Oh Dark Thirty
I’d gotten to bed too early and consequently woke up too early. There was no sign of the pre-dawn twilight when I made my first batch of coffee. The StarlinkRV and computer fired up and I went through my authentication protocols to login at work and begin another day at the office. The day is promising both sun and fun, although I’m not certain about the latter.
Morning
I saw that Mark and Marjorie have returned from their sortie to Philipsburg and hope to enlist their aid today to finally get the genoa sail hoisted. I will need to clean a up bit belowdecks first, so that I don’t give Marjorie the impression that I’m a typical bachelor slob. Even though I am often one.
While making another coffee and my fried eggs and bread I ran the engine. This keeps the high drain from going to the battery bank and begins to charge the batteries as well. Due to Peukert’s law the amount of energy you need to put into a battery exceeds that which you can get out. The energy difference between consumption and charging increases along with the power drain.
Noon
Several calls later, my workday ended in the mid-afternoon. I realized that today wouldn’t be the sun and fun that I’d anticipated. I had finally been contacted by ELECTEC regarding my generator woes. To say I was displeased by their response is putting it mildly. I’d contacted them a week ago and was told “The technical department will get back to you”. They didn’t. And after I complained this morning, I was told to wait until next week and then they would see about trying to arrange a visit from a technician. Not that a technician would actually come next week. Just that they could see about scheduling then. Despite being busy, this is an unacceptably long wait.
The technical manager and I exchanged e-mails and both he and his technician agreed that my problem was most likely the fuel pump. I had already reached the same conclusion, but had hoped that I’d missed something substantial in my analysis. This is because the fuel injection pump is the single most expensive item on the engine. A new one from Cummins-Onan is $1900 in the USA (without shipping). There are refurbished ones available on the market that I could try. Plus I can remove my pump and have it refurbished as well. But that might take a long time and the cost is unknown.
Afternoon
I decided that I’d need to remove the fuel pump myself and bring it in to ELECTEC. As can be expected, I couldn’t just remove it, that would have been too easy. I needed to remove other parts such as the injector lines and the air delivery manifold.
Once I got it removed it looked to be in pretty good condition with no visible damage. The service manual shows the parts and I decided that I’d try to disassemble it myself to see if cleaning it thoroughly might work. I took lots of pictures and made notes as well.
Each of the 4 pump barrels has a metal shim with a number on it (05, 12, 12, 15). I duly noted which one went with which cylinder to prevent reassembly issues. 3 of the 4 top ends were very tight and I couldn’t remove them aboard without a vise. I ended up bringing them ashore and using the concrete dock as a fulcrum to lever them open.
Late Afternoon
I’d put everything in a bag prior to going to the dock, including my Post-It note with the shim cylinder numbers. That was a mistake, perhaps even a $2000 mistake. The note fluttered off the dock in the wind and I didn’t notice in time to stop it from disappearing into the depths of Simpson Bay. The tolerances for the high-pressure pump pieces is in the 10ths of a millimeter as they define the injection points for the cylinders. That means that just randomly putting in shims could result in engine damage.
It has been a day with sun and no fun! I had a couple of beers at the Soggy Dollar bar to drown my sorrows and then returned to Zanshin for dinner and movie. Except I didn’t make it to the movie portion of the entertainment calendar.