I’ve written (republished from an article I wrote a while ago) a longer bit on diesel bugs etc.. a bit more technical if you are interested. Look at post 30/11/14 Cheers.
Let’s hear that a’chuggin.
Shit happens. It happened in the Bay of Islands. Almost always at the most inconvenient time, this one after an eight hour trip by bus from Tauranga at six pm just when we promised the mooring owner that we would vacate and move to our newly acquired one . We had rowed out to be greeted by a recalcitrant diesel that just refused to cough on command. Wild Bird had been left unattended and unloved for a month.
The engine just refused to start, no matter how much pre heating and no matter how much cranking. Step one. Go to sleep. Step two. Read the how to books on diesels. I needed go no further than the trouble shooting section on starting a diesel that refuses to do so.
I brushed past the section that told me to remove the bird’s nest from the air intake. I kid you not.. this referred to troubleshooting on big fishing boats. That gunk in the tank was not there. The secondary filter bled clean fuel. The air intake was fine, and the oil in the sump was clean. After bleeding the two screws on the high pressure injector pump, it still did not start. Ahhhhg. Back to the book. I checked the stop button was working properly and in the right position. I checked the engine flywheel was indeed flying around.
The final solution was brilliant. Activate the stop button, then run the starter motor for a max. of 30 seconds then wait five minutes to start again. The good book promised that this would do two things. It would lubricate the cylinders with oil and most importantly, rid the injector pipes of any residual air.
Whoomph. Away she went. I think the old girl had lost some compression while we were off the boat when the cylinders and rings lost their lubrication. For good measure, the 30 second crank would have rid the pipes of any air if indeed there was air present.
Incidentally, while working in the bilge again.. the default location for me in the mornings.. one of the fuel pipes cracked. Hmm probably part of the above problem. I then replaced all nitrile hoses and nylon pipes associated with fuel delivery and return to the tanks. 20 years service is not a bad run, and it would be embarrassing squirting diesel with friends on board this summer.
New nitrile pipes. De-Bug on the left, filter, water trap, filter.
The De-Bug is another story. It is a marvelous little unit that kills random microbes before they wreck havoc in our fuel system.
Next, we go to a nice anchorage and clean the hull of fuzz and greeblies and throw out that bait catcher line while we breakfast. Let’s see if the snapper are as keen to jump into our frying pan as they were in the Gulf.
