Nigel Calder - Marine Diesel Engines: Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair

MARINE DIESEL ENGINES

THIRD EDITION

Maintenance, Troubleshooting, and Repair

THIRD EDITION

NIGEL CALDER

OTHER BOOKS BY NIGEL CALDER

Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual: How to Maintain, Repair and Improve Your Boats Essential Systems, Third Edition

The Cruising Guide to the Northwest Caribbean: The Yucatan Coast of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Bay Islands of Honduras

Cuba: A Cruising Guide

How to Read a Nautical Chart: A Complete Guide to the Symbols, Abbreviations, and Data Displayed on Nautical Charts

Nigel Calders Cruising Handbook: A Compendium for Coastal and Offshore Sailors

Refrigeration for Pleasureboats: Installation, Maintenance, and Repair Repairs at Sea

Copyright 1987, 1992 by International Marine & 2007 by Nigel Calder. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-177999-9
MHID: 0-07-177999-X

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All photos by the author unless otherwise noted. Illustration page iii courtesy Yanmar.

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To Terrie,
who never minds getting grease under her fingernails

APPENDICES

An untrained observer will see only physical labor, and often gets the idea that physical labor is what the mechanic does. Actually, the physical labor is the smallest and easiest part of what the mechanic does. By far the greatest part of his [or her] work is careful observation and precise thinking.

Robert M. Pirsig
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

More than ten years have gone by since I wrote the second edition of this book. In this time, there have been significant changes in the diesel engine world. Whereas in the past such changes have occurred largely as a result of economic and competitive pressures, in recent years the motivation for change has come from what is known as technology forcing legislation, primarily in the form of ever-tightening emissions standards (see the Technology Forcing Legislation sidebar next page). When such legislation is first introduced, many in the industry argue that the new standards will be impossible to meet, but in fact, as each successive deadline has approached, manufacturers have invariably succeeded in exceeding the new requirements. Some will admit off the record that the legislative pressure has been good for the industry.

When first proposed, most of the tightened standards were not applicable to marine engines. But because of the relatively small size of the marine marketplace (approximately 50,000 diesel engines up to 800 horsepower worldwide each year, as opposed to millions of engines in the automotive and trucking industries), many marine diesel engines have always been adapted from other applications, and to the degree that the new standards applied to these applications, the technology found its way onto boats. From about 2004 onward, marine engines have been specifically included in both international and U.S. EPA regulations, with increasingly stringent emissions requirements being phased in over the five-year period from 2004 to 2009. This has resulted in numerous technological changes, most of which are invisible to boatowners, consisting of refinements in materials and design elements that have little impact on operating and maintenance practices. As such the changes have had, and continue to have, little practical impact on most boatowners. The two notable exceptions are electronic engine controls and common rail fuel injection.

Electronic engine controls and common rail fuel injection are different, with considerable practical implications, so I have worked them both into this new edition. Even so, it is worth noting that these technologies have typically not yet filtered down to marine diesel engines below 100 hp (76 kW), and in terms of the major players in this marketplaceVolvo Penta and Yanmarare not likely to make their way into this horsepower range anytime soon. Thus, they can be ignored by the owners of most small auxiliary diesel engines.

The net result of this picture is that despite numerous modifications to diesel engines, as far as most boatowners with an inboard diesel engine are concerned, there has been little change over the past ten years at the propulsion end of things. On the transmission side, things are a little different. We have seen major inroads into the sailboat market by saildrives, an innovation that replaces the conventional propeller shaft and shaft seal, and which consists of an inboard diesel engine connected to a drive leg that passes through the bottom of the boat. I look at saildrives in , Marine Transmissions.