new to me boat project, storfidra 26

[PaulR 3]

. . . poured about 10ltr of fresh diesel in the tank and the engine laboured on for about 2 minutes, then died

 

. . . have read of exhausts ports clogging up with carbon if engine only ever run at idle

 

and manual says to check exhaust

 

would a blocked exhaust port stop a cyl from firing?

 

1. Could still be dirt in fuel tank, any filter between tank and engine and supply lines if you did not clean the tank out BEFORE adding fresh 10L of diesel.

 

2. Air Filter. Is it clogged? Replace anyway. A dirty or blocked (ant nests + spiders etc) air filter reduces the amount of "air" being sucked into your motor. Diesels will only speed up if they can have lots of Fuel + lots of air.

 

Possibly that is why most diesel manuals suggest altering the revs at specific intervals rather than run continously at the one speed, but on yachts?? the object is to sailing and switch off the motor ASAP, unless motoring home in flat calms etc.

 

3. How sensible it is to RTFM and follow their advice. Of course check the exhaust. There could be a well developed mussel farm inside your exhaust piping and don't forget that funny black box thinngy. Take it out, flush & degunk.

 

4. A blocked exhaust port, exhaust elbow / manifiold, closed exhaust skin fitting would only stop exhaust fumes, unburnt fuel and compressed air from the piston movement escaping the engine. like your doctor will advise you when you are older, "if you can't pee, your dead". So the same with your engine!!

 

Try lifting the decompression lever (s), crank over engine and look and sniff closely at working end of decompression lever.

You will only ever need to learn once or twice.

[erice 732]

got the 2 anchors and chains around to east tamaki galvanisers

 

price to hot-dip is $3.20+ gst/kg

 

at $3.68/kg it would cost $18.40 for the 5kg anchor

$55.20 for the 15kg

$60? for the 11m chain

$120? for the 20m chain

 

about $250 all up

 

as the galv. guy said, under half the cost of replacing with new

 

but for now the engine needs that cash, so anchors and chain just got a quick zinc-it spray

 

engine now mostly disconnected ready to be slid out of the bay

[erice 732]

damn!

 

seem to have found why the front cyl wasn't firing

 

head off shows scored cyl wall, so probably broken ring(s)

 

hoping to lift engine on blocks, remove sump + bearing cap, push piston out top to change rings

 

can the bore be honed smooth in the boat?

[rossd 16]

You are at a cross road here! Do you do what will amount to a botch up job or remove the whole engine for a proper recondition? With a few rags in the right place you could hone the bore in place with a risk of getting grit where you don't want it. It probably will not get rid of the score though and more important will need to get rid of any lip in bore above top ring.

[wheels 543]

Sorry mate, that score, from what I can tell in the pic, looks too bad for a hone. I think you are going to need to have the cylinders rebored and that means new Pistons, crank ground, bearings etc etc.

[Black Panther 1,581]

What does a second hand replacement cost?

[Guest]

sorry bud but it's a new liner there and possibly piston as well, so out it comes. Before you go too far though check the exhaust valve for signs of rust (as in deep pits etc on the manifold side of things) which could indicate exhaust water backflow at rest, some designs particularly raked transoms like an H28 will concentrate wave force at anchor and pump things up a bit filling exhaust box and in time exhaust manifold and if an exhaust valve is open then into the cylinder jamming/ corroding and eventually breaking rings etc, if you do see historic rust on the valve you'll at least have a likely culprit and can do something about it so it aint going to happen again, and a rule of thumb for water injection for exhausts is somewhere round 300mm fall between injection point and top of muffler box. check out the air filter side of things as well to be sure nothings disintegrated or allowed things past, Vetus use Mitsubishi as a base engine so like Kubota it's far cheaper to go down the tractor route and look at a reco'd shortblock as opposed to rebuilding............. never forget though something caused that to happen......find out what and good luck

[Chloe 7]

As a general rule off thumb it will cost around $1000 a cylinder for a recondition rebuild.

[erice 732]

today's guess as to why the rings broke is a soft? seize

- due to overheat

- maybe the 50% blocked - never cleaned heat exchanger

- or due to lack of coolant

- due to alloy corrosion at the back of the heat exchanger

- due to insufficient coolant changes

 

when drained the 'coolant' was like rusty water with no green or red coloration left, did feel a little 'soapy' so am guessing it was either very, very old, (2006? when the engine was put in?) or the leak was simply continually topped up, (diluting the glycol) by the previous nz owners instead of fixing the leak until they forgot to top it up, over-heated the engine, resulting in a brief seize

 

pic below from an ad non-factory faster acting over-heat alarms

http://www.saltyjohn.co.uk/sentry_cooli ... _alarm.htm

 

the leak on this engine was rusting out the left engine rail

 

the corrosion repair so far is this

 

 

based on the very complete set of pics of a 4cyl vetus - mitsubishi break-down and rebuild in the usa

 

http://www.cse.psu.edu/~dunn/Alita/engine.html

http://www.cse.psu.edu/~dunn/Alita/engine1.html

http://www.cse.psu.edu/~dunn/Alita/engine2.html

 

this guy had the problem with raw seawater sitting in the top of the engine

 

the head of my 2cyl engine looks ok to me with no signs of a burned valve, bad seal corrosion etc

 

[wheels 543]

Is that your engines head erice? If it is, it looks like the engine has done very little work. You are still going to need to bore the Cylinders and fit oversize Pistons, but you may not need to grind the crank, or replace any of the Crank bearings. You only need to do that on a high hrs engine where fitting new Pistons/Rings places a lot more load on the old bearings and they fail. That's a little saving. Then there is the Head. I looks great condition and so you would get away with nothing needed there either. A bit more of a saving. You have already done the injectors, so no more cost there. So if you an remove the engine yourself and get it to a reconditioner, he might be able to just bore the Cylinders which is not too expensive and you could get away with just 4 new Pistons/rings and end shells.

[erice 732]

only a 2cyl so even less

 

engine fitted 2006 in northern hemisphere

 

boat only has a 40ltr built-in tank + a 20ltr plastic one so it's unlikely that it motored across the atlantic + pacific

 

and boat basically been on sitting mooring for last 4 years

[erice 732]

big surprise!

 

blocked up the engine, drained the newish looking oil + filter, dropped the sump, removed the big-end bearing cap nuts + cap

 

NO BEARING SHELLS............ nothing, nada, zip....the conrod was running directly on the crank.......

 

pushed the piston up through the bore + and the rings aren't broken, look fine

 

presumably the lack of fwd piston, conrod crank bearings screwed up the timing + compression enough that the fwd cyl couldn't ignite the fuel?

 

 

[rossd 16]

What!!??

[wheels 543]

Nothing at all? You found nothing in the bottom of the sump? It must have sounded like a bag of hammers when it was running.

With no bearing, the Piston would never reach full stroke and thus full compression and thus not enough heat to ignite the Fuel.

So how badly worn is the crank? Is this just the one cylinder, or both?

What about the Score mark in the bore?

Obviously something serious has happened, someone has pulled it apart and had no idea what they were doing. They probably had no idea what the left over bits were.

Either that, or they had a repair at sea and this was an "only start in emergency to get me out of trouble" plan.

[erice 732]

the good rear cylinder i haven't touched, don't want to

 

a few days ago when the head came off i did notice some slop in the movement of the fwd piston + a little clank when turning the engine over by hand. that would have been due to the lack of the crank shell bearings

 

the firing, working rear cyl. bottom end looks and feels tight. so i'm not touching it

 

how did the shell bearings leave the conrod?

 

taking the sump off took some time, the sealant and paint looked to have been factory...

 

had a friend who lived in the mountains and brought his auto terrano to me complained of poor braking

 

took his rear calipers off to find no pads, just heavily burned pistons eating into the brake rotors

 

i can only guess he wore straight through the friction material, and coming down the mountain switchbacks got the steel backing plates so hot they folded out of there somehow

 

so on this boat is it possible that the bearing was spun? run like that for so long it disintegrated, some tiny bits ended up scoring the sides of the alloy piston and a few scores of the iron bore

 

but it all was washed out of the engine with repeated oil + filter changes?

 

the boat came with 3 spare prop anodes

3 spare water separator filters

3 spare vetus fuel filters

but no spare engine oil filters....

 

will take the piston, head and pics in to the diesel mechanic for options...

[erice 732]

last week when the head came off took this phone video

 

was puzzled by the 'clunk' at 6sec

 

 

[wheels 543]

but it all was washed out of the engine with repeated oil + filter changes?

Nope, that's impossible. The shell is called just that. It is a hardened steel shell with white metal poured into the shell as the actual bearing material. Lets say the bearing got starved of oil due to a blockage in the crank oil feed. The Crank will grab the white metal and via a lot of friction, the White metal will all end up as a pile of shavings in the bottom of the sump under the Crank journal. The crank Journal will most likely have turned Blue from Friction heat.

From factory, they do not seal the Sump gasket, so there is another clue.

So using our powers of Deduction dear Homes, I suspect this engine has been played with.

You are going to have to pull that other Piston, simply because the Crank is stuffed anyway. I can see obvious wear just from the photo which means I doubt very much the Crank is going to be able to be saved. Besides, that score mark in the cylinder is going to have to be machined out. A Hone won't work. If you can see score marks, it's serious. Looking at the marks on the cylinder and Piston skirt, I also suspect that the rings had broken in that cylinder and have been replaced. If it was due to something being picked up from the oil, then the other cylinder would have the same damage. If it's hasn't, then chances are it is something that has happened to just that cylinder, which really, the only possible has to be the cylinder rings that could cause that kind of damage. Something sucked into the engine would be embedded in the Piston head, so that rules that out.

This is starting to look like a very expensive issue.

Is there any recourse with the original owner? There is no way this engine would run for long. We are talking minutes, not hrs. The only reason it was not even shorter that minutes is due to that cylinder not firing. If it had of fired, then the damage would have been totally destructive and would happen in seconds. The fault with this engine had to have be known as it would have to have been done on purpose and it would likely have never have been run after the repair. There may have been a really interesting story behind it, or it may simply be "Idiot let lose with tools", or a slap it together and lets sell it quick and not tell the new owner.

[Dagwood 57]

You've come this far - do it once do it right.

Patch up jobs are more often than not a waste of time and money. They're worth less than nil to a new owner and deliver no peace of mind while you own it.

[erice 732]

if the crank is beyond repair i guess the engine would be better broken down to parts and sold

 

this ex-saildrive 3cyl yanmar is cheap, how hard would it be to mate to the existing transmission? or would it need a bigger transmission anyway?

 

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/boats-m ... 627493.htm

 

then there's this air cooled 20hp

 

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/boats-m ... 657045.htm

 

right up to a new beta

 

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/boats-m ... 431967.htm

 

might see what the industrial mitsubishi L2E base engine would cost in japan

[wheels 543]

The first thing I would do is price up a new Crank, 2 new Pistons, A new Connecting rod, rings and Gasket set. Ask a recon guy what boring two cylinders would cost. You might find all up it is not too bad, you end up with a really good engine and it fits right back in with no hassles.

Going to some other engine can become a nightmare and huge expense. The Yanmar may look cheap, but it is an unknown, and will take some work to fit and it is far more powerful which can also cause issues. Forget the air cooled, they get far too hot in a confined space and will cause big problems.