Fuel Injector Failure. Volvo D12

[BGS]

I recently encountered a disturbing problem with my Phantom 50 in Mallorca. After a 60 mile trip from Andratx to Cala D'Or in a stif Force 6 Easterly, I made the fatal, and idiotic mistake of telling my guests how trustworthy my boat was. As we punched through wave after wave, occassionally suffering the odd bucket or so of water over the flybridge, I gloated about the sea keeping sturdiness of the Fairline hull, and the sheer reliability of the Volvo engines. Stupid. I know. As we turned into Cala D'Or, to my horror, my guests pointed out thick black smoke pumping from the starboard exhaust. Having seen a boat go up in flames last year with similar amounts of black oily smoke, I had visions of an imminent boat fire. I stopped the starboard engine and soon after, to my massive relief, the smoke stopped. I took the boat to the far end if Cala D'Or and berthed her safely. After an hour or so I plucked up the courage to attempt to restart her Starboard engine. Nothing but a horrible clanking noise and oil spurting from the exhaust. I feared the very worst. I called my service engineer. James of Total Marine. Within one hour he attended the boat and diagnosed failed fuel injectors. A diagnosis I would not have even considered. In fact the pontoon talk consensus prior to James arriving was somewhere between smashed valves, damaged pistons and a failed turbo. However, confident in his diagnosis, James stripped the injectors, sent them for testing, and reported back several days later that two injectors had failed. Within a week he had serviced and repaired all the injectors and replaced them. The boat is now safely home at Andratx running as good as new. Reassuring to know there are still great engineers out there when you need them. Well done James.

 

[rafiki_]

Wow, quite a relief! Would be interested to understand why more than 1 injector failed? I'm not a great believer in coincidence, being an Engineer by background.

 

[BGS]

Now your stretching me. My understanding is that Total Marine have experienced several boats this year with Volvo Engines suffering failed injectors. The slightly worrying thing is that my boat is only three years old and logged about 200 hours. I certainly would not have expected to experience failed injectors this soon. Perhaps this is an issue for Volvo?
I should add though that the team at Total Marine where spot on. James, and his partner Tom where fantastic and bang on with their diagnosis. Together with Steve Wickenden (Sea School and delivery skipper), Tom has just brought the boat back home and Steve has verified she is running as good as new.

 

[omega2]

failed injecter

Could it be that due to the rough water conditions you stirred up the muck in the bottom of your tank? this in turn got by your filters and gunged up the injectors. Are you fuel tanks independent? Did your mechanic change the fuel filters?

 

[Portofino]

Genuine fuel filters? Changed as per service schedule ?
Water in the" dodgy " fuel ? = corrosion?
Or just a bad batch of injectors - unlucky along with loads of others ?
No dought someone will come along and expand these ideas

 

[rafiki_]

Genuine fuel filters? Changed as per service schedule ?
Water in the" dodgy " fuel ? = corrosion?
Or just a bad batch of injectors - unlucky along with loads of others ?
No dought someone will come along and expand these ideas

Even with a bad batch of injectors, for 2 to fail at the same time is stretching things. Fuel might be an issue, but it is a relatively new boat, so unless she filled with a bad batch, this is also unlikely. However, if this is indicative of a fuel issue, unless checked, there could be more failures ahead?

I hope VolvoPaul will be along in a bit to add his expertise.

 

[volvopaul]

Now your stretching me. My understanding is that Total Marine have experienced several boats this year with Volvo Engines suffering failed injectors. The slightly worrying thing is that my boat is only three years old and logged about 200 hours. I certainly would not have expected to experience failed injectors this soon. Perhaps this is an issue for Volvo?
I should add though that the team at Total Marine where spot on. James, and his partner Tom where fantastic and bang on with their diagnosis. Together with Steve Wickenden (Sea School and delivery skipper), Tom has just brought the boat back home and Steve has verified she is running as good as new.

Ther is one item that rings alarm bells.

We would need more info from total marine as to what engines, hours, ages before we could make anything from this but one thing springs to my mind on a relatively new and low hour engine is fuel, not dirty or water contaminated fuel as the d12 has a very good rated secondary filter with it's own water indicator fitted. I'd say and this is only off the cuff that the fuel in Majorca could have contributed to the failure should it be a different rating that won't lube the injectors as it should.

 

[Portofino]

Fuel additives
I have Allways put that " startron " from Starrbrite in mine every fill up .
Not just for the water / bug issue , but as some sort of injector cleaner allegedly
What does VP think about additives ? - any good or " snake oil" excuse the pun

Audi VAG groupe a few years ago had a torrid time with a batch of ignition coils
First replacing the odd one then ending up recalling from memory 60' 000
Units .faulty batch Allways starts as a trickle then flood comes later .

 

[jfm]

Hmmm. failure of 2 at 200 hours is indeed strange. Yours must be the same generation as my 2nd lot of D12s, 2009, and they have 450+ hours on them now with no issues (250 of my hours, and another 200hrs with the new owners whom I am in touch with from time to time)

My previous D12s, in a 2004 boat, had 800 hours with me and have just hit 1000 with the subsequent owner. Again, no problems. So I'd want to understnad what caused this. I don't beleive it is crud in your tank getting stirred up. Your boat is too new and the Fairline+Volvo filtering is too good for it to be crud

Where do you buy your fuel?

 

[volvopaul]

Fuel additives
I have Allways put that " startron " from Starrbrite in mine every fill up .
Not just for the water / bug issue , but as some sort of injector cleaner allegedly
What does VP think about additives ? - any good or " snake oil" excuse the pun

Audi VAG groupe a few years ago had a torrid time with a batch of ignition coils
First replacing the odd one then ending up recalling from memory 60' 000
Units .faulty batch Allways starts as a trickle then flood comes later .

I've never been a fan of any additive as an engine is designed to run on clean filtered fuel, not bad dirty fuel with something in to make it try and do it's job. After a meet once with a company polishing fuel and cleanin out tanks he said cleaning is the only answer and new fuel to, the ammonia in additives does not work well with any fuel injection system, and let's face it why should it.

The d12 premature failure could just be down to poor fuel, or an underlying manufacturing fault. Also the d12 has a fresh water cooled intercooler, now they clog up due to poor servicing, and I mean the water coolant filter not being changed , and the coolant every 2 years, it's very important on the d12 to do this otherwise the passages in the cooler clogs up and the intercooler stops working, you know about that when the plastic cover above it melts! . High air ilet temp tells the engine to weaken off the fuel so it doesn't work so hard, which turns down the hp, but the owner still wants the same power which can cause high combustion temp, burning the injector tips off , which is what I'd say happened in this case.

Nothing has been said about the turbos though , the d12 has had wastage failures in the past.

 

[BGS]

The guys at Total are sending the fuel for analysis on Monday. I guess I wait for the results and see where we go from there.

 

[Portofino]

I've never been a fan of any additive as an engine is designed to run on clean filtered fuel, not bad dirty fuel with something in to make it try and do it's job. After a meet once with a company polishing fuel and cleanin out tanks he said cleaning is the only answer and new fuel to, the ammonia in additives does not work well with any fuel injection system, and let's face it why should it.

The d12 premature failure could just be down to poor fuel, or an underlying manufacturing fault. Also the d12 has a fresh water cooled intercooler, now they clog up due to poor servicing, and I mean the water coolant filter not being changed , and the coolant every 2 years, it's very important on the d12 to do this otherwise the passages in the cooler clogs up and the intercooler stops working, you know about that when the plastic cover above it melts! . High air ilet temp tells the engine to weaken off the fuel so it doesn't work so hard, which turns down the hp, but the owner still wants the same power which can cause high combustion temp, burning the injector tips off , which is what I'd say happened in this case.

Nothing has been said about the turbos though , the d12 has had wastage failures in the past.

Thanks VP makes sence when you think about it,
Difficult to reconcile the truck D12 ,s doing 1m + Kms with no probs on the roads with all sorts of " fill ups "
1 realise they are only rated down to 480 or so
So provisional diagnosis Fuel or glogged intrcooler = lean mix damaging the injector tips

 

[Latestarter1]

James stripped the injectors, sent them for testing, and reported back several days later that two injectors had failed. Within a week he had serviced and repaired all the injectors and replaced them. The boat is now safely home at Andratx running as good as new. Reassuring to know there are still great engineers out there when you need them. Well done James.

#1 What was this guy doing stripping the injectors, pump shop job!

#2 Serviced and repaired ALL the injectors?? No service procedure for unit injectors?? They either work of fail.

#3 You can perform electronic functionality test on Bosch unit injectors, what did tests throw up.

#4 What was the conclusion of analysis of the failed units??

#5 Did the repairer carry out a boroscope inspection of cylinders??

#6 Come on James, the hero of the hour, tell us exactly why TWO injectors failed on low hour motors.

With earlier failure posted here spoke with pal of mine at VP in the US described filteration set up on vessel in question. Reply was 'yes it meets VP guidelines but would never us this setup on my own vessel'.

Highly likely to be serious contamination issue, what investigation was carried out on fuel system on GOOD engine??

I would certainly not be settling the fat bill until our 'hero' has submitted without a whole bunch of answers.

 

[volvopaul]

#1 What was this guy doing stripping the injectors, pump shop job!

#2 Serviced and repaired ALL the injectors?? No service procedure for unit injectors?? They either work of fail.

#3 You can perform electronic functionality test on Bosch unit injectors, what did tests throw up.

#4 What was the conclusion of analysis of the failed units??

#5 Did the repairer carry out a boroscope inspection of cylinders??

#6 Come on James, the hero of the hour, tell us exactly why TWO injectors failed on low hour motors.

With earlier failure posted here spoke with pal of mine at VP in the US described filteration set up on vessel in question. Reply was 'yes it meets VP guidelines but would never us this setup on my own vessel'.

Highly likely to be serious contamination issue, what investigation was carried out on fuel system on GOOD engine??

I would certainly not be settling the fat bill our 'hero' has submitted without a whole bunch of answers.

Quite right, it's the route of the problem that needs to be investigated not so much how the repair was carried out. Did he have the set up tools?