Volvo Penta TAMD22 advice please

[Tillsbury]

Hello all. I'm trying to decide what best to do with my TAMD22 engine, 1300 hours or so of unspecified but mostly light use. Visually very clean and tidy.

Current issues: Instrument panel electrics are dodgy and alarms are either nonexistent or intermittent. I need to get this fixed sooner rather than later, but it's not affecting the engine significantly at the moment. Once a probably flaky earth somewhere is fixed I'm guessing this will all start working perfectly again. I suspect that I could get more raw water flow through the engine, and I suspect that I could get less white smoke in an ideal world. But nothing about it is really bad. It starts instantly and runs very smoothly.

I had a basic service and inspection done by the local highly recommended "marine engine expert" (there are no actual Volvo Penta agents within hours of here). He wasn't exactly forthcoming, but when I asked what he'd do if it were his engine he said "Nothing. It'll be fine for another dozen years and won't let you down". He showed me a slightly high crankcase pressure (you can feel it with the oil filler open), and a tiny oil leak through the turbo which was causing a slow loss of oil through the pinhole at the bottom of the turbo casing. He didn't think it was worth the cost of overhauling / exchanging the turbo though.

I certainly intend to open up all the raw water system and make sure that's clear of bits of old impeller, and probably replace or at least thoroughly inspect the exhaust elbow to avoid future problems there.

I don't use the engine much at all, although around here it can be very useful to avoid weather systems and in an ideal world I'd want to be able to rely on it for 24-48 hour runs. I have been able to so far and it's been absolutely fine.

What would you do in my situation? Is it worth pulling apart all the turbo/cooler elements and overhauling that over this winter? Or do I just leave it be as the engineer suggested? Or something else? I would probably prefer to do most of the work myself as although the diesel engine is probably the area of the boat I have the least experience with I should like to get to know it a bit better.

[DougR]

To me, the issues you have mentioned sound like mostly nuisance items that you can work on over the winter at your leisure.....clean the raw water system and heat exchanger, maybe clean the aftercooler, etc. If you are feeling really ambitious you could have a rebuild kit put in the turbo, but if it's spinning freely and doesn't have too much play in the shaft I doubt I would mess with it.

I would spend a bit of time getting the electrical system sorted out so you have some reliable instrumentation and alarms. The electrical system on your engine is a bit unusual in that it has a two pole, isolated ground system most of the time, but it does ground the block under certain conditions.....glow plug use, starter use and stop solenoid use. This is done with grounding relays which are controlled by the key switch. You can download a shop manual with the wiring diagrams for free and work thru this.

As you probably know the base engine is a Perkins block that was used for years by both VP and Perkins for marine applications, and also found in many on highway automotive applications. It's a decent engine although some find it a little complicated with its belt driven camshaft.

DougR

[Pete7]

This engine was also used in cars and small vans in the UK by the shedload in the 1980s. The LDV and Leyland Sherpa vans were narrow so with a side door good for driving around big cities as postie vans.

You have the 105hp version, turbo and after cooled, whilst the road versions were about 80hp from memory. So let it warm up and cool down after a long run to avoid the turbo over heating or the pistons having hot spots. There is something about the starter needing a really good earth wire as its electrically separate from the block or something. Have a good look at this first.

VP even did a stern drive version of this for ribs and small cruisers.

Pete

[Tillsbury]

There's a bit of a trip coming up next weekend, then I will strip the raw water system and the entire electrical system and see whether it is improved when I put it back together again

Thanks for the comments