Starting a small diesel, manually...just how hard can it be?

At further risk of drifting a thread of my own initiating, I wonder why there isn't more consensus on which marine engines are best - or on which features, excluded by some builders and maintained by others, are too good to do without? Isn't it logical that consensus should define each new generation of design?

I can see that different users value different features, but I can't think why some manufacturers accept designs which will routinely defy easy use in situ...why should it be so common for hand-starting access to be prohibitive in the compartment where the engine will almost certainly be located? Why bother including it at all, if it isn't fully workable?

Likewise, engine cooling systems seem to cause a fair share of difficulty...there's a selection of ways of cooling, some better than others, but a steady trickle of questions on this forum suggests that none are sustainedly satisfactory...in the automobile world, such issues seem to have been sorted out, long since...why do marine applications lag behind in their effectiveness? Or is it just because (unlike road-vehicles) we tend to hold on to boat-based equipment, decades after its design was virtually obsolete?
 
Dan,

I only dallied with inboards for a while myself - 1986-89 with a Volvo saildrive on a Carter 30 ( Polish built, American design, British spec' kit ) and I found every horror story about Volvo spares was completely right !

In 1988, a stainless castellated nut - about 15mm from memory - was £ 18.00, and the nasty cheapo zinc boss for the folding prop' was £ 480.00...

It also had a sense of humour, developing cracks in the core plugs when at the top of the Alderney Race in a flat calm; - that was a 1981 boat - since then I never go anywhere without ' Araldite Rapid '.

There is a big step between boats like mine where an engine change is a job for the tender to and fro, and anything over 25' ish requiring major surgery, not least to one's wallet !

when I see things like Shrimpers with no guardrails but an inbooard, I just hope they're retired folk staying in the harbour either with a healthy bank balance or going to pass the problems on.:)
 
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Starting a small boat engine by hand should be relatively easy.

Presumably starting your Tiger tank may at times have been necessary under more trying conditions.
 
Seajet said:
There is a big step between boats like mine where an engine change is a job for the tender to and fro, and anything over 25' ish requiring major surgery, not least to one's wallet !
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The thought of the immobilising scale and cost of problems relating to an inboard engine, must have scared many who had the choice, into an outboard instead.

It surprises me that "saildrive" outboards, which at one time included models with usefully-lower gear ratios and bigger props, seem now to be restricted to extra-long-shaft units with bigger charging coils, and lots of "Sailing" motifs on the cowl.

Has the benefit of big, slow-spinning propellers (over the rapid-turning tiddlers which suit most outboard craft using less than 10hp) been called into doubt?
 
2Tizwoz said:

Starting a small boat engine by hand should be relatively easy.

Presumably starting your Tiger tank may at times have been necessary under more trying conditions.
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The only problem with carrying a bloke like that on board (called Big Eck or something) is that although he'd be useful when the battery was flat for engine starting purposes, on all other days he'd eat all the pies.
 
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dancrane said:
It surprises me that "saildrive" outboards, which at one time included models with usefully-lower gear ratios and bigger props, seem now to be restricted to extra-long-shaft units with bigger charging coils, and lots of "Sailing" motifs on the cowl.
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Tohatsu, if you go to the UK importer, are hugely flexible and helpful in assembling an engine to your specification with your choice of prop, gearbox and other bits, if they are available and interchangeable. The other manufacturers say "Here is our product range, take it or leave it".
 
Before you decide which inboard engine is best you have to define size
i would suggest 10Hp up to 20 HP which covers a range of yachts from 22-31 fet
then you need to find out what sort of problem is the most prevalent.
Judging by Seajets comments I suppose one would split into A)engine & B)method of providing propulsion ie shaft drive or sail drive.
If we are discussing engines we can, i would suggest , omit B) mainly because that tends to be a product of boat design & does not fail due to the power plant running it

Now we get to engines - petrol or Diesel- Well having had a Stuart Turner I think we should consign petrol to history.
Then we have method of cooling, air or water. i am sure most boats have water cooling but I am equally sure air cooled is more reliable but not so practical on a yacht. On a launch yes
So now we get raw water or fresh water cooling
So one has to ask who has what & is the water cooling a problem & what are they. I would expect corrosion, impellors, hose failure top of the list
Corrosion normally happens because the engine is left with little maintenance such as flushing at year end etc- that is normally down to the owner, as is split hoses & failing to check for delamination or hardening etc. A bit of spare hose on board soon sorts it
Impellors can fail but if the boat is laid out properly - as is mine- one can change an impellor in 4-5 minutes. poor layout is not the fault of the engine
Fuel problems come next. air leaks water in the fuel, faulty pumps,clogged filters, & the like - all owner preventable ( sorry, not pumps)
things like glow plugs & injectors have been around for years It is easy enough to determine if they are at fault. They do not normally fail suddenly but tell one something is wrong by gradually breaking down over time. one just needs to watch for it. More modern engines will not solve that.

Electrics must be high on the list but simple wiring failure is often the result of poor maintenance of the engine area. I did not look at my alternator & had not noticed the terminals corroding . When I went to rewire the hour meter one sheared off. Fortunately mid winter so I had the alternator serviced. My Lombardini used 3 different makes of alternator, Fiat, Renault & Lucas. Cannot really blame the engine for that. neither can i moan if i fail to check belt tension & it wears out. But I do carry 2 spares. i do not carry a spare starter but would notice if it began to loose power long before it died ( i hope)

What i am leading to is that in many cases it is not the basic engine that is at fault. it is normally the owners failure to undertake preventive maintenance or the peripheral accessories that get faults. If manufacturers bought out higher tech engines i bet there would be far more problems. personally I am happy that my Volvo is based on a Petters block & is of a design that ( apart from detailed electrics) I can normally sort.
Looking at the outboards on our club safety boats I would not have a clue what to do if one went wrong, other than call up another rescue boat to tow me home.
As far as I can see the only advantage of an outboard is that if one can get it off the boat one can take it to the dealer for repair rather than them come to the boat
 
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Daydream believer said:
As far as I can see the only advantage of an outboard is that if one can get it off the boat one can take it to the dealer for repair rather than them come to the boat
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Ease of hand starting, ability to clear a fouled prop. Both of these have saved the day for me. If an outboard stops or refuses to start at sea there are things that can be investigated before calling for a tow. It's what you get used to living with.
 
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Angus, I'm glad to hear of Tohatsu's approach to their customers' needs, and I see the advantages of an engine & prop that is easily detachable from the boat.

Daydream Believer, that's a pretty comprehensive defence of the inboard diesel...very persuasive. I suppose I can infer that as long as one doesn't neglect a diesel unit, and in particular if one has charge of its maintenance from new, there's not really much reason to wish for an alternative. :encouragement:
 
Seajet said:
All inboards are expensive hassle. . . .
Below 25' an outboard in a well is king
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Not my experience at all. Had various boats sub 25' with outboards (including in wells), and current 23' boat with inboard diesel for last 7 years. I find the diesel inboard is far more convenient - hassle free; cheaper to run; more reliable; fuel from dockside rather than having to walk miles with a petrol can looking for an open filling station; generates as much electricity as I want (for nav lights, cabin lights, comms etc.); uses far less fuel - a fixed tank hidden out of the way holds enough diesel to run for 36 hours non-stop; the prop stays in the water when going gets rough, or I stand on the bow; etc. It always starts easily (all of my outboards could occasionally be awkward, sometimes at critical moments), using a small battery. If that ever failed I can just switch over to the domestic battery. If that ever failed, too, I could just sail home (like I've done in the past when the outboards failed or had run out of fuel!).

An outboard will suit some better, depending on their tastes, boat and type of sailing, but they're different to a diesel inboard, not inherently better, even well below 25 feet.
 
dancrane said:
At further risk of drifting a thread of my own initiating, I wonder why there isn't more consensus on which marine engines are best - or on which features, excluded by some builders and maintained by others, are too good to do without? Isn't it logical that consensus should define each new generation of design?

I can see that different users value different features, but I can't think why some manufacturers accept designs which will routinely defy easy use in situ...why should it be so common for hand-starting access to be prohibitive in the compartment where the engine will almost certainly be located? Why bother including it at all, if it isn't fully workable?

Likewise, engine cooling systems seem to cause a fair share of difficulty...there's a selection of ways of cooling, some better than others, but a steady trickle of questions on this forum suggests that none are sustainedly satisfactory...in the automobile world, such issues seem to have been sorted out, long since...why do marine applications lag behind in their effectiveness? Or is it just because (unlike road-vehicles) we tend to hold on to boat-based equipment, decades after its design was virtually obsolete?
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Some of the trouble is that some features are desirable in some ways but undesirable in others. For example, we all want our inboard engines to be quiet and fuel-efficient, but we also want simplicity and longevity, plus easy maintenance and cheap spares. Hard to reconcile both. Similarly, we want to be able to hand start, but the engine designer doesn't have any control over how the yacht designer (or engine installer) will package the engine compartment. Again, we want to maximise space in the boat, and we want quiet operation, but we also want ease of access. My BMW D12 has a few really good features. It has no oil filter to change, and no oil pump to fail. Everything is splash-lubricated. It is, however, pretty noisy and harsh. They had what seemed a very clever idea of having an alternator with no moving parts (relative to one another) Built into the flywheel and bellhousing. Trouble was, it was only 20 amp output at best and if anything went wrong, you had to split the engine and gearbox.
 
Lots of good sense there, thanks.

I suppose engine installations in most boats have been chosen for the specific purpose, hopefully not only for reasons of economic convenience...

...and usually, that'll mean the engine isn't downright unsuitable or a liability to run, assuming it is properly maintained.

I won't choose a boat based on whether I can start the auxiliary by hand. ;)
 
Hand starting diesels was a daily routine for me for five years and a weekly routine for ten before that. It is all down to technique. never just try and start it. Spend a few minutes slowly turning the engine over decompressed to distribute the oil around the bearing shells and ease everything up. Then start to build up the speed until your hand is doing a couple of revs per second. this should only require one hand as you have free'd everything up with a couple of minutes of slow turning. then whilst still turning flip one of the decompressors down but don't stop turning,,,, it should fire. When it does fire and start to put put let it put put for a few seconds before flipping the second lever down it should then run up. I must admit that I have used some quick start spray when returning to a snow covered tugboat after the Christmas break but it shouldn't be required in the summer. If the start fails and you get a bit of backfire then re try immediately as the back fire will have heated the cylinder enough to make a second go easier. The biggest engine I've hand started was a six cylinder emergency fire pump on a container ship. I think it was a Lister? It normally used a wind up inertia starter but it had exploded and whilst we waited for spares it had to be hand cranked. It was a two man job. One to crank and the other to know over the decomps which were all tied together by a rod. I was an apprentice then, I wouldn't fancy it now.
As mentioned above, always hold the handle like a monkey, ie, with thumb and fingers on the same side.
 
I had a Volvo 2002 in my first boat. In the 9 years or so that I had the boat, I never succeeded once in starting it by hand. I tried that many times I must've worn part of the attachment out, as eventually the handle just wouldn't engage any more. At that point I gave it up as a lost cause!
I have managed to start a Yanmar 1GM10 before, plus an old Farymann.

Current boat, a 9 ton Hillyard, has its original Petter PH2W (marinized version of the dumper engines, mentioned previously). The engine is fitted with a raised hand start shaft (half engine speed).
She's a beaut of an engine to start by hand. Just a few swings to get the heavy flywheel going, and then down with the decompression lever, and off she goes.
Currently hand starting is the only way I can start it, due to an electrical issue I've yet to resolve. I've just got so used to the 'old fashioned' method, I've not bothered yet, with sorting the electrics!
Because of the reach to the decompression lever from the starting handle, it is easier with two people, but as I single hand quite often, I have my own little set-up, using a short piece of lanyard wound a couple of times around the hand start shaft, with the other end looped around the decompression lever. As the shaft turns the lanyard winds in on itself, and pulls the lever down, and bingo, off she goes!

(Hope the pic works.)

Doug

 
Daydream believer said:
Nothing like a bit of modern technology to get things going!!!
Your engine looks beautifully clean :encouragement:
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Thank you! I had it overhauled a few years ago, and detailed it back to its original 1968 look. I wasn't going to go as far as having highly polished copper work (originally painted), but the guy who rebuilt the engine was more used to rebuilding the gleaming works of art one usually sees in narrowboats!
 
hannahman said:
Thank you! I had it overhauled a few years ago, and detailed it back to its original 1968 look. I wasn't going to go as far as having highly polished copper work (originally painted), but the guy who rebuilt the engine was more used to rebuilding the gleaming works of art one usually sees in narrowboats!
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There has been a comment that the small boaters marine world has been slow to provide more modern engines. That engine could have come straight out of one of my dumpers (no disrespect intended yours looks fab) It ran & ran for 45 years with only regular oil changes, started by hand extremely easily with a shaft off the flywheel & just chugged away all day. (The steering finally went not the engine)
So the question has to be - do we actually need any updating . Are we not better off with engines that work. That we can maintain ourselves without some bloke with a computer to tune it.
 
Another vote for a Bukh DV 24. I start our's by hand 3 or 4 times a year from cold, nice big fly wheel, decompression lever on a string to my foot. Wind it up and drop the lever, usually fires 1st go, what's more I'm an 11 stone weakling.
 
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