Embarrassment

Green Turtle Cay
26 46.62 N 077 20.17 W

I have an embarrassing story to tell; the kind of story that some blog readers like best.

This morning, we started the engine to recharge batteries. That's our normal routine. It ran for about 3 minutes, then it stopped abruptly.

"Uh Oh," I thought, "It must be out of fuel." At least that was my initial diagnosis. What else could make a diesel engine stop abruptly? Surprising though because we bought fuel recently and it shouldn't be down at all.

We have two fuel tanks. 20 gallons each. We use transfer valves to manually switch from the port tank to the starboard tank. Sight glasses on each tank allow us to see the fuel level 0-10 gallons in each tank. More than half full, we have no fuel gauge. Anyhow, I opened up the engine compartment and peered at the sight gauge on the starboard tank we were drawing from. It was inconclusive. You see, the plastic tube that forms the sight gauge gets stained brown. So it looks brown when full and brown when empty. To be useful, I have to be able to spot the air/liquid surface in the tube. When the tank is full or empty, no air/liquid surface exists for me to see.

Anyhow, I switched tanks and cranked the engine. Nothing.

In the 2 or 3 times in the past when we let one tank run dry, this step fixed the problem. (This is the 4th time I made this mistake in 4 years. That means I remember to check and to switch 99.7% of the time.)

I pumped the manual fuel lift pump lever for 5 minutes, then cranked again. No start.

I inspected the primary fuel filter. It was full of fuel. I changed the filter anyhow on general purposes. I cranked again. Nothing.

I began to doubt my diagnosis. I removed the air filter and cranked. Nothing. I changed the air filter anyhow on general purposes.

I removed the secondary fuel filter. It was dry. Good; that's a clue. I fetched a cup of diesel fuel and filled the filter, put it back in place, and worked the manual fuel lift for one more minute. Then I cranked. Nothing.

Libby brought out the Nigel Calder maintenance book and found the no-start checklist. It was too general to be of use.

I was then considering disassembling the fuel system bit by bit to see where fuel flowed and where it didn't. Before taking that drastic step, I looked up the air bleed procedure in the engine manual. Aha; there's a bleed screw on the secondary fuel filter. The instruction said to loosen the screw and work the manual fuel lift pump until fuel streams out with no bubbles. I did that. No fuel came out at all with or without bubbles. Double uh oh.

Finally, I decided to crank with the air bleed screw open. Fuel streamed out and the engine coughed. Great! Now I tightened the screw again and cranked. She started right up! The Beta engine's fuel system is self-bleeding so just letting it run would purge the rest of the air in the system.

The embarrassing part is that it took me almost 90 minutes to restart the engine. Last night I sat up on anchor watch ready to spring into action and to use the engine to prevent disaster in case the anchor dragged. Well if it had dragged, I would have sprang into action only to have the engine stop minutes later in the midst of an emergency. Double contingency. Very bad. I didn't know how to correct, bleed, and restart rapidly. Triple contingency. Very very bad. It is a good illustration of how seemingly improbable multiple contingencies can be more likely than we suspect.

What lessons to learn?

1) I've always had the habit of checking the fuel level regularly. When we are on the move and using the engine a lot, that means daily. When at anchor and using the engine to recharge batteries, that means weekly. I fell victim to Island Time. I thought we refueled only a few days ago. Checking the log book, it was more than two weeks ago. Anyhow, 99.7% is not good enough. I should revise the routine to check fuel daily no matter what.

2) The next time we run a tank dry, I'll loosen the bleed screw *before* trying to crank the engine. That might get us restarted in seconds rather than an hour or more.