Seasonal Maintenance - Learning

[jonelli]

Hey all, meant to do this in spring, but better later then too late, this was my first seasonal maintenance since buying the boat a year ago. I am a newbie at diesel boat engines, and didn't want to figure it out completely on my own, so I brought a diesel mechanic friend into the picture. Also teamed up with another member here, CalTom so we could do our boats together. It was interesting to see the differences between our two boats. Tom has the M25, and I have the M25XP. We have different fuel filter setups, and had to bleed Tom's fuel lines while mine has the return line and auto-bleeds itself by just turning on the fuel pump. The oil was straight forward, but not sure of the advantage of the drain plug hose that I have installed vs just sucking the oil from the dip tube. Is it just that I'm likely to get a bit more oil sucked out? But that all went fine and think that we both can handle that on our own from now on. The trouble we had most was with flushing my coolant out. My coolant desperately needed changing. We used the nipple valve (technical name, right?) on the starboard side of the engine, connected a hose and used a hand pump. We only got about a gallon out of it, but we assumed there's got to be more coolant since there's a water heater too. We connected the pump to one of the water heater hoses an sucked out what we could from there, maybe another pint or so. Reconnected everything and tried refilling it. We spent a lot of time running the motor trying to get it burp, letting it cool off, then repeating the process. It took many repeats and over an hour to see any change in cooling. We seemed to think there's got to be a much better process than almost overheating your motor to get rid of airlock. In the end, it finally got the air out and all of a sudden the engine cooled itself rapidly and we let it run for a while and kept opening the butterfly valve to let the little air bubbles out, all the while the temp was jumping up and down +/-5 degrees. We did this until it was solid stream at the butterfly valve and the temp was stable for a long time. As a note, I do not have the mixing valve thingy to mix the amount of flow to the water heater, its just a straight connection. Later last night I found this: http://www.c34.org/faq-pages/faq-engine-air-lock.html And seems logical that manually sucking the air out of the water heater line would have worked better. Do you guys do this? What's the "magic trick" for next time?

 

[Ralph Johnstone]

What's the "magic trick" for next time?

Change the coolant in the "engine block" only every two years and you'll ensure all the coolant in:

- the block
- hoses to and from hot water tank
- heat ex in the hot water heater

are always up to strength. It's not worth the trouble of draining and burping all the related equipment.

 

[JK_Boston_Catalina310]

Good luck with the new boat. Here is some info that might help.

I put together a maintenance schedule for my boat (pdf attached and you can't see PDFs if you use the phone or tablet app). We are cruising full time starting in 28 days so this will be a little different for you. For instance I put a lot of things in terms of hours. But the reality is that anything listed at under 500 hours will be annually or more often for most boaters. For instance changing engine oil, I have that at every 250 hours. Prior to cruising we only put about 50-100 hours a year on the boat. That doesn't mean I am going to go 5 years without changing my oil and filter. I would do that every year, typically in the fall. But we will put 250 hours on the boat in 2-3 months going down the ICW.

There is some more discussion on my schedule here.

For the air lock issue check out this post from the C34IA. I went with the Maine Sail method listed in reply no. 14 and have never had an issue with air locking. I change all my antifreeze ever other year, flush it with water, run it on water for an hour or so and then replace all of the antifreeze. I use a drill pump to pump new antifreeze in while displacing the water.

Good luck and fair winds,

Jesse

 

[jonelli]

Hey all,
I just did my yearly maintenance again and I did it with no help by myself this time.
I did the coolant first, it was easy actually I bought the hand siphon pump from Lowe's for $13. First I connected it to the drain nipple and sucked out the coolant from the engine. Then I connected to one of the hoses off the block that went to the water heater and sucked the rest of the coolant out of the system. I forgot to flush it, I just put in new coolant mix and sucked it through the water heater and tell it came out, I reconnected the hose to the block and all was good with the world. No vapor lock and it flowed perfectly.
Next, I got the engine hot and used a sure flow pump to suck out the oil. No mess easy Peasy. I change the oil filter with a bag and paper towels around it so it dripped in the bag, replaced it, then added new oil.
Then I got to the fuel filters. I tried the same technique with the paper towels in the bag over the feel filter but it didn't really work because I did not anticipate so much fuel. it was a big mess and I repeated the messy process on the second fuel filter. Now I know why boats smell like diesel. I hope my wife doesn't complain tomorrow.
What are your tricks for changing the fuel filter's without making a mess? I didn't have anything large enough that would fit under them to catch all the fuel.
But it's all done, the fuel bleeds perfectly. Oh, and I changed the water pump impeller and the heat exchanger zinc.
I did not do the belt because it looked good and I'll keep the new belt as a spare or change it next time.

 

[Calif. Ted]

I place disposal aluminum pans, loaf or cake as fits under the filters and keep them upright so lose very little fuel. Did you shut off the fuel line at the tank ? Prevents the fuel line from draining thru the filter housing.

 

[jonelli]

I suppose that would have helped to shut it off lol. Oh well.