Yanmar Smoking and Making Oil

[Tspringer]

After 5 solid months of 10-12 hour days getting a huge refit completed, my wife and 2 kids and I cast off the dock lines yesterday around noon and motored off from Ortega Yacht Club Marina in Jacksonville with plans to head outside south to Cape Canaveral.

We didn't get very far!!

Part of the refit work I just did involved taking most of the ancillary parts off of my Yanmar 4JH2-HTE so the engine could be stripped, cleaned, primed and repainted. A couple of years ago before I purchased the boat a raw water hose got loose at the back of the engine and hosed salt water over the backside of the engine. The prior owner rinsed it off... but it still resulted in a fair bit of surface rust all over the back of the engine. I took everything off to properly remove all this and repaint the engine and in general clean up the entire engine room (btw, it looks great now!)

I had the turbo off during this and I cleaned it out with carb cleaner and rinsed it with hot water plus compressed air. The turbine blades spun freely.

I also had the injector pipes off so I could reach the block and repaint everything. I did seal up all of the ports in the head and injector pump to prevent and dirt ingress.

The engine has given off some light grey colored smoke in the past, not excessive but noticable. Last Christmas in St. Thomas I had the Yanmar dealer "service" the injectors and engine. They adjusted the valves and set the injector pressure and cleaned the injectors but they did not install any new injector parts or such.

The smoke we saw yesterday was much darker in color, a definite dark blue to blackish smoke. Not pitch black, but darker. Also, there rapidly showed a fair amount of black soot across the transom something that has never appeared before.

I checked and noted the oil level before leaving, it was just slightly over the full mark. When I checked it after anchoring, it was a good 1/2" above that point and the oil feels and looks diluted with diesel.

The engine fires right up when started. It does not spin overly fast at startup and it never turns over more than 4-5 times before firing off even when cold and it usually first on the 3d turn. The engine has always run well and yesterday it ran pretty much as normal.

This morning after checking the oil and determining for sure that the oil did appear diluted with diesel (no sign of water at all) I decided to seek professional help. I called around and now we are tied up alongside a barge at JAcksonville Boat Works just in from the inlet on the St. Johns. I did change the engine oil this morning before motoring up here.

The guys here have removed the injectors and sent them out to be tested and to have new nozzles (which I had in the spares inventory) installed. When the techs were inspecting the engine while running, they cracked the fuel lines open at the injectors to see how it impacted the engine running, to get a read on compression I believe. On two of the cylinders it had a big impact on the running and on the other two a lesser impact. The engine idled this morning as if it were dead on one cylinder. Two of the injectors were very sooted up and nasty when they came out.

I am more than just a tad worried! A major engine compression issue at this point would be a disaster. So.... what do folks think?



Terry