get it right, and that the guy who launched the boat only 1 week earlier would also check it along with the motor check he performed (I'm still to ask). What still amazes me though, is that the problem only turned up after 2 weeks and 20h of motoring, and a couple of those days included a few hours on the iron spinnaker at a time.