Heart attack time! (Nearly...)

No Regrets

No Regrets

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Fifty Shades dropped back in the water on Friday, Thanks to a lovely little crane job from the guys at Penton Hook!

Both engines started immediately, pumping water fine, and were freshly serviced...

Twenty minutes later, exiting the marina, the Starboard engine was overheating, so was shut down, and appeared to have lost nearly all the (new!) coolant....!?

The bilges showed nothing at that time, so the engine was refilled, and the calorifier valves closed as a precaution, and an hour later things seemed OK, so we went back to Bray, watching those gauges like a hawk...

Thankfully, the problem didn't come back, but when I opened the calorifier valve, the coolant all disappeared again within seconds, and so I reckon it's a pipe failed somewhere in the front, near the calorifier, which is good news because a/ I can fix that, and b/ The likely part alone was over £2000 (Heat exchanger stack) plus removing engine to fit, as the forward bulkhead is too close to remove it.

The big old Volvo is healthy though, as I just caught the overheat at the upper end of the engines normal heat range, but it could so easily have killed the engine if I hadn't noticed the problem in the first place. A sobering thought as a new engine is probably around £25K :(

So, next week, a little job....:)

Rather glad to be back at Bray on time, as the next morning everything was redder than election time in Oldham....
 
Air lock in calorifier..?
In order to get water into calorifier pipes on my old boat,used to remove inlet pipe from engine and fill with mains pressure from hose(yea I know) to remove all air from system and then refit pipe to engine.
It probably diluted anitfreeze but never seemed to be a problem during cold weather.
Was only way to get all air out of piping.If any air remained ....... no hot water. !
 
Sorry to hear of your problem, John, but a little surprised that you were worried about it being the heat exchanger. If it had been I would have expected to find water in the bilge under the engine as the pressure from the raw water side would have resulted in raw water being pushed into the coolant circuit resulting in the coolant then being exhausted through the pressure relief cap/overflow.
This is exactly what happened to me 18 months ago and it transpired that the end caps on the heat exchanger had deteriorated resulting in cross flow from raw to coolant. Oldgit assisted me greatly and you may remember we posted the pics. http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthrea...h-its-weight-in-gold&highlight=heat+exchanger
In your case the coolant had to be leaking somewhere so , as you say, you will probably find a load of coolant in the bilges somewhere nearer the calorifier.
Good luck !
 
On a slightly different note but still vaguely related. I would thoroughly recommend fitting a speed seal kit to the raw water pumps.

Before fitting ours we would use 3 or 4 impellors per year, last year we fitted the speed seal in April and have not had to touch the impellor since.

Well worth the money, plus the fittings make changing the impellor a much quicker and easier job.
 
CX54WEK said:
On a slightly different note but still vaguely related. I would thoroughly recommend fitting a speed seal kit to the raw water pumps.

Before fitting ours we would use 3 or 4 impellors per year, last year we fitted the speed seal in April and have not had to touch the impellor since.

Well worth the money, plus the fittings make changing the impellor a much quicker and easier job.
Click to expand...

Why does the speed seal kit stop impellers failing, isn't it just to allow a quick change?
 
Chris_d said:
Why does the speed seal kit stop impellers failing, isn't it just to allow a quick change?
Click to expand...

No it has a teflon inner plate that spins against the bronze cover plate. In theory (and seemingly in practice also) it reduces the friction on the impellor when it runs dry reducing the risk of shredding the impellor teeth. We were very sceptical when we bought it and bought it purely for the ease of changing the impellor but it does appear to have worked.

Link here

http://www.speedseal.com/SpeedsealLife/SpeedsealLife.html
 
Chris_d said:
Didn't know it had that feature, very handy. Still at £140 for two I might leave it for now, my impellers seem to be going on forever so far, 5 years and 500hrs so far.
Click to expand...

If there is nothing wrong with your plates then there is no point changing it. Our plate was badly scored due to persistant overheating issues so needed changing anyway. The cost was pretty much the same as the VP item so purely for the fact it made changing the impellor easier we went for the Speed Seal. Seems it has possibly paid for itself already mind because at £45 per impellor it was getting a tad pricey changing them 3 or 4 times a year!!
 
I subsequently found £60 worth of lovely green coolant in the bilges which wasn't there before!

All retrieved and filtered, will be reused when the Calorifier pipe leak has been sorted!
 
No Regrets said:
I subsequently found £60 worth of lovely green coolant in the bilges which wasn't there before!

All retrieved and filtered, will be reused when the Calorifier pipe leak has been sorted!
Click to expand...


O booger ..lets hope its a perished rubber pipe or loose jubilee clip and not a failure in tank.
 
Last edited:
No Regrets said:
Yep, 3.8 litre 6 cylinder Volvos take 20 litres each, excluding the calorifier :(
Click to expand...

You can ignore the calorifier as coolant only passes through the tube system. As long as you have a 50/50 mix in the cooling circuit the extra water in the hoses etc is irrelevant.

`another advantage of having a smaller boat - my twin TMD22A's can be antifreezed with a single 5 litre can of goo down to minus 30 :)
 
" my twin TMD22A's can be antifreezed with a single 5 litre can of goo down to minus 30 "


Yea... but as you lot up there stop boating when the temp drop belows 20C its a bit academic :):):):)
 
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