Engine Died !!!

[Argonautical]

Day three with George on the day skipper course............Night crossing from Cowes back to Hayling Island.

Pants rainy weather, spoiled an otherwise interesting excercise, but we were doing o.k. up untill about a mile off the west Pole, when the starboard engine decided to simply die!

All power died, all guages, lights, diagnostics, everything electrical, DEAD on the Starboard side.

Thank God for a calm friendly fantastic skipper on board, first night crossing first engine failure.

Limped back, fortunately wind with tide on one engine.

Tim, the engineer, has now been fiddling and eliminating potential faults now for a fair while on and off over the last few days, and is now nearly ready to be dismantling the aft cabin, with a veiw to replacing the entire loom to the starboard engine.

Boat Targa 37, twin KAD 44 edc engines...............Anyone got any clues, or previous experiences that may help to shed some light. I have every comfidence in the engineer, but by his own admittance its a new one on him despite years of experience. The only build up symptom otherwise before the engine failure was............................The need to occasionally turn off the master switches in order to re start the engines after turning them off. A strange situation indeed and one which the engineer is fairly certain would have lead to a pointer of bigger problems to come!

All in all, a lot peeeedm of with the whole ordeal at the moment and loosing faith fast.

Best regards
Jas.

 

[ians]

Hi jason

I no he may well of tried this but has the engineer tried swopping the EDC units round from the engine that works ok,
Have heard of a few problems with EDC units.

 

[Argonautical]

Hi Ian, yes mate he's swapped the lot!

Had the starboard engine cranking on the port wiring and vice versa. The first thing he checked really were the 'Brains'.

Thanks anyway
Jas.

 

[Questor]

How old is the boat? The master switches are pretty crap quality, and go manky with age. I would start looking at these. We had to replace ours when the boat was about 6 years old. The lead up symptoms were similar followed by total electrical failure on port side.......just when I didn't need it. Replacement costs are about £8 each

 

[djefabs]

Hi Jason
Sorry to hear your news, but before you start ripping things out I had a similar problem with '44s on my previous boat. The duty engineer was full of doom and gloom about the ''whole wiring loom has got to come out mate'' and would not be able to do it for many days. /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
When it was checked out by somebody else it turned out to be the ignition switch needed changing together with a fuse that had blown due to the ignition switch fault.
I think you will know who the 'somebody else' is and would ask for a second opinion before dismantling the boat. Surely the worst case is to identify the faulty wire in the loom and make suitable replacement????

 

[Argonautical]

Hi Derek, drop me a pm with your number mate. Ill give you a call!

Cheers

 

[brianrunyard]

[ QUOTE ]
The only build up symptom otherwise before the engine failure was............................The need to occasionally turn off the master switches in order to re start the engines after turning them off. Best regards
Jas.

[/ QUOTE ]
Have you tried bypassing the master switch it could have deteriated to a point where it doesn't work at all.

 

[stephenmartin]

Had a ford d type die on me mid channel...took a week to find somebody in france who could sort out the problem....turned out to be the diesel injection pump slipped moving the timing...20 minutes later and 30 euros well spent i was a happy boater again....

Also dropped a valve on the other engine (again mid channel going to france) and sorted that out myself....after plucking up the courage to strip down the top end of the engine...its quite an achievement to do it yourself

 

[Its_Only_Money]

[ QUOTE ]
The only build up symptom otherwise before the engine failure was............................The need to occasionally turn off the master switches in order to re start the engines after turning them off.

[/ QUOTE ]

That is a workaround, not a symptom. Would the engines not crank at all or crank but not run without the master switch cycling off and back on??? Were both engines affected? How long did the master switch(es) need to be off for it to work?

 

[andyball]

where's the boat?

 

[Whitelighter]

Sparkes Marina

 

[PCUK]

It's frightening that modern "marine" engines die due to lack of electricity.

 

[andyball]

Thanks Jez - I was err worried abt a different engineer then.

 

[Dave_Snelson]

Yep, had exactly the same symptoms on Coney Island - albeit they are petrol (LPG) engines.

Turned out to be a fuse with poor connectivity inside the fuse holder. Replaced fuse and holder, no probs for 2+ years.

The two engines are fused separately with separate wiring (for obvious reasons) and one of them went duff. It was intermittent at first, then hard failure occured.

 

[DoubleVision]

Had the same prob on one of my 42`s last year. Turned out to be the master 12v switch. on testing it only switched on momentarily then off in the fully on position /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif. Cost a fiver to fix--got to be worth testing it first. Unless you have had a fire or a seriouse current overload in the loom I would doubt that is at fault. I would also check all the earths. I had one come loose from the bell housing once--took me weeks to suss it. 2 turns with a spanner fixed that.
Whatever it turns out to be I hope its fixed soon and at minimal expense.
Paul

 

[Argonautical]

Cheers for your thoughts guys, The engineeeeeeeeeeeeer called me later this evening to say.........3 faults found, 2 I just aboiut understood thenm it was lost on my tiny mind.

Suffice to say she'll be up and running again by the weekend. It seems that she has half a KAD 44 loom and half original KAD 42 loom. Seeminly not a match made in heaven. However it will be nice to get a fresh attempt at my last two days 'Skippering Course' as soon as George is available again.

Thanks again chaps
Jas.

P.S. It seems one part of the fault was in the dash, another is in part of the loom connecting 132 odd wires together. The 132 wires have 12v on each side of a connector untill they are asked to do something at which time..........bugger all!

I hope you will all forgive my seemingly hopeless grasp of all things involving wires! /forums/images/graemlins/ooo.gif