Diesel Ready...almost

Our boat is powered with a Universal 5432. The more I learn about this little beast the more I've come to love her. Having a 30 year old engine used to concern me considering what we will be expecting of her. But now, I have few worries. She has a new oversized heat exchanger, new raw water pump, new exhaust mixing elbow, and all new belts and hoses. The past 2 weeks has been fixing minor fuel leaks, repairing a chaffed heat exchanger (totally my fault...rubbing on bellhousing bolt), all fluid changes, all new hoses and clamps, and alignment.

The engine was running a little hot yesterday (195 at full load) so I drilled a small hole in the 180 degree thermostat and reduced the coolant ration to 30%. Lesson learned: change only one thing at once. The temp is now too cold. Soooooooo, back to the "no hole thermostat with the holed one as a spare for the warmer water we're heading off to. I believe the high concentration of coolant was the problem. Live and learn and spend time and money.

I believe today that this engine could motor around the world...and hopefully will have to! The Kubota block that the Universal is built around might just be the most robust and bomb proof diesel ever made. I know people love their Yanmars, but I'll take this ol' girl any day. 30 years old, pushes this 10 ton boat at 6.3 kts at 80% throttle, 7.3kts wide open, 45lb of oil pressure, and burns less than 1 gal/hr. With our 93 gallons of fuel onboard (ok, this includes 4 jerry jugs), our range is well over 500 miles with plenty of reserve. This, of course, with no wind. And it doesn't take much wind to make this boat go.

We also have a day tank system with onboard fuel polishing and transfer which is similar to commercial fishing boats. This means that fuel from the day tank to the engine fuel filters (racor 500 and engine mount filter) has already been pre-filtered with seperate Racor 500 and a 30 micron racor. It also enables us to keep the 12 gallon day tank topped off, eliminating the possibility of sucking air into the system in a rough seaway (this happened on our last boat and was not fun!)

Anyway, we blew up the diesel on our last boat (12 hp Farymann) and have no intention of a repeat. The Farymann had no gauges or alarms and got hot enough to sieze. We now have all gauges and an alarm system to wake the dead. Add to that, when the alarm goes off Dover barks like the sky is falling. I think he knows the importance.

Tomorrow I'm going to delve into the black art of NMEA 0183 and try and make the Navman wind instrument and Garmin GPS talk to the Furuno Autopilot. I rate my odds at about 35%. It sure would be nice for the autopilot to steer off the apparent wind. But, to be honest, I'm so thrilled just to have an autopilot (last trip was 4000 miles of hand steering) that none of this matters too much.

A week of rain is in the forecast and we just want to go go go. Anything non-critical can be installed someplace warm with many cervesa breaks!