Water in my fuel

[U4]

I am getting a little concerned as a warning light has come on and the display is telling me that there is water in my fuel.

The problem is that this has now happened three times. The first two times I drained the fuel filter of what looks more like diesel rather than water (although I have never had to do this before so perhaps that’s normal as obviously its mixed with diesel). I seem only to be able to run for about 2 hours before the filter is full again.

I have read quite a lot online about how expensive it can be after you have run the engines (I have 2 x D3 190 EVC) with water in the fuel so I am really worried....

Does anyone have any advice? Should I be trying to get the fuel out of my tanks in case its poor quality or are the filters sufficient to siphon off the water and protect my engines?

I have ¾ of a tank in each tank…

 

[hlb]

Your diesel should look like rosie wine, clear and not cloudy. If you empty your fuel filter into a glass, water should be obvious as a bubble at the bottom.

 

[omega2]

contaminated diesel

The fluid in the bottom of the filter housing will look like cold tea, instead of rosie wine, and your engines will slowly grind to a halt, and refuse to rev but may run at reduced power, i.e less throttle opening. are both engines affected? or does one tank supply both. it may be just a faulty sender on the filters.

 

[U4]

Cold tea is a pretty good description of what has been coming out. I haven’t emptied the latest lot out as I only had the new warning light this evening. I will empty it tomorrow in to a glass container so that I can have a better look.

It only seems to be affecting the starboard engine and I have put the same fuel source in both. I am not sure if the tanks are shared (I am reading the manuals now) to find out!

 

[Kawasaki]

Does the warning light say 'water' or does it just light up to say'contamination'?

If I remember the D3 series is very sensitive to foreign stuff in the fuel.
Fitted with a very sensitive sensor for that very reason.

As opposed to older Volvo lumps I mean.

I came accross one a year or two back with contaminated fuel.
The lump went into 'limp home' mode.
Tank and filts were flushed.
'Brain' re set and She has been ok since.
As hlb says, water will normally show as a globule in the filt bowl.
Tea makes me think more of crud.

Hmm, think I,ll have a coffee right now!

 

[Tidnock]

I would ensure that you have enough water trap capacity, there are predominantly two issues with fuel between the tank and the engine, filtration, which is for solids and water traps, which are for liquids filters do not stop water, traps do not stop solids . I had installations that did not have enough water trap capacity nor water trap depth, that is, not deep enough to cope with the rigours of a lumpy sea, the motion of the boat was enough to reintroduce.

To reduce reoccurrence, the other thing you must do is fuel the tanks to the top when the boat is on the mooring for extended periods. It can be condensation that puts water in a tank not a "bad fuel pump" the heat retained by the fuel causes condensation, so if the tanks are full, there is reduced surface area for the condensation to form on.

 

[mm1]

Dirty fuel

Just out of interest where do you keep your boat & where do you buy your fuel!!,mm1.

 

[spannerman]

I take it you have water seperators installed between the tanks and the engine filters i.e. Racor or Separ. These should be inspected before every trip to check for clean fuel, as if detected here it shouldn't ever get to the last line of defence the engine filter, all Volvo common rail engines are intolerant of water as the pump generates around 1800 bar and its the fuel which lubes the moving parts, if water gets as far as the pump it will suffer damage which means £££££. As others have said the older pumps could swallow a far bit of water because they operated at much lower pressures.

 

[D3B]

I have D3 160's and made the silly mistake of leaving the filler cap off the starboard side (posted on here in May)
Sea water in tank!

emptied and filtered with no visble trace of water and a strange pink stuff that detects water wiped onto dip stick showed nil.

filtered fuel put back in

next trip alarm goes of to say water in fuel.
emptied pre-filters
no sign of water

sent sample away for test and it showed salt in fuel.
sensors are not tolerant of impurities on D3 engines!

tank now emptied, cleaned and waiting for me to put some fresh more fuel in.

I hope that will be the end of it!

 

[U4]

I went down to the boat earlier today and emptied the latest lot of 'water' from the filter. I used a glass as suggested above so that I could check to see if it looked like any water was there and I have to say that I don't think that there is. It just looked like perfectly good diesel to me.....

I then started the engine and ran it for 1 minute.

I then went back and unscrewed the drain plug and low and behold it was absolutely full to the top again of what looks (to the untrained eye) like perfectly good diesel...!

Any ideas?

 

[Tidnock]

I went down to the boat earlier today and emptied the latest lot of 'water' from the filter. I used a glass as suggested above so that I could check to see if it looked like any water was there and I have to say that I don't think that there is. It just looked like perfectly good diesel to me.....

I then started the engine and ran it for 1 minute.

I then went back and unscrewed the drain plug and low and behold it was absolutely full to the top again of what looks (to the untrained eye) like perfectly good diesel...!

Any ideas?

For clarity, did you find any water in the fuel during your visit

 

[U4]

No... However the display at the helm read 'water in fuel'. I have read the manual and this just seems to be the standard fault the display will state if the filter is full.

 

[sarabande]

does the readout say"water in fuel" when you have emptied the filter and refilled it with 'diesel' without running the engine. If so, then a sensor fault ?

 

[U4]

No, it comes on again after an hour or so of running the engine. I will try and get hold of a new sensor and see if that sorts it..

 

[sarabande]

I would not expect a sensor fault to occur regularly after an hours running. But again, if it's one engine only, and IF it is a water fault, then you must have separate feeds with one tank (stbd supply) having a problem.

 

[omega2]

filter housing

Forgive my ignorance, but our cav filter/trap, and cav filters on the engine are always full of diesel, the way they work is to trap water and foriegn matter in the filter or the bowl, by a venturi action, which allows the fuel to spin, and the impurities fall out, which eventually drop to the bottom of the filter housing and are held in the filter/bowl. If I did not see any fluid in the trap whether it be water or diesel I would suspect that the pick up in the tank was blocked. Also when draining the bowl via the drain plug only let it run until you see good diesel, i.e the red stuff rather than the clear watery stuff.