Generator low oil pressure shutdown here in the Caribbean

[stranded]

We have a super simple 27 year old twin cylinder Perkins. No electronics. No AVR. Simple fail safe water and oil pressure sensors on a common shut down circuit. That's as complicated as it gets.
It's fuel efficient and reliable except for the raw water pump that is always needing seals and bearings. I carry a spare pump ready to fit then rebuild the old one

Sounds like my kind of setup - I did (ignorantly) ask our engineer whether it would be possible to simplify or even remove the electronics and just have the engine and alternator, but of course it is not that simple. I am now quite looking forward to the simplicity of a Honda and to getting the Mastervolt lump off my boat and getting rid of three holes in the hull.

 

[davethedog]

Been delving a bit further into the manual and it does indeed have a oil/sea water heat exchanger. If the problem persists then will see if I can get that out to give it a clean..

 

[jwfrary]

Been delving a bit further into the manual and it does indeed have a oil/sea water heat exchanger. If the problem persists then will see if I can get that out to give it a clean..

It could be this, quite easy to rod out and clean with rydlyme or barnacle buster whatever you can find to do the job where you are!

The sensor layout is a but sub optimal on these, but it isn't impossible to fix, just a steady work though from the obvious and cheap to fix things, to the get the Multimeter out and start testing things.

Faults like this can be a bit frustrating!

One thing you might want to check is that the fuel lift pumps working correctly, I have had trouble with those giving strange alarms with whisper generators and since there usually low down I forget if it's in site or outside the case on yours but the sometime get corroded contacts and intermittently work and that causes the kind of shutdowns your experiacing (what the panel tells you isn't the full story!)

 

[davethedog]

Thanks for all the replies and found the oil and water heat exchanger and as usual on a boat in a bit if a sod place to get it removed so that will be one of the steps I take it the issue persists .

I did change the oil yesterday and will change it again after the next run as it seems to get black very quickly and can not do any harm .

 

[davethedog]

Update on this:

I have changed the oil again and, fingers crossed, has been running a lot better.

Time will tell as perhaps the oil was a bit contaminated, so I have also changed the oil today as a pre-emptive measure!

 

[jdc]

I hope it's fixed and works. FWIW we have the same generator, more than 700 hrs use, and not had problems in much hotter places with 15w40 oil. Only major fail was the fuel solenoid, which we removed and used it like that for 8 weeks or so while we got a spare sent from the Netherlands.
PS: did you clean the gauze and magnet in the oil? It's a bit messy to do but access isn't too bad.

 

[davethedog]

I hope it's fixed and works. FWIW we have the same generator, more than 700 hrs use, and not had problems in much hotter places with 15w40 oil. Only major fail was the fuel solenoid, which we removed and used it like that for 8 weeks or so while we got a spare sent from the Netherlands.
PS: did you clean the gauze and magnet in the oil? It's a bit messy to do but access isn't too bad.

That's a good point, will do that next oil change!