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After about six months,I finally completed fabricating and replacing the wooden structure below decks including the rudder and steering shelves.Made all with coosa and F/G cloth.Since I wrapped both engines in plastic,I didn't start the engines in all that time.May have been a big mistake.Got the decks back in and the engine covers on today and tried to start both engines.Stbd spun easily but wouldn't start.Port fired right up until I stupidly moved the throttle a little then it wouldn't restart.I did not want to overheat the starters so I turned on the block heaters and will try later after I run an errand.Any suggestions if they still won't go? Cummins 6bta 270 hp with around a thousand hours indicated.I would hate to go through with another hosing like I just got at a local boatbuilder earlier.Many thanks to Capt. Pat,Bob H. and Pete Fallon for advise on this job.

Go back and bleed the injector pump and injectors from ground zero. Shut off your fuel valve at the tank for each engine, then pull the top off your Racor and top it off with fresh diesel. Put the Racor top back on and snug down the T handle, making sure to instpect the o-rings first. Now loosen the very samll bleed screw that's in the boss where the spin-on engine fileter sits and pump the mechanical arm on the fuel lift pump until you get nice clean, no - bubble diesel coming out from under the bleed screw. Now tighten the bleed screw. (if the lift pump lever just "flops", kick the motor over to get the lever on the cam lobe". Now crack the injector nuts on all 6 injectors and unscrew them about a turn & a half. Place rags over the cracked nuts and spin the eingine until all injector nuts have good clean, air bubble free diesel coming out from under themj. Tighten up the nuts, open any fuel valves uyou have closed and it should crank right up. A little puff or two of ether is always helpful.

But if the injector lines are not bled it will not start until April.....very critical to any air in the system.

UV

Jrhazard,
Make sure that the throttles are in the neutral postion, just a little off from detent holes and they will not fire up. Check your starting curcuit wiring and make sure all grounds are tight. Good luck.
Pete Fallon

UV...

Not sure what engines jrshazard has but with my 6Bs with electric air preheaters I have been warned to never use ether! They may set off the ether before it has a chance to get into the cylinders.

IRGuy wrote:UV...

Not sure what engines jrshazard has but with my 6Bs with electric air preheaters I have been warned to never use ether! They may set off the ether before it has a chance to get into the cylinders.

WD40 should work.

+1 on WD40 over ether.

Mike..
Thanks for the tip. I have been told that I could disconnect the air preheaters if I start using the block heaters I had installed, but I never heard about using WD-40 until about a year ago. These are my first diesels. I might give it a try just to see. Winter is coming! Even to NC.

Block heaters are the cat's meow, even in relaively mild climates. Mine are some old finned strip heaters that test about 125 watts each that I hang off the heat exchangers with some aluminum ground wire. One per engnie box. I originally wired them through a line voltage thermostat but it crapped out pretty quickly so now I just leave them on all the time from about now until March or so. Makes a huge difference - my 250s don't have pre heat, and like all the 6Bs, no glow plugs so when the ambient air is in the 50s or lower they just flat don't wannt start....with the heaters they fire up instantly with minimum smoke. I notice a slight jump in my electric bill when they are running, say 10 bucks a month but that's quite okay for the dry engines and easy starting.

I bought a pair of the Wolverine 250 watt stcik on pad heaters and never installed them....they get damn hot and are probably overkill for a 6B.

A couple of 100 watt light bulbs per engine box would do about as well.

UV

John, Ether is last resort, make sure you changed out you fuel filters before you fire them off, after sittn for so long, fuel gets nasty, fill them with clean fresh fuel. Second Petes thoughts on the throttle position..reprime injector pump and you should be good to go with the block heaters on...great job on the progress..BH

My neighbor has similar engines and had done this bleeding procedure before.We bled the low pressure side first then the engines reluctantly started.While running,we bled each injector individually.On both engines,the forward two injectors(the highest elevation)had some air.They smoothed right out and now start instantly as before.There was a little smoke at first from the port engine for a few seconds but now not a trace.Pretty much the procedure Vic described except there was no small bleeder nut on the low pressure lift pump side that I could find so we bled it at a junction,worked fine.Lot of air came out.The swim platform on this boat is the solid fiberglass style not the slotted teak design.It is impossible to tell if water is coming out the exhaust upon start up.Not crazy about that.Does anyone have a recommended place to buy the manuals for these engines?That would be most helpful as a servicing and troubleshooting guide. Many thanks for all your input.I don't feel so alone.

The low pressure bleed screw is on the boss the spin on fuel filter is on....as I recall, just above the spin on...a tiny hex head screw, maybe 6 or 8 mm.

To check the water flow, get a infrared temp gun with a laser pointer and just shoot the raw water pump - if no water is being pumped it will heat up real quick.

I can usually bleed mine by just cracking the rear four injector nuts since the front two are hard to get a wrench on. I gamble sometimes and don't fill the Racor 500 body with diesel with cnanging the element.....and usually lose and have to do the whole bleed procedure. Its a lot easier to fish the jug of diesel outta the bilge than bleed, but I'm a gambler.....

Cummins 6Bs will airlock in a heartbeat and 99% of hard starting on them is due to some sort of air leak in the fuel system.....cracking in the plastic bowl on the Racors, especially around the drain, is a usual suspect.

UV

Dumb question.

Are the cummins 6bt not a good idea if I don't have access to shore power in the colder months to run engine block heaters? Or is this all diesels?

All diesels are hard to start in cold weather. Some - Volvo for example -have glow plugs that help. The newer Cummins 6Bs have air box pre-heaters that run for a few seconds off the batteries as you are starting that help, but are mostly to cut down on start-up smoking. The electronic engines, Cummins included, are much easier to start in cold weather.

My old 6B manuals say you should have auxulary heat when strarting them below 50 degrees ambient. I can attest to that. Don't not consider diesels due to that tho, they will start, just takes a few tries, and regardless of what people say, a puff of ether will always do the trick....wd-40 works too, but not nearly as well. CX won't work.

And you can get all the Cummins manuals from Cummins direct. The 6B owner's manual is the best I've ever seen, well worth whatever they ask for it.

UV

Peter- I have the Cummins and do not have block heaters. I put the Boat in around April 15 and usually haul around Thanksgiving. Have had no startup problems because of the cold. Once it gets below 50 I do get some white smoke at startup, but once gone, no smoke at all other than what might be considered normal. If you were keeping the boat in the water all winter, no matter what diesel you chose, it's the fuel that needs an additive to keep it from gelling (thickening) in the severe winter cold. A 100 watt lightbulb in each engine hatch would probably do it as far as the engines go.

Thanks for the info guys, I'm still about 75k short of converting to diesels however it is on my mind constantly. The one given is that the boat sits in a "village slip" for 12 months which costs me less then $1000 for the year. There is no shore power from December - March but I generally don't run the boat it's winterized. There are slips with shore power but my prefered location does not have shore power at all, I'd like to keep it that way.

I'm basically on Walters schedule accept the boat doesn't get hauled.

The yanmar has a glow plug and doesn't need heaters at all?

I have 230 Yanmars. There are no glow plugs, but there is a 'cold start circut' which is a black plunger that you're supposed to pull before attempting a cold start.

I've started my boat with temps in the 30's and never used the plunger. The engines take a while to get happy, but always start.

Sorry to hijack the thread.

Mike is that the model they don't offer any longer? I know the popular ones to talk about are the yanmar 315 or cummins 250. But that little 4 cylinder is probably super efficient requires less modification to the boat and all at a cost savings. Last year I was given a quote at the boat show of 22k for a cummins 250.

Edit: looks like yanmar doesn't make a 4 cyl big enough any longer.

I hooked up my block heaters yesterday and they kept tripping the GFCI on the 120 volt circuit on board they are wired into. This is the only circuit on board with a GFCI, the other 3 are old fsshioned three wire (black load, white neutral, and green ground). I've had problems with the GFCI tripping for years (Can't remember why I put it in years ago) so got out a meter and was able to detect only a very slight leakage to ground. I concluded the GFCI was either defective or too sensitive so replaced it with an ordinary 3-prong outlet and everything works fine. I'm leaning toward not replacing the GFCI as the properly grounded conventional wiring seems sufficient to me, and trying to keep tiny ground faults at bay on a boat is sorta like filling sinkholes behind your bulkhead.

The block heaters have the added benefit of keeping your engines & engine boxes dry, a prtty big deal of us that stay in the water all year. I keep a 100 watt Air-Dri in the V-berths and an old 120 volt desk fan running all the time on the cabin floor to keep the cabin dry too. Well worth the few bucks in juice a month.

UV

UV,

Just anything with a thermostat will, more often than not, trip GFCI.s.... Been down that road too many times. The worst offender to me was a whole house tankless water heater.

Is the receptacle in the cabin? If in the cockpit, it needs rain protection.

Br,

Patrick

peter please call me dec.14 to go last day of bass fishing. most likely 30 degree`s or less i will let you start the engines.they don`t start one turn i buy lunch when they do in half turn we go to mama`s.

As part of my rebuild of "Phoenix" I ran new 120 volt circuits in the cabin. To be a good doobie I used GFCIs for each circuit. Later I ran a seperate circuit for an electric cooktop. It tripped the GFCI whenever I turned the stove on. I spoke with several supposedly knowledgeable marine electricians. The general concensus was that you can't use resistance heaters on a boat without tripping the GFCI for that circuit.

No GFCI.. cooktop works fine!

Thanks......the outlet is inside the stb. motor box - aluminum box screwed to bulkhead in front of engine with weather tight "flaps" over duplex outlet when nothing is plugged in, wire is in plastic conduit, so its all out of the weather. One of our camp neighbors is in the electrical contracting business and says tracking down problems caused by GFCIs is a profit center for him.

It was in the low 50s at the camp last night and this morning I opened the motor boxes and both engines were warm to the touch - both cranked on the first turn or two with little smoke. And everything in both boxes, genset included, was dry and toasty. Works for me.

UV

bob lico wrote:peter please call me dec.14 to go last day of bass fishing. most likely 30 degree`s or less i will let you start the engines.they don`t start one turn i buy lunch when they do in half turn we go to mama`s.

I wouldn't miss a trip to mamas regardless of who's paying. To bad they stopped making the pizza pop a bunch of years back. It was my favorite.

I'm up for a last trip of the year, I'll call the week before. You fishing the riverview on Tuesday? Should be a beautiful day.

PeterPalmieri wrote:Sorry to hijack the thread.

Mike is that the model they don't offer any longer? I know the popular ones to talk about are the yanmar 315 or cummins 250. But that little 4 cylinder is probably super efficient requires less modification to the boat and all at a cost savings. Last year I was given a quote at the boat show of 22k for a cummins 250.

Edit: looks like yanmar doesn't make a 4 cyl big enough any longer.

Peter

If that 22 was fo r250's then they are not remans. You want the 270 remans. Did the 22 include the transmissions? In 2008, the 270's with Transmissions cost me around 37 and change with transmissions.

Find a good Cummins dealer on the Island I am sure Bob can help you. I hear a good one out there is few and far between.

tony are you kidding! 6 cummins trucks 24 men and between 18 and 24 remans cummins and every single part in 24 hours (two hours if you want to drive to jfk airport there new distribution center.

Tony,

I think the figure I got was from the guys Harv used and 22k was a ballpark figure per motor with transmissions for the remans didn't get into a lot of details. I will certainly enlist Bob when I'm ready, right now it's still a pipe dream.

Boat is running good at the moment, fishing the Riverview Striped Bass Tournament tomorrow. Hoping to have Rob at Raybo down this week to take a look at some glass work where I removed the pulpit.