bsangs
E35-3 - New Jersey
In Spring of '22, when "Radiance" was new to me, I had the yard do some of the routine maintenance items for the first time, since I was unfamiliar. I watched each time and became confident enough to do them on my own. One task I missed being present for was the Racor and secondary fuel filter changes. Sure enough, first time we tried to go out after the yard changed the filters last season, the engine wouldn't stay on. Was lucky enough to have somebody familiar with the engine, and he helped run me through the air bleeding process and eventually all was copasetic.
Flash forward to today, when I changed the fuel filters. Followed the procedure to a T. Immediately knew something was amiss, as the main Racor screw top pump did nothing after changing the primary. Didn't pump out air, or diesel. Hmmm. Weird. OK, I'll double back to that. Changed the secondary filter (old one was very clean still, good to know), opened the bleeding screw, went to town on the lift pump until diesel bubbled out. Great. Went further up line to the high pressure line, loosened the nut, bled again, all good. Back to the Racor, and the little screw top pump still produced nothing, but I'd filled the filter and bowl with diesel before reattaching, and since all the other bleed screws worked properly, figured I was good.
She fired right up. Look at me. Amateur diesel mechanic. And after about 30 seconds...she died. Shit. Back to the bleeding process...fired up, quickly died again. I'd taken a diesel class last fall, so went into the nav desk and pulled out my notes. Ah, the decompression valves! Flipped them, cracked a few nuts open, waited for diesel to spit out all three, flipped the levers back into place and was good to go. She fired right up. This time, after about three minutes, she died again. At this point, I figured I'd Tim Taylored the damn thing somehow, and should have just paid for the simple task in the first place. Sheepishly contacted my marina yard engine guy, and he came over, did the same things, got the same results. Puzzling.
Then he started looking closely, and here my friends is how I found out all the damn places air can leak into a Yanmar 3GM30F:
-- The Racor screw pump was missing a shaft piston - needed to actually pump air and diesel from its bleed screw - but it was a missing seal beneath the screw pump top that was letting in air.
-- The secondary fuel filter bleed screw had a broken seal.
-- The high pressure line bleed screw was cracked, and its seal broken too.
He opined all of these were the original hardware.
(How this was running without choking on air is a mystery to me. Not a single engine issue all season. Guess when it was all tightened up last season, it stayed air-tight until I - figuratively or literally - cracked the seals today.)
He replaced all the broken/missing seals and the broken nut. We bled the lines again. Fired her up and....ran her for 25 minutes, without issue. Three hours later I tried again, and all was well as I ran her for about 15 minutes.
Couldn't help but think of Christian's rudder post ordeal and how at the end of everything he did, it was something as simple as a new zerk fitting and some grease that likely solved the problem. Well, after nearly 3-1/2 hours trying to figure out how a routine fuel filter change could render my workhorse of an engine inoperable, it turns out that it was because of a nut, and three rubber seals, all of which could fit on one of my fingers at the same time. Mama was right, it really is the little things in life.
Flash forward to today, when I changed the fuel filters. Followed the procedure to a T. Immediately knew something was amiss, as the main Racor screw top pump did nothing after changing the primary. Didn't pump out air, or diesel. Hmmm. Weird. OK, I'll double back to that. Changed the secondary filter (old one was very clean still, good to know), opened the bleeding screw, went to town on the lift pump until diesel bubbled out. Great. Went further up line to the high pressure line, loosened the nut, bled again, all good. Back to the Racor, and the little screw top pump still produced nothing, but I'd filled the filter and bowl with diesel before reattaching, and since all the other bleed screws worked properly, figured I was good.
She fired right up. Look at me. Amateur diesel mechanic. And after about 30 seconds...she died. Shit. Back to the bleeding process...fired up, quickly died again. I'd taken a diesel class last fall, so went into the nav desk and pulled out my notes. Ah, the decompression valves! Flipped them, cracked a few nuts open, waited for diesel to spit out all three, flipped the levers back into place and was good to go. She fired right up. This time, after about three minutes, she died again. At this point, I figured I'd Tim Taylored the damn thing somehow, and should have just paid for the simple task in the first place. Sheepishly contacted my marina yard engine guy, and he came over, did the same things, got the same results. Puzzling.
Then he started looking closely, and here my friends is how I found out all the damn places air can leak into a Yanmar 3GM30F:
-- The Racor screw pump was missing a shaft piston - needed to actually pump air and diesel from its bleed screw - but it was a missing seal beneath the screw pump top that was letting in air.
-- The secondary fuel filter bleed screw had a broken seal.
-- The high pressure line bleed screw was cracked, and its seal broken too.
He opined all of these were the original hardware.
(How this was running without choking on air is a mystery to me. Not a single engine issue all season. Guess when it was all tightened up last season, it stayed air-tight until I - figuratively or literally - cracked the seals today.)
He replaced all the broken/missing seals and the broken nut. We bled the lines again. Fired her up and....ran her for 25 minutes, without issue. Three hours later I tried again, and all was well as I ran her for about 15 minutes.
Couldn't help but think of Christian's rudder post ordeal and how at the end of everything he did, it was something as simple as a new zerk fitting and some grease that likely solved the problem. Well, after nearly 3-1/2 hours trying to figure out how a routine fuel filter change could render my workhorse of an engine inoperable, it turns out that it was because of a nut, and three rubber seals, all of which could fit on one of my fingers at the same time. Mama was right, it really is the little things in life.
