Looking for some help from the
diesel gurus. I've recently started working on my third
project boat... Sigh... Opening up the
engine well shows a goldish two cylinder
diesel with no block casting or ID plate anywhere to be found. That's the easy problem, trying to figure out what model this is so I can get a book and order
parts.
Second and more importantly, it won't start at all. Owing partially to the several hundred other posts that have already been asked on this forum I can tell you both
fuel filters are clean,
fuel bled all the way up to the block with no air bubbles,
raw water intake impeller in good shape,
oil looks really clean and at the right level,
coolant looks fine too.
So here's the symptoms. When I hold the glow
plug switch every light in the
boat dims, I have zero access to the
plug even when I crawl upside down and sideways into the stern so for now I'm taking that as a sign that its getting its 12 volts. When I turn the key to on my fuel,
oil, temp, and volt gauges light up, also what looks like the
fuel pump, set in between the two fuel filters clicks repeatedly, faster when the glow plug switch is held down. When I turn the key a little more all the lights really dim and the
engine (sort of) turns over. I say sort of because it seems really slow to me. At this point I first checked the
battery voltage (good), then tried spinning the crank by hand. It spins easily both ways and gradually gets harder (I'm figuring this is
compression in the cylinder, hopefully good)
Next I thought that maybe the glow plug isn't working and/or the engine is just too cold (I'm in
Massachusetts, its pretty cold here at the moment) without removing the
cockpit I just can't get to the plug so I ran a space
heater under the block and left it there all day while I tried other stuff.
Following my hunch with the
electrical (just a hunch really, I've got no experience whatsoever with diesels, it just seems to me like its turning over way to slow and shouldn't be dimming the lights quite this much) I first swapped the
battery out with a newer, larger battery with about 300 more cold cranking amps. No difference. Then I connected both
batteries, no difference. Then I hooked up a buzz box to the first battery, no difference. And finally I ran jumper
cables from my car to bank no. 1. Despite all of this, the lights still dim when I crank the engine and it cranks very slowly. I traced the wires from the battery, checked the negative connection at the block (good) and followed the positive to a barely visible solenoid and finally to the starter (connections all good). The starter felt unusually warm but at this point I've been cranking on it all day. While I was doing a yoga pose anyway to reach the starter I tried the old mechanics trick of tapping the starter gently with a hammer (no help at all this time).
That's everything I tried with the
electrical. I also tried shoving a hair drier down the intake in case it was an air restriction, and finally shooting a bit of WD40 into the intake in a final glow plug be damned attempt to get her to start. After spending most of the brain
power I've got rationed for the year on this one day, the
motor didn't so much as sputter even once. At this point I'm not expecting good news from anybody, but any ideas at all?