I have fallen victim of the Curse of the Westerbeke. Saturday I went to the boat to winterize her. My routine is simple:
1. Drain the fresh water tank(s)
2. Drain the Hotwater Heater
3. Remove water filters
4. Blow the lines clear of any water
5. Change the Fuel Filters
6. Bleed the "Red Beast"
7. Run the engine in gear to warm engine, V-drive, & Transmission oil
8. Change all oil
9. Pump antifreeze through engine & head
10. Then go home
Saturday, items 1, 2, 3, 4, &5 were completed in record time (damn I am good). It 1:15 another 2 hours and I am on my way home! I bleed the "Red Beast" (something I have done probably 20 times) hopped up into the cockpit to start the engine crank, crank, crank - nothing. I know from experience if it does not start in the first 5 -10 seconds it is NOT starting. No problem I was rushing – rebleed the beast, take your time get it right. Starting at the racor, I check for leaks – no leaks. I carefully bleed the beast one more time. Crank, Crank, Crank – nothing.
To make a long story short, I repeated the look for leak, bleed, crank, no start, and curse, over and over. Because I only have to climb into cockpit to bleed the injectors & start the engine I do not put the stairs in place, I just pull myself up and jump back down.... Finally at approximately 6:15 (after almost 5 hours of bleeding) I hit the starter button & boom she burst into life and all is well. I spend the next 35 minutes cleaning up all of the diesel soaked paper towels and the diesel fuel I have dripped all around the engine and then go home. Step 8 will have to wait.
I have no idea what I did wrong the first dozen times or what I did right the last time – but today my arms, back, and legs are sore from pumping, bending, climbing, & jumping.... I can only say I am really getting old when I must take Advil and rest half a day from bleeding an engine..... :o
Garner
Maybe in step 5 you left the water trap valve on the Racor loose? Will not drip diesel, too viscous, but will suck a tiny stream of air bubbles under negative pressure. I've seen that stop and engine in the middle of the night halfway to Catalina.
Don't have a 108/107 but have any of you guys ever considered installing an electric lift pump. Turn it on, wait a minute, self bleeding. Yanmar and Kubota part is $65. Westerbeke is $165.
Pete
Pete,
I HAVE an electric fuel pump, and it is STILL a beast to bleed. I don't know why, but sometimes it works for me, and other times it don't. I'm lucky in that my exhaust will not waterlog back into the cylinders, but I am sure that most of the wear on my starter is from bleeding the engine. *shrugs*, I am just a neophyte diesel mechanic I'm sure.
I am a bit more confused than usual on this post. When I change my fuel filter, I leave it slightly loose and pump the little "priming" lever until fuel comes dribbling out. I tighten the fuel and hit the starter. The result has always been getty-up-and-go. I always do the filter change after the engine has been run and it is warm.
Only once did I have an hour or so invested in trying to start it and that was only after I pulled the motor, dragged it 375 miles, took it apart and dragged it back 375 miles and stuck it back in the boat. Am I doing something wrong?
Dale
Every Diesel engine has a low pressure fuel system that feeds the injector pump and a high pressure system that feed the injectors at maybe 15,000 PSI. When you change the fuel filter you get air in the low pressure system. My Westerbeke has both a manual pump for bleeding and an electric lift pump for running. The lift pump pressurizes the injector pump input with about 15 PSI.
I think if you can change the fuel filter and you can bleed all the air out of the line to the injector pump before you attempt to start the engine you will start right up. Filling the fuel filter housing up with clean fuel before you screw the cover back on is recommended. Bleeding the air out with the hand pump is recommended because I read some lift pumps will not pump dry.
If you don't get all the air out and then you turn the engine over you have now gotten air also into the injector pump and the high pressure lines. You will now have to star over and continue bleeding up to the injector pump low pressure line. The you will have to repair the damage done by bleeding the high pressure system. On my Engine the high pressure lines get bled by cracking the fittings on all the injectors and cranking the motor with the throttle wide open. Then tightening them up. A lot of air in the high pressure lines will keep the injectors from popping off so the air gets trapped.
My injector pump is "self bleeding". I am not sure what that really means as my users manual says you need to bleed everything in the correct sequence if its been taken apart. The brochure on the W58 calls it a " new self priming fuel system". I suppose that means means I can run it out of fuel and just fill the tank and go. Awesome ! Pete
Dale,
Is the spin on filter on the engine after the lift pump? If so, I love that approach. Pump it till it over flows and then spin it tight. But the Rakor filter is usually closer to the tank. Those need to be primed with fuel other wise you are going to have to pump all that air up the line. Pete
Dale,
That is the mystery... I have heard horror stories from other W40 owners but it has never taken me more than 15 minutes to bleed and restart the engine in the 11 years & 20 plus times I have performed this seemingly straight forward task..... Even the time I ran completely out of fuel, I was able to bleed and restart the engine (after adding fuel) in just a few minutes....
I have never felt more like I was in hell, doomed to repeat the same task over & over with the same results than I did on Saturday. Once started it runs fine and starts as always.
It felt like I bled a pint of diesel fuel from the system in the process. The good news is I was able to capture a big portion of the fuel with my shirt and polar fleece jacket which are still hanging in the garage.
I can only say it was a humbling afternoon as I was close to throwing my hands up and walking away.... I am now a believer in the "Curse of the Westerbeke".
Garner
First Pete's question. The Racor separator is ahead of the spin on engine filter. I have never had anything showing in the Racor's clear bowl so I have not had to prime that one, only the first time when I reinstalled it.
Garner, better the shirt and fleece jacket than diesel all over the boat. I have only had one instance besides the reinstall where the engine was not cooperative. I got on board, hit the button but it would not start. Crank, crank, crank, nothing. I shut off the raw water so as not to flood it out. Crank and more crank without even a hiccup. I looked and cranked and searched some more still nothing. My vent fan switch is under my rear cockpit hatch so I went back there to shut it off and discovered that I had never pushed the stop cable back in last time I shut the engine down the trip before. One thing is for sure, they will not start under those conditions. Shoved it in and it fired in the first revolution.
Dale
Dale, Same thing happened to me once. Only time my engine failed to start. Once I pushed the stop knob back it, the ole gal fired right up.
Cheers
Garner,
I am sure it was getting chilly in MD where your boat is. Have you checked the continuity on your glow plugs lately. I don't know if the 107 cu inch motors have enough compression to start without them but my 154 cu inch motor will not. Even on a hot day. When I first went to start it after the sale went through I found all 4 to be open circuited. Luckily I was able to cross it to a modern NGK part number for the Mazda B2500 Pickups which are plentiful in Great Britain, India, Pakistan and South Korea. $11 on EBay. Don't ever buy that part from Westerbeke. But It fired up immediately after I put those in.
I don't have a stop lever on my Bosch fuel injector pump. There is an electric solenoid for stop and start. Probably something that I should find a spare for. Pete
Pete,
Thank you for the idea on the glow plug / pre-heat... I feel pretty good this is working order...
Assuming it really is not a curse, I do have a question / concern. Over the last two (2) seasons I have noticed excessive white smoke from the exhaust when under heavier loads (i.e. at RPMs over 2,400). My first reaction is either poor combustion due to a) low compression (possible rings) or b) clogged / worn injectors not properly atomizing the fuel. I have not noticed any unusual oil consumption, so I am ruling out rings. I am leaning toward the possibility of 32+ year old injectors.
The engine has always produced a fair amount of white smoke at start but it clears within a minute or a minute & half of starting a high idle (1,200 RPMs). This season I have the sense that the white smoke is worse at start than in the past.
Maintenance not performed in the last 12 years:
Valve adjustment (shame on me)
Cleaning of the mixing elbow
Anything with injector pump or injectors (best I can tell the injectors & pump are untouched since February 1981 when the engine was built)
Thoughts anyone?
Garner
Garner,
If it were the rings it would be burning oil as well and that smoke would be blue. Injectors could indeed be the culprit. It could be something as simple as the engine is not up to temperature. We always worry about overheating perhaps your thermostat is bad and you are actually running cold. White smoke is an indication of incomplete fuel burn and if running under temperature that would not help.
A diesel should go thousands and thousands of hours. Let's say you have 3000 hrs. 3000 hrs at 50 mph = 150,000 miles. That is nothing for a diesel or the injector pump.
Dale
Pull the breather tube while the engine is running. Smoke coming out of there would indicate possible bad rings or worn valve guides. A 32 year old motor that's hard to start blows white smoke? I'm going to have to go with bad combustion due to low compression. Besides I'm not sure I could tell the difference between white smoke from poor compression due to bad rings and valves or blue smoke from bad rings and valves that's causing poor compression. May just be a little of both.
Definitely time to adjust the valve tappet clearances first then do a compression check. You can check compression through the glow plug holes ( usually metric 10mm). Check those plugs with an ohmmeter while they are out. If compression looks good (350-400 PSI). Have the injectors checked and rebuilt if needed. Dale may be right and you may luck out.
I've also heard that carbon build up on the head and pistons can cause poor combustion and white smoke. Pete
What's all this talk about Glow Plugs? According to the Westerbeke operators manual, a Westerbeke 4-107/108 has no Glow Plugs. Instead, on this W40 - there is a "Preheat Button" which energies a thermostat device located on the AIR intake manifold side of the engine. This device assists in vaporizing the fuel at the intake manifold inlet. The vaporized fuel is then drawn into the cylinder during cranking and allows for easy compustion during cranking when it's cold. The only way to check compression is to remove the injectors & check thru the injector holes.
Am I wrong about this?
Jack
Jack,
I am glad you asked... I was thinking the same thing. I do not have glow plugs on my 4-107 nor is there any place for them to be installed. I do have the "thermostat" device but I have never hooked mine back up when I reinstalled the engine back into the boat. To this day, after eight years, I have never had a need to.
The "thermostat" device as Perkins refers to it is located in the inlet elbow just under the mushroom intake cover. It consists of a coil or grate that is an electric heating element. When you press the preheat button, for 15 to 20 seconds prior to cranking the engine, the coil becomes very hot.
There is a bimetallic strip inside there as well. A bimetallic strip consists of two different metals bonded together. Each metal has a different thermal expansion rate, meaning each type of metal expands to a different length for a given temperature. When you heat the combined strip of metals, one side expands to a longer length than the other side and the strip bends.
Think of a board of wood. If you wet only one side of it, the wet side expands from absorbing the water. The dry side stays its normal size (small). As the wet side expands in size the board bends. That is why if you want wood not to warp, you should coat or seal all the sides even if they are not exposed.
As the coil heats up, the bimetallic strip bends. The strip is connected to a small valve that allows a trickle of fuel to dribble onto the hot heating element. The fuel turns into a warm vapor which is sucked into the engine when you crank it and promotes combustion at a colder temperature. The vapor is actually very tiny droplets of diesel fuel, it is not burnt fuel. The smaller the droplet size (mist) the quicker it will combust.
The preheater system consists of the heating element and bimetalic valve assembly located in the air inlet elbow and a small fuel reservoir bolted to the block. The fuel reservoir is feed with fuel from the fuel return tube that returns back to the fuel tank. A small hose that allows fuel from the reservoir connects to the bimetallic valve assembly.
To summarize, when you hit the preheat button, a heater element in the air inlet gets hot, real hot. The heat makes a magical valve open and fuel dribbles onto the heater element causing it to become vapor. The warm vapor is sucked into the engine when you hit the starter and the warm vaporized diesel fuel allows for a colder start.
Like I said, I have never used mine because it is not hooked up and it has started. I suppose I seldom attempt to start my engine when it is fifty degrees out because by that point the boat is out of the water for the impending snow and ice season.
By the way, Western New York when I am has received over 4ft of snow in less than a week. This is allot of snow for so early in the year. I suspect we are in for an old fashioned winter like when I was a kid. I know I was shorter, but it was not unusual for snow to be above the roof of the car when parked in the driveway. We had a 4ft fence between us and the neighbor and it often was not visible. It was not unusual to be able to dig tunnels and crawl along them on your hands and knees. Seldom could one see out of your basement windows and for the past week ours are dark. So much for global warming.
Dale