391: Our Engine Kept Shutting Down… The Cause Shocked Us

We have been plagued with some really serious engine problems. Well, that didn't work. Not 100% confident this is the right way to go. Okay, we're a little baffled. He wigged out on us. Really don't know what's going on right now. It's too weird and we just don't understand it. We think it's time to hire a professional. Doing nothing isn't going to help. And it looks clean. I cannot believe it. That is the best. It's fun. I like challenges and I'm giddy over every little... Hey guys, we are in Tahiti, but we only have about one and a half months left before we check out and head west towards Fiji. If you follow our channel, you know we have been plagued with some really serious engine problems. Our port engine just kept shutting down and we think it's because we have asphaltenes, which after we've treated them, have ended up clogging up our filters, which is normal. And it just shuts our engine down. So we need to tackle that problem. And also our starboard engine is not revving above 2200. So we need to also fix that. Today we're going to try and tackle our port side problem by creating our own fuel polishing system. Thank you, Andrew, on Reload and Charge for the recommendation and for our friends Mike and Janet who brought parts when they came to visit us. Now we have everything we need to make the system. So the captain is going to get right on it. What I'm getting ready to do is build a diesel fuel polishing system. Here in the tropics, fuel can go bad several ways. It can degrade, especially in a sailboat where you use it very infrequently. Diesel fuel has a shelf life of about just a few months. So what's going to happen is you're going to get phase separation where the water, which is dissolved in the diesel fuel, is going to separate and the water is going to fall to the bottom. So you're going to get water in your tank. If you do not treat your fuel, you're going to get bacteria and that's going to cause a problem. And also, over the years, you'll get fuel degradation, degradative fuel particles, asphaltenes, that type of thing. Sticky, tarry, they stick to your tank. They're hard to remove. We have treated our tanks to dissolve that. Without running the engines, we are going to polish, cycle all of that fuel through the ray core. And then we may have to do this several times. That's what we're setting out to do. I've never done this before. There's so many things I've never done. Learning a lot doing these modifications. I really hope this helps you. If you have to do something like this for your boat, or I hope this helps you be glad you don't own a boat and have to do stuff like this. If you appreciate material like this, please hit that subscribe button. Hit the like button. Make sure to forward this and share with other people and leave us a comment. We'd love to have that. Thank you so much. So this is drawing from the tank. Well, that didn't work because the fuel pump to pump the fuel from the tank all the way up to the jerry can was not strong enough. So we had to go to plan B and pump directly from the tank. Listen to that. Our own fuel polishing system. And it doesn't cost us two grand to do it. Okay, we're a little baffled, which in my case that's not too difficult. Our fuel is a little cloudy. And when we tried to pump it out of the tank with the tube, it got clogged. So we really don't know what's going on right now. So we think it's time to hire a professional. This morning we have some good news. Maybe we have a person who does tank cleaning coming to the boat to give us an estimate for polishing the fuel and cleaning the tank. We have asphaltenes in the bottom of the port tank. It's pretty bad. And we really need someone professionally to get in there and do something with it, we hope. So this is the only polishing place that we know of here in Tahiti. Not 100% confident this is the right way to go, but we're really not sure at this point what we should do since this engine is only on bypass and that's how we can use it is only on bypass. So we really want to get off of that, get back to using the tank. And possibly filling it up with fuel would help dilute the problem or it might exacerbate it, so we're not really sure. But we've got someone from Pacific Fuel coming out to help us. They have not been great about communication. Sort of been, yeah, we're coming tomorrow, then they don't show up, they don't communicate. Yeah, we're interested, then we don't hear from them for two days. So not really confident of this group at the moment. But maybe it will turn out to be exactly what we need, let's hope. We don't use a lot of fuel, so the fuel is slightly degraded. Dominique just left, he is the owner of Pacific Fuel, the company that is going to help us out here. He said our tanks look really good inside. He is not concerned, he just said that the fuel is old, which is no surprise. We've got really big fuel tanks and we don't use fuel very often. So his suggestion is to take the fuel out and throw it away. So that's what we're going to do. And he's going to check both the fuel lines and the fuel pickup tube to make sure there are no clogs and nothing is broken. Should be a very good day if that fixes everything. Yesterday we texted back and forth. We were looking forward to this week to take the boat in and work with Pacific Fuel Polishing to take the fuel out of our tanks and get our tanks clean. But when he sent the quote, he changed from what he quoted on the boat, and of course the price was higher, and the description of what he was going to do didn't include the things that we had agreed upon in the quote that he gave us on the boat. So we inquired about that, and we also asked about the cost of the marina, if that was included or if that would be an additional fee. We just needed to know all of that. And just for clarification on the quote that he gave us in writing that was different than the one that he gave us previously in writing. And his response was really odd. He wigged out on us and said, I don't want to do the job. So he's not doing the job. We're not really sure what happened. We said we're really sorry. There seems to be a misunderstanding. He speaks French. We speak English. We use translator. But it's just too weird. It's too weird, and we just don't understand it. So we are going to tackle this on our own. And Brown is already in here taking a look at the tank. We have got to take off some of the fittings on the tank that we haven't taken off before. Where's my tip jar? We've never taken any of this stuff off. Like fuel supply. Anytime you take apart something on a tank, you have the possibility that it could break. Aluminum is very soft. But the good thing is this was removed four years ago, which means midway through our boat's history, we hope that this sealant, which is pipe thread sealant, is removable. I bet it will be. And hopefully this hole is big enough to where I can get the tube, I'm sure it will be, all the way down where this one was so I can suck out whatever little bits and stuff. This goes to the lowest point in the fuel tank. Alright, that's good. No, there's an eagle ray right there. We're super gun shy not wanting to break anything out here. We've never done anything like this before, so... Next step is we need to use this pump to take the fuel out of the fuel tank and put it into jerry cans, and that way we can get rid of this fuel on land. System is set up. Now we've got to get some jerry cans out there for the fuel lift to go into the jerry cans. We hope it'll lift it. System's working, fuel is going into the can. This one's the one we're filling right now. I'll put this here, and this will extend over here. I'll put some of this up underneath. Local mad scientists. It's kind of what you have to be to own a boat, right? The process is moving along. Brown is going to go out and he's going to blow through the fuel line to see if anything comes out here. Maybe the clog is between the ray core and here. Yeah, air's coming out. Yep. So a little bit bewildering. We are taking the fuel out, but we're not seeing any of the black asphaltenes that we've seen before that clogged the pipe. The last time we did this out of the sender, we also don't want to have another problem. So we have a couple of options. What do we do? Do we just go fill up this tank completely and hope that it waters it down enough so that the problem is gone? Or do we open up the sender now and try pulling fuel from that side and see if that's where all the asphaltenes have landed? Because the last time we did that, it clogged the tube. We just don't know. But we've got to solve this problem and doing nothing isn't going to help. We're going to take the sender off and put the tube down in that area. That's where we clogged the last time. Also, what's perplexing is, are we getting more air through there or fuel? Huh. Boy, you can really see in there now. Definitely some asphaltenes, a little bit of corrosion. You know, the reader doesn't read properly. Oh, really? The sender. So it looks like we're empty. So I think what we need to do is, we really, when we put fuel in, we need to... Let's take this out. This is really suspect. The sender is very suspect. Okay. I'd like to be able to look in the tank. I'm going to get the camera. This is our little camera that can get into tiny spaces. And we use it with Ron's iPad so we can check out what's happening inside the tank. That's the bottom of the tank. Here's the tube. So I think there's a little bit of fuel down there. And it looks clean. So these are all good signs, you know? A tip for anyone removing your sender, you absolutely need to make sure you number before everything gets all greasy the sender screws as well as where they fit on the tank. We're a little suspicious of our fuel tank sender. We have the tank completely empty and reading more than half in the tank. Wow, this is crazy. Empty tank. I cannot believe it. Test. Rewire this, I think. We may have found the problem. I mean, who knows. Everything's off, right? Yeah, it's highly suspect. We replaced the butt connector and I've reconnected it. And it'll be a miracle if it works. The wire, unfortunately, looks really bad. It probably needs to be replaced. Nope, still going up. All right. All right, guys, we are off to the big city. We need to find some tank dope to close up the fittings on our fuel tank that we've taken out. And we have some things here on the boat, but we're just not super sure about using them. So better to be safe. If we can find this goob that we need, that would be better. And while we're at it, we're going to go over and see the boat that's sinking. Oh, look at that view. Never gets old. Like with all things marine here in Tahiti, we've gone to four stores and have not found what we needed yet. This is very typical of things happening in Papeete. So we always fly stuff in with friends who are coming for that very reason. So we're going to go to Ace now. Hopefully they have what we need. Another store down. We are now coming to our final marine shop and they're usually pretty good. All right, last chance. Permatex, Loctite, True Blue. We didn't find what we needed and we were going to go back to one of the stores, but it's closed. So rough afternoon. We got some good exercise. Didn't accomplish everything we needed, but we did get some things that we needed. So heading back to the boat. And we're living in Tahiti and we're not at home where it's cold. And it's straight tropical. Yeah, it's so nice. So no complaints. Man, it's hot. Oh, man. That is the best. So as you know, we've had an issue with revving above 1800 on our starboard engine. And our port side engine has just been dying. Now, since we bypassed the port, we've had no problems. And now we're bypassing the starboard just to see if potentially we can rev up. If we can rev up, then we know it's a fuel issue and we've got to then investigate it from there. If it doesn't rev up, then we've got, I don't know what happens. We've got an electrician coming and maybe it's an electrical issue. Starboard engine's running. We've got that on bypass. Everything's on bypass. All right, well, I think we have figured out the problem. It's definitely the fuel source. It could be there's a leak in the fuel line somewhere. Or the racor. Yep. And so it's possible it could be the pickup tube. But I guarantee you if I replace that racor, this thing will fix itself. Well, that's good news. We've made a step in the right direction. Trying to get the engines put back together since we think we now understand what's wrong with them. Struggling a little bit. We've changed out the very expensive racor filter for a Chinese version and struggling a little bit to get that to prime and the engine to start. I think this is probably going to work. I have cleaned out the Dometic, given some laundry. Brown's made some yogurt. Our washing machine is on its last legs. It's been dumping junk all in the laundry and we're getting ready to put the fuel tank back together in the stern cabin and see if we can start that engine. But we've got to get the starboard engine started first. The captain has finished his work out here in the starboard engine. This trail of tools. And now, since we know the whole reason we have a problem with this engine is because we have no fuel in it, the captain is putting it all back together again. New hoses, everything. It's fine. I like challenges and I'm giddy over every little setback. At least you remembered to put the hose clamps on before you put the hose on. That's good. The captain's moving fast. Look at this. Everything's back together down here. And now he's moving to the port engine. Both engines started? Yeah. Well, that's a good start. That's a good start, isn't it? So far, so good. We got the anchor up. Both engines are still running, which is good. Brown just tried to run the starboard at high revs and it didn't work. So it is doing it in reverse but not in forward. So we're going to have to try and figure that one out. We thought we were good to go, but we're not. So one more thing to take care of. But we're on the way, and that's what's important. We'll get a lot of fuel. Maybe the fuel will take care of it. I don't know. It'll be interesting to see. At least it's nice and calm and sunny today. We finally heard from the fuel dock. They've given us permission to come in, so that'll be good. We are thankful there's no other boat in there at the moment. Captain rocked it. All right, so the port, we're going to put it in 70. 70? 7-0? Filling the port tank right now. We need 265 liters, so we've got another 7-8 liters to go here. Almost done. Then we've got to fill starboard. It's going to be an expensive purchase today. All paid and ready to go. That was a big task to get all that done. Dump the trash. All right, good job. Up to 23? Yeah. 22. With full tanks, the starboard is up to 22. Boy, I got busy at the fuel station there at the end. That's a good sign. It's not completely fixed, but I guess we'll watch it over the next couple weeks. If it doesn't improve 100%, then we'll have to get the mechanic in. Coming back. Thankfully, no one took our spot. All right, guys, we made it back safe and sound. I think in the same exact spot we were in when we left. It's so beautiful. It's really nice to have that out of the way. Our tank's full of fuel. Our engines are happy now that they actually have fuel to run on. I think today we're going to just take a chill day. If we even know how to do that anymore, I don't know.