KAMD 300 Smoking & Poor Fuel Economy

First places I would look for black smoke and excessive fuel use is the air filter and injectors.
 
Chris_d said:
Unfortunately you have potentially bought a bit of a project.
P266 was never fitted with that engine, although I think some had single AD41's. It has probably been converted from twin petrol's so has had extensive structural work done on the transom and engine room to convert it. The fuel system will have been petrol so all new fuel filtration and return lines installed. A KAMD300 is the shaft drive version so was probably second-hand and converted to stern drive spec, The stern drive was not supposed to be mated to that engine, so the extra torque will overstress it unless you drive it very carefully.. The list could go on and on and its a 25+ year old boat with all the usual problems old boats normally have.
Not a good buy for a boating newbie, and also a dealer with one of the worst reputations for service in the UK.

If it was me I would cut my losses and get somebody else competent onto it and pay whatever it needs to get it sorted, sorry to be so blunt :(
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Are you able to provide a bit more info on your comment about the KAMD300 not being designed for the DPE?

Is this factor going to cause me a problem?

I just want to know as much info as possible for when I meet the dealer and if for sure that engine is meant for shafts as opposed to an outsrive then I will raise this. I've spoken to a number of different engineers today and no one else has picked up on the fact I've got this KAMD300 on a DPE and presumably this could be a cause of the excess smoke due to the engine having to drive a leg as opposed to a shaft.

I really appreciate all your input and it's helping me greatly in forming what I say to the dealer.
 
On checking it appears the KAD300 was sold with DPE drives, I was going on Volvopauls comment above as I thought the same.
However KAMD300 is the shaft drive version but as its basically the same engine it can be converted I assume with the correct parts.
More likely the installation has not been properly commissioned and checked or your have inherited an old problem with the engine.
 
Dazzajohm said:
That's also more than likely - I don't want to get in to running down the company I got the boat from on here, but they have been terrible. There have been problem with the boat one way or another ever since I got it. I was suppose To have a 3 month warranty on it and it took me three months of constantly badgering to get them to come and fix it ( bearing in mind my boat is in Dover and they too are based in Dover marina so not really any hassle). The engineer came last week, spent a day and a half on there and still half the things he was supposed to fix are again not working.

I'm now in the process of trying to get someone else local to come and have a look. I'm peed off that I'm going to have to pay someone to sort this issue when not only should it not have happened on a boat that's been fully serviced etc but it should also be covered on the warranty, but I guess it's getting to the point where I'd just much rather have peace of mind now.
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CR for a guess
 
Chris_d said:
On checking it appears the KAD300 was sold with DPE drives, I was going on Volvopauls comment above as I thought the same.
However KAMD300 is the shaft drive version but as its basically the same engine it can be converted I assume with the correct parts.
More likely the installation has not been properly commissioned and checked or your have inherited an old problem with the engine.
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Thanks very much for looking in to this for me. I've just been trying to do the same and any tech spec I've looked at from VP talk about the KA(M)D300 together, and all I could find was that the KAD is an Aquamatic engine (whatever that means) and the KAMD is the inboard version. When I googled the KAMD300 and select images, there are pictures of the engine with an outdrive attached but I would have no idea whether it's a DPE or not.

Hopefully that's now now less thing for me to worry about and I can just concentrate on getting the issue with the smoke etc resolved :-)

Once again thanks, really appreciated.
 
Chris_d said:
On checking it appears the KAD300 was sold with DPE drives, I was going on Volvopauls comment above as I thought the same.
However KAMD300 is the shaft drive version but as its basically the same engine it can be converted I assume with the correct parts.
More likely the installation has not been properly commissioned and checked or your have inherited an old problem with the engine.
Click to expand...

The engine is the same unit wether its shaft or sterndrives, the 300 sterndrives version had a newly designed drive the DPG which is a different drive form the DPE in that the top half is a better design to cope with the extra power available so fitting the DPE is just another poor job which isn't fit for purpose.

I have in recent weeks worked on another boat that's been re engined by the same company and that too wasn't a very good job either that the owner has spent thousands neither various companies trying to get it to perform correctly in order that he can sell it with a clean bill of health.
 
Dazzajohm said:
Are you able to provide a bit more info on your comment about the KAMD300 not being designed for the DPE?

Is this factor going to cause me a problem?

I just want to know as much info as possible for when I meet the dealer and if for sure that engine is meant for shafts as opposed to an outsrive then I will raise this. I've spoken to a number of different engineers today and no one else has picked up on the fact I've got this KAMD300 on a DPE and presumably this could be a cause of the excess smoke due to the engine having to drive a leg as opposed to a shaft.

I really appreciate all your input and it's helping me greatly in forming what I say to the dealer.
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The drive won't cause the problem , you need to find an engineer that knows the engine and how it works, as I've said it needs to pull 3800 rpm flat out, do a sea trial and confirm what rpm it's making if it's under ther could be problems or it's propped wrong and the engine is under too much load , I doubt you will see anymore than 25 knots flat out as this boat has 285 hp on a good day, this boat was designed for big petrols both V6 and V8 units with twice the power you have.

It sound to me like somewhere along the line no one has done the maths before paying over thousands just to be a diesel boat, fitting a diesel doesn't always pay you back over a petrol .
 
volvopaul said:
The drive won't cause the problem , you need to find an engineer that knows the engine and how it works, as I've said it needs to pull 3800 rpm flat out, do a sea trial and confirm what rpm it's making if it's under ther could be problems or it's propped wrong and the engine is under too much load , I doubt you will see anymore than 25 knots flat out as this boat has 285 hp on a good day, this boat was designed for big petrols both V6 and V8 units with twice the power you have.

It sound to me like somewhere along the line no one has done the maths before paying over thousands just to be a diesel boat, fitting a diesel doesn't always pay you back over a petrol .
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On a calm day I've had her up to about 28kts flat out but I prefer to keep to around 20 - 22kts as its more pleasant regarding engine noise.

Up until last week, the tacho wasn't calibrated properly and when flat out went over 4200 rpm. An engineer was sent to have a look last week and it was calibrated, but I've not had the chance to go out and try it since.
 
Just as an aside, I thought I'd check my invoice as I remember the spec being on there and in case I'd gotten something wrong and it says;

"Sale of Princess 266 year 1990, fitted with a Volvo Penta Kad44 engine and 290dp sterndrive package..."

Doesn't really enlighten me about the stern drive, but it's definitely not the Kad 44 engine in there as the engine that's in there clearly has KAMD 300 written on it so I'm confused there!
 
Dazzajohm said:
Just as an aside, I thought I'd check my invoice as I remember the spec being on there and in case I'd gotten something wrong and it says;

"Sale of Princess 266 year 1990, fitted with a Volvo Penta Kad44 engine and 290dp sterndrive package..."

Doesn't really enlighten me about the stern drive, but it's definitely not the Kad 44 engine in there as the engine that's in there clearly has KAMD 300 written on it so I'm confused there!
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The 44 had the DPE drive , where does it state 300 if it's on the plastic cover over the engine you can't take that as the truth you need to look at the engine plate which is near the injection pump riveted to the engine block.
 
volvopaul said:
The 44 had the DPE drive , where does it state 300 if it's on the plastic cover over the engine you can't take that as the truth you need to look at the engine plate which is near the injection pump riveted to the engine block.
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Yes it says it on the plastic cover over the engine.

It would seem I can't attach a photo as using my phone otherwise I'd attach a photo of my engine but after googling the 44 it does look a little different but I could be wrong.
 
Those black covers are interchangeable and is only a dust cover, do not take it as gospel.

Very possible the previous owner got a dust cover from a KAMD300.

Did the KAD44 come with the DP-E drive? A picture of the out-drive would solve this pretty quickly (i'm guessing boat is in the water?)

What about the throttle..... is it fly-by-wire?
 
Last edited:
Just had a visit to the boat to have a look. When they reconditioned the engine they obviously covered it in pain but we
Managed to scratch it off the engine plate and although a couple of digits from the numbers are a bit faded and difficult to make out we have the following;

Rated Power 188,0
Rated Speed 3800
Part no 873964? / 5? / 1?
Dataset 873965
Batch number 983
Serial 869061

From the serial although we were unsure of the last two digits it has come up straight away as the KAD44P-B
 
That looks like it might be a tight fit at the front of the engine. Is there sufficient room to change a belt or an impeller?
 
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