I have posted various questions over the past year or so to get help with some engine problems. I decided it might help someone else out in the future to share my experience.
Things started out with me getting white smoke in the exhaust. I replaced injectors and glow plugs. Injectors hoping that would help the smoke and glow plugs because I was in there and they are only $8 each (Kubota parts). Unfortunately, this had no impact on the smoke.
Pretty soon after, I started having a hard start problem. I ended up rewiring the engine compartment including several of the modifications that have been documented on this site. I also replaced all the gages on the panel. One of my posts after I completed this was that I saw a big voltage drop on the glow plug switch. Long story short, I went back later and rechecked and got essentially no voltage drop across that same switch. Talking to a electrical engineering friend he suggested that maybe with a high current draw (about 30 amps on my circuit), if we had been pressing on that switch for some time, we probably heated it up enough to create a temporary resistance in the switch. I don't know if that was the case or not but if I only press for 10 seconds or so there is no drop.
At this point, I still had a starting problem and smoke.
The yard mechanic checked out the engine and found poor fuel delivery on the #1 injector. We rebuilt the fuel injector pump. Bingo. I also changed the thermostat since my engine ran at 160 and I wanted to get it up to 180 (another post I found here). Started and ran like a champ. Much more pep and could now get 6 knots at 2000 rpm in no current.
But still had white smoke although not as bad.... My auto mechanic suggested that my problem was in the exhaust heat exchanger.
So I pulled it and took it to a radiator shop (there is a blog post by Mainsail on this). That (finally!) fixed the white smoke.
This all took me almost 2 years but since at one point I was thinking I might have to repower, I am very happy to say the engine runs great and I am now pretty confident it will last a long time. I also learned quite a bit so it was worth all the emotional stress I went through trying to get a reliable engine. At the end of the day, I think I needed to do pretty much each thing that I ended up doing but the Injector pump was the one item I had not seen mentioned on the site.
Grateful to all the folks who make this site available and provide such great info. I don't think I could have ever fixed all this without that resource.
Lee Nill
Things started out with me getting white smoke in the exhaust. I replaced injectors and glow plugs. Injectors hoping that would help the smoke and glow plugs because I was in there and they are only $8 each (Kubota parts). Unfortunately, this had no impact on the smoke.
Pretty soon after, I started having a hard start problem. I ended up rewiring the engine compartment including several of the modifications that have been documented on this site. I also replaced all the gages on the panel. One of my posts after I completed this was that I saw a big voltage drop on the glow plug switch. Long story short, I went back later and rechecked and got essentially no voltage drop across that same switch. Talking to a electrical engineering friend he suggested that maybe with a high current draw (about 30 amps on my circuit), if we had been pressing on that switch for some time, we probably heated it up enough to create a temporary resistance in the switch. I don't know if that was the case or not but if I only press for 10 seconds or so there is no drop.
At this point, I still had a starting problem and smoke.
The yard mechanic checked out the engine and found poor fuel delivery on the #1 injector. We rebuilt the fuel injector pump. Bingo. I also changed the thermostat since my engine ran at 160 and I wanted to get it up to 180 (another post I found here). Started and ran like a champ. Much more pep and could now get 6 knots at 2000 rpm in no current.
But still had white smoke although not as bad.... My auto mechanic suggested that my problem was in the exhaust heat exchanger.
So I pulled it and took it to a radiator shop (there is a blog post by Mainsail on this). That (finally!) fixed the white smoke.
This all took me almost 2 years but since at one point I was thinking I might have to repower, I am very happy to say the engine runs great and I am now pretty confident it will last a long time. I also learned quite a bit so it was worth all the emotional stress I went through trying to get a reliable engine. At the end of the day, I think I needed to do pretty much each thing that I ended up doing but the Injector pump was the one item I had not seen mentioned on the site.
Grateful to all the folks who make this site available and provide such great info. I don't think I could have ever fixed all this without that resource.
Lee Nill