Overheating engine


twarble

twarble

Member
guys,
we were cruising across the bay today, and the port side engine sounded funny. as i looked at the gauges i saw that the rpm's were crashing. we shut down power, turned off the engine. when i opened the hatch there was smoke coming from all over the place, in particular out of the blowback tube. i noticed oil all over the bilge, and it looks like it got splattered all over the place. we limped home on one engine (thank goodness i read that post this week. ;) ) i assumed that the engine was blown.

it was pretty dark when we got in, but i could see oil on mostly the pan seals. i just so happen to be taking it in for service tomorrow, but was wondering if you might have any ideas as to where i could look prior to doing that.

i'm running the yanmar 440 diesels. never heard any alarms, and never noticed the temp going up. could this be something simple like a gasket blowing out? anybody else seen this?

thanks,
todd
 
just an update so that we can close this one out...

limped to the shipyard, and got them to start soaking up the oil. one of the guys found 2 pieces of aluminum the size of my fist from the bottom of the oil pan in the bilge. looks like i threw a rod or something. :( gonna be a long, and expensive layup. hoping to get the engine pulled, and diagnosed ASAP, but you know how that works. unless someone can find a true manufacturers defect, i'm probably out quite a bit of gas money. unfortunately i'm out of warranty, so that might not even help. only other option, is maybe i sucked up a jellyfish, or a plastic bag. :) keep your fingers crossed for me...

todd
 
Wow, hard to believe a diesel had that kind of failure...

Just a quick question...are you the original owner? Or perhaps someone before you abused the engine?
 
i'm the 3rd owner believe it or not. crazy to think that i'm the 3rd, and it sat for about 2 years...was originally purchased on 7-7-04, so the other 2 owners only had it for maybe 3 years since i bought it last year.

i've talked to a guy that really knows these engines, and he's also a little blown away by what happened. mack boring said they've only heard of one other type of failure like this. i'll be really interested to learn the root cause. i can update you guys with whatever i find out...

todd
 
Todd,

I am very sorry this happened to you. That is terrible news. I hope it is not as bad as it seems. Best of luck and please let us know how things turn out. Who is doing the work?
 
i have the boat at petrini's on spa creek in annapolis. the guy does really good work. i had a bunch of stuff done there last year, and he always seems to know someone that's really good in the business because he's been there forever. he put me in touch with Chris Oliver...

http://www.marineenginesurveys.com/

Chris was apparently working with Yanmar back in the 70's, so he's got a wealth of knowledge. seriously after a 10 minute conversation with him on the phone he was describing how he would troubleshoot the engine to figure out how it went down, and i actually understood him. ;) i felt much better after that conversation.

like i said, keep your fingers crossed that either insurance covers it, or that yanmar steps up. :D that, and if anyone has any spare room aboard, i'll be in need of a boat fix for a few weeks. :)
 
Were you able to see the water temp during the RPM dropping ??

Marine diesels are so close to the edge for cooling capacity that any sort of disruption to the water flow to the heat exchanger, will almost result in major damage to the engine.

best wishes and hopefully it's not a major repair....
 
unfortunately no i didn't see the water temp. i felt the boat start to shutter...my first reaction was to look aft because it felt like we hit something...next i checked the depth, and we were in 120' of water. at that time, i saw the rpm's dropping. killed the engines, and my first and hopefully last experience as a sailor (4kts across the bay) ensued.

trust me, i'm dying to figure out what went wrong. i never expected this out of these engines because i've heard such great things about them. will definitely let you guys know what happened when i find out, but i'm really hoping that it wasn't operator error. ;)
 
well, after getting insurance involved, it was decided that i should move the boat to bert jabin's and have bay shore marine take a look at the engine. i got it there on Monday, and it was hauled, and has already been dissected. i was there today, and while kim didn't have a diagnosis, she said that jeff's notes said it had a split crankshaft, and that the #2 cap was in the oil pan. any idea what the cap is? oh, and i don't think i ever mentioned that a rod went through the block.

i'm waiting for the insurance adjuster to take a look at what jeff has found so that they can give me a diagnosis. hopefully that happens tomorrow. definitely looks like the engine is toast. just not sure what's going to happen from here.

anybody want a 40pc at a good price? ;)
 
This may be a silly question, but you said you got insurance involved. Your insurance policy covers repairs? Never heard of such a thing.
 
Just read what happened to you, sorry to hear this. I blew a transmission last year so I can feel your pain. Good luck.
 
You must have an excellent insurance policy to cover repairs !!

That's an inline-6 diesel ?? I can't believe that a crank would "split" and your boat is only 6 yrs old !!!!!!

Hope all goes well in the process.
 
so to be clear, no my insurance doesn't cover repairs. basically, insurance will cover it if i hit something, or if they pull a trash bag out of the intake. other than that, it falls back on me. i got them involved just in case there was some accident involved. also, it gives me the free use of an independent marine surveyor to see what really happened.

depending on what the fault is, i'm going to go back to mack boring. as you said, it's only 6 years old, and it only has 440 hours on it, so this is a little unreal. i'm hoping that yanmar will step up and cover it if it was a mechanical defect.

i'm hoping to hear what went wrong today...i'll keep you guys up to date.

thanks,
todd
 
okay, so just heard from the marine surveyor. his first words were something along the line of "i've never seen anything like this. the whole bottom of that engine just blew up."

he said that it looks like one of the main bearings let go. specifically, he thinks that maybe the connecting rod bearing spun, and this allowed the rod to hit directly against more metal. the cap that was mentioned by the mechanic is the other side of the clamp that holds the piston on the crankshaft. apparently the lack of the bearing caused amazing stress on the two bolts holding the cap to the rod. one gave way, and the cap shot into the oil pan causing the broken oil pan pieces that i've seen in the bilge. shortly after this, he guesses the amazing amount of stress caused more things to go wrong including the crankshaft splitting in half.

so, he's at a loss as to why any of this happened. he thinks that Bay Shore doesn't want to keep taking it apart to try and diagnose, so they may want to ship it back to Mack Boring. i'm back in a waiting pattern to see what they want to do, and to get a final diagnosis.

i'll keep you in the loop.

todd
 
Usually when you throw a rod like that, it's due to lack of oil supply to the bearing... Unless the piston seized solid in the bore from overheating or salt water intrusion?
 
These are the horror stories you hate to read / talk about from diesel owners !

Since you're the 3rd owner, you wonder how the cooling system has been taken care of in the past, etc.

6 cylinder diesel are amazing motors, but when something like this happens, I'm sure the repair costs will be extremely high compared to a gasser engine.

Just so young in the engines life to have something like this happen.

Hopefully Yanmar will get involved and provide some insight and cash !!!

I've been reading a lot on modern marine diesels and all the authors stress and re-stress the importance of the cooling system because of how these engines are engineered.

Again, hope it's a quick turnaround for the repairs !!!
 
yeah, no telling why the engine went. i'm hoping that they do ship it off to Mack Boring, and that they can give me some sort of failure analysis. first of all, i'm curious as heck to know why...and secondly, i have a starboard engine that i'm also worried about. ;)

it is funny in a way...you think about when you're looking to buy a boat, and everyone tells you that diesels are so much less maintenance. yet, after i got it, all i read is how you have to be very careful about the cooling. not sure if that was the problem, or something like the oil pump...all i know is you do what you can to minimize the chance that something like this will happen. not sure what i'll add to my routine after this is all over, but i will at least learn from it.

thanks for the well wishes...keep your fingers crossed that yanmar steps up. :)

todd
 
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