My Universal 32 hp
diesel in our 1983
Ericson 38 used to smoke white all the time. It was worse at higher
RPM. Revving the
engine would also spit out lots of soot as evidenced by the residue near the exhaust outlet. My guess is that it had 1800 hours on it when we bought it in the Chesapeake. We cruised the
boat extensively for about 7 years putting another 3000 hours on it including
charging the
batteries at
anchor.
I never was able to find anything wrong with it. I used synthetic
oil in it and had the
oil lab tested every 400 hours. Never turned up any issues. I replaced the
heat exchanger for a larger one it made no difference. I converted the
water pump to a higher capacity
pump no difference.
Raw water exiting the exhaust seemed normal.
I had a
3 blade variable
pitch feathering prop and I tried any number of different
pitch settings varying max
rpm from 2100 to 2900 but it seemed to run best when pitched to give about 2600 at full throttle. We typically ran it about 2000-2200 and made a nice 6 knots or so in flat
water. Great reverse
power with no walk but a friend with the same
boat and original
2 blade prop could get 7.5 knots out of his and run at 2700 rpm or so. He also smoked white ... more load, more smoke. Of course he prop walked quite a bit in reverse.
I had at least three diesel mechanics check it out over the years we owned it and none of them could find anything wrong with it either. I did have an infrared thermometer and periodically I'd use it to read the temp at the thermostat housing, the exhaust
elbow or the wet hose. It never read anything hot either.
Sorry I can't be any more help than that.