Volvo EDC Throttle behaviour

[nfluester]

after some information / advice please from the Volvo penta experts

we have a pain of Kad44 EDC's on our Sealine and i am a little confused about the way the throttles seem to work and wonder if there is a way to change their behaviour let me explain:

as a pair they function perfectly however on their own the Port engine is able to rev freely but the starboard engine only revs to ~1500RPM on its own, i have tried pressing the "sync" button which allows me to control them independently. but the starboard engine will only rev above ~1500 if the port engine is above 1500.

Is this normal behaviour? my concern is if we have a problem with the port engine we will only be able to struggle along at 1500RPM which is a little worrying.

can this be changed or programmed somewhere?

 

[jrudge]

In neutral they will only rev to 1500.

If only one engine is running then from memory yes there is rev limitation. I had an engine failure ( belt ) on a pair of kad 300s and the journey back was very slow for this reason ( not that it would have ace been that quick on one engine anyway ).

I would not think the system would differentiate between port and stbd - is they should both be rev limited.

Someone else will no doubt have chapter and verse as to how this works as mine is only from experience as opposed to technical understanding of what it should do

As an aside if they are working as a pair what are you seeking to do be intentionally introducing a significant rev differential ? handling in a marina should not get you close to those sort of revs

 

[nfluester]

yes i understand that they only rev to 1500 in neutral im good with that.

here is the issue that arose last year:

we had a leak out of the sea water pump on the port engine so only wanted to run back on the starboard engine which only ran up to 1500 which made slow progress however if we started the port engine and ran it upto say 2500 rpm and then turned it off the starboard engine would happily stay there.

if this is the way they are supposed to function then fine but i would have liked to be able to run each engine independently in case of a failure like you can on a mechanical throttle engine

 

[petem]

I'd be very careful about how many revs you are running on a single engine as you won't be planning and will be putting a huge load on it. I was told that if running on a single engine keep to 6kts or so.

 

[volvopaul]

after some information / advice please from the Volvo penta experts

we have a pain of Kad44 EDC's on our Sealine and i am a little confused about the way the throttles seem to work and wonder if there is a way to change their behaviour let me explain:

as a pair they function perfectly however on their own the Port engine is able to rev freely but the starboard engine only revs to ~1500RPM on its own, i have tried pressing the "sync" button which allows me to control them independently. but the starboard engine will only rev above ~1500 if the port engine is above 1500.

Is this normal behaviour? my concern is if we have a problem with the port engine we will only be able to struggle along at 1500RPM which is a little worrying.

can this be changed or programmed somewhere?

Are we talking out of gear or under load ?

 

[nfluester]

under load / in gear

 

[jrudge]

It would seem under load as the OP acknowledges a 1500 RPM limit in neutral.

 

[volvopaul]

You have an engine problem that’s affecting the fuel , could be a edc sensor, boost sensor, or turbo issue , does the supercharger cut in ?
where is boat located

 

[jrudge]

Paul - out of interest why would that be? He says it revs normally if both are running and the limit only comes in when one engine is working.

Based on my own experience on KAD300 the revs were limited when only one engine was running - so the only odd thing I can see is that ( from how he described it) one engine will fully rev on one engine , but the other is limited - and I would have thought they should both be limited. I know sod all about KAD 44 so they may do very different things to a KAD 300.

 

[nfluester]

boat is on the Thames and yes superchargers and turbos cut in and both engines work fine we had 34 knots out of her with both engines doing about 3700RPM together however the throttle control doesnt seem to have much effect when you run on only the port engine past 1500rpm as if something is stopping / limiting it electronicaly

 

[volvopaul]

With the sync button off you can set to within reason each engine where you like , the faster engine won’t attain its full rpm as it’s under more load , why you would want to do that is owners choice .

on a sea trial test I do that to check if either engine is weak .
id say your starboard engine has an issue

 

[nfluester]

throttle potentiometer maybe? or in need of calibration? its strange how if we started the port engine and increased the revs up we could then adjust the starboard up and then shut off the port engine.