Northern Lights… not the pretty ones…. Part 2

Not sure the generator company should have been allowed to use the name of something so wonderful!

 

Half happy to find the solution (see Part 1) and half upset I did hours of work before checking the easy item first (water pump belt tension), I spent the next few hours putting it all back together and filling the engine with nice clean new antifreeze.  Excited to show Julie we checked off one more item from the loooooong list of projects, I started up the Northern Lights generator
only to watch it start leaking antifreeze all over the place from under the heat exchanger/exhaust manifold.
After quickly draining the antifreeze that was left in the engine, I tightened the heat exchanger end caps untill I broke a couple of the old hose clamps… uggh.  New hose clamps installed on the end caps, I removed the old hose from the heat exchanger and water pump, cut off the oversize stretched out ends and put the shorter rubber hose back on.  Tightened the hose clamps… a lot but without breaking it.

Hours later…  Now I am really not happy I did not check the fan belt first, considering it never leaked before I took everything apart, I refilled the engine with antifreeze again.  Started it and it still slowly dripped antifreeze from somewhere under the heat exchanger.  Oh well, it will have to get us down the coast to San Diego.  Should never need it anyways, we have the Yanmar for charging the batteries if we need to.

Fast Forward months later….

Now in San Diego and seriously thinking I really should just pull out the generator and scrap it.  The thought of getting all that weight out of the engine compartment, up the companion way, off the boat, down the dock, then to where???  The thought help me decide to see about buying all new rubber endcaps, hose, and hose clamps.  $200 from http://www.dieselpartsdirect.com/. OK I can afford the cost, although not sure about the time, to give this one more try.

With new rubber endcaps and hose in hand I drained the antifreeze yet again.  Put the new hose on between the engine water pump and the heat exchanger.  Not too bad so far.  Pull the end caps off both ends this time… already removed one end to pull out the core, so not too bad….



 

Bummer.  The end cap I had not previously removed was attached to the heat exchanger and the exhaust elbow.  It’s role was to dump the now hot salt water into the hot exhaust gas stream to be spat overboard.  The exhaust elbow port for the salt water was about 98% carboned up (Hose Clamp 6 shows the position in the pic above).  Definitely the problem, or one of the problems and it  looked very familiar based on my experience with Consort in Part 1.  I knew the whole elbow was probably bad, but I got this far so figured I could just drill out the carbon in the port where the rubber end cap attached to the exhaust elbow.  I could then put it all back together to see what happens.

What a clean elbow and manifold should look like!  No pics of mine...

 

Drilling the old rusty cast iron exhaust elbow port was not ideal.  The elbow port broke before the carbon did.  Would someone buy this thing as-is off of Craigslist and remove it from the boat for me?  Probably not. On-line again.  Quite amazed http://www.dieselpartsdirect.com/ actually has parts for this thing.  $350 for a new exhaust elbow with shipping (should be free!), this time a stainless steel one instead of cast iron.  At least it is an upgrade.  Plus, some stainless steel bolts and nuts to replace the old mild steel ones that should never have been used on a “marine” engine.

Hey look at the bright side of the Northern Lights... I do not have to beat myself up for the obvious fan belt being the issue!

A lack of pictures throughout all this had a lot to do with frustration, but let’s go with constant dirty black hands from morning till night.  Many more hours spent and still more to come!