Slip-sliding Away
Slip slidin’ away
Slip slidin’ away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away
— Simon and Garfunkel
So these profetic words were written many years ago when I was but a wee lad who had no idea about boats and it would have been a good thing if it had stayed that way. However, here we are many moons later, and I am totally stuck in an oily situation.
After the headaches caused to me by the toilet situation (which are now under control I hope after a bit more love using tightened screws) I remembered to have to look into another situation. Last Friday before I switched on the engine I did an oil level check. Due to a tiny situation with a broken seal some oil seeps out of the sump and needs to be replaced. However, the level was increasing! Odd enough, a few weeks ago before my first attempt to make the passage to Bowling, the level was also higher than expected. However since Tony had replaced the old oil with new after the boat arrived here in Dunstaffnage (together with some extra for a new oil filter), I’d imagined he had added a bit too much. So I had pumped out a bit out to lower it back to “the max”. So why would it be higher again?
I discussed this with several local experts in my pub and the conclusion was that diesel fuel must leak somehow into the oil sump of the engine. Or water, but then you should find a white emulsion and that wasn’t the case. And water would be bad. At least the diesel can clean up the sump a bit but it’s not good for the engine and needs to be fixed.
So I call a recommended local expert yesterday who can show up today! That is a first for western Scotland. The cheapest bit that could cause the problem is called a lift pump. To access this part in the cramped engine “room” he had to get the alternator out of the way before being able to take this part out. After checking it thoroughly in the workshop, he concluded that the lift pump wasn’t the culprit. This was not good news. He also verified if there was no water in the sump itself (since oil floats on water this can be easily verified by opening the sump at the bottom of the engine). This was fortunately not the case.
Then he assembled everything and we tried to start the engine. Well, that didn’t go well in the sense that there was a high-pitched squealy noise coming from the alternator and I didn’t see the RPM displayed correctly. After a lot of experimenting it became clear that by touching this engine:
- it had become obvious that the crappy electric wiring for the instrument control panel isn’t helping
- another important electrical part that guarantees all batteries are equally charged was not acting normal
- we could hear the misfiring of one of the cylinders during these tests.
The latter indicates that an investigation needs to take place for the 3 cylinders in order to find out which one is not working correctly. That would be the one that causes fuel to leak into the sump.
So where does this bring me? Well, I have currently an engine that cannot be relied upon to charge my batteries. That will need many oil changes to get somewhere inefficiently. And the electric wiring should all be replaced (possibly with a better instrument control panel) to be reliable and dependable. I’m awaiting a proposal with a cost estimate, but it is not going to be cheap…
In the meantime I’m not nearing my destination but slip-slidin’ away…
