- Welcome to the Inspire and Learn series.
We are The Multihull Group,
a multi award winning dealership in Australia,
specialising in catamarans.
Join us as our expert team, teach you all
about anchoring, docking, rigging, sail trim, maintenance
and so much more.
So you can build confidence
in your catamaran handling ability.
John is going down into the engine Bay
to show you the process
of routine engine maintenance.
ENJOY!
- So, welcome back to another Inspire
and Learn episode with The Multihull Group.
I'm Joe Fox.
And today I'm joined by John Gamlin.
One of our service coordinators from Vesseltec,
the dedicated service centre for The Multihull Group.
John is a rigger and yacht master by trade.
He's got many thousands
of sailing miles under his belt, up to 80,000
he just told me.
so, John very impressive.
Thank you for joining us today.
- You're welcome.
- Today We're just going to talk
about diesel engines on your Lagoons.
So, generally on the smaller Lagoons,
we're dealing with a common rail Yanmar engines.
John's gonna talk us through, some
of the things that you can do as an owner
to maintain your engine, not necessarily regular servicin,
but regular checks which you can do on board
just to keep your engine healthy
and to identify any problems before they become issues.
John, just take us through the process,
from opening the hatch to do a, an engine inspection.
- One thing that we don't want
to have happen is somebody walk up
and turn those engines on.
So, the first thing we're gonna do is,
we're opening up the engine
and you'll see a nice bright red knob
on the top of the engine or near the top of the engine.
And we gonna reach down
and we're gonna push on that red knob,
that's going to isolate the engine
so that it cannot be started from the helm station.
- We should start just on these Yanmar engines,
other engines may, may vary whether they have that knob.
- That's correct, That's correct.
Some of them may not.
If we ever have to get into that engine bay,
with an engine running, we want to make sure
that we don't have a lot of loose clothing
and what have you.
Because again the last thing we want
is to get our clothing or long hair,
caught up in those moving parts of the engine.
So, we need to be careful of that.
And then as we open that hatch,
we wanna take, we wanna get a bit of an idea
on that engine space on how well it's been maintained.
What sort of an engine is there?
What make?
But also is it clean, is the bilge clean?
Is there any smells and what have you
that we become aware of any obvious leaks or whether
I can say something straight away
that I should be concerned about.
Whether there's loose fittings,
bits and pieces in the bilge,
water in the bilge oil of the engine.
- So it's a visual check first.
And then what, what do you go into
to then do a routine checks, say a once in a week check?
- Are you heading towards, wobble or not?
- I am, that's exactly where we are going John.
- Okay.
So, I think it's a great acronym, Wobbles.
The W stands for water, for our cooling system.
O is for oil.
B is for batteries.
Second B is for belts.
The L is for leaks, different types of leaks,
We'll talk about that.
The E is for exhausts.
We're gonna to be checking
that when we start the boat, motor.
And the S for sound.
we wanna to know that, we want to be mindful
of what a good engine sounds like.
And I also, I quite like the idea of having a, another S
which is spares, making sure we have those spares we need.
- Very important.
Now, take us back to the beginning
and we'll just run through that in detail.
So.
- Right.
- W
- Okay.
So, the water system, these
these engines are cooled by water system.
It's actually a dual system, salt water and fresh water.
So, in the engine bay, we've got a, a pickup
outside the boat.
A through hull water gets drawn u
through hull, into a strainer,
a seawater strainer.
And then it feeds into the engine
and that water circulates around a fresh water system.
And it's that fresh water system.
That keeps the engine jacket
and the components of the engine cool.
And here we have raw water intake,
which is coming off the stern drive, near the propeller.
And so what we're going to do is, we're going to
turn that stopcock off.
As long as we have that handle
at right angles to the flow of the water.
We know that the water is off.
What that's going to do is that's going to
prevent the water running out from our strainer,
which is way over here it's other side
and forward of the Motor.
And that's gonna to stop all that water draining
out of the leg.
Because if that happens, we need to then fill it
strainer back up with water, to prime
the, the raw water cooling system.
And if we need to inspect the filter,
to see if there's any debris, some sea weed in there.
So we can remove that, put our filter back in the strair
make sure it's sited correctly.
And then put that cap back on.
When I want to put the cap back on, I actually
wound it back in the directin that I would take it off.
And that was to allow the cap to site correctly
before I twisted it on,
so that I didn't cross thread that cap.
But also we've got a water pump down and here.
This impeller is not actually fOR this motor.
It's just an example
of what your impeller is going to look like.
But as similar looking Impeller will be
in behind this fitting here, this plate.
Now, this is a perfect example
of why we need to know our boats
and we need to know our tools.
Because,
what you would normally do.
If you've got a problem with your water, raw water intake
and you've checked your Strainers and what have you
and it's not that.
We're worried now that we've broken one of the vains
of our impeller.
So, we need to take this plae off and excess the Impeller
inside this fitting.
We do that by loosening these nuts, taking these nuts
off completely, and then we'll be able to prize
out the Impeller from in here and check it, inspect it.
With a couple of, of the flat screwdrivers,
I'll be able to get that out.
And then I'll be able to inspect it,
to see that it's not damaged.
One thing I would mention when you're doing this sort
of work, is you need to be very careful not to
damage the inside of that Impeller housing, particulary
where you would see the housing has a slight bump.
It's called a cam.
And we don't want to put
our screwdrivers anywhere near that
because that's needed for the pump to work correctly.
So we would come to the uniform, curved sides of the,
of the housing and that's where we would put our,
our screwdrivers and gently prize out the impeller.
And here we have our fresh water side
of the engine cooling system.
And so we've got a reservoir which is
underneath the floor in the engine bay
It's a little reservoir where I just like in your car.
I can see the fluid, it's got a high and a low mark,
and it's coming in here.
And that's the same sort
of cap that you would see on your car.
Its like radiator cap.
We can undo that.
You can have a look at that and we can see our
coolant level there
nice and full, it's a green color,
its got the anti-freezer in it.
And so, for the O in our wobble.
Is our oil
This is our oil dipstick down in here.
So we're gonna to be pulling that out,
just like it is in a car.
And then we have our dipstick and actually
this oil is beautiful.
We're just an engine service done on these engines.
And so that oil is actually quite clear.
It's only just starting to have a tinge of black to it.
It's got two little marks.
So, I'm gonna to wipe that off.
You can see those two marks.
We've got a minimum and a maximum.
I'm gonna pop that back in to the dipstick hole.
I'm gonna push it right down to the bottom.
This is different to the transmission,
which we■ll see later.
And then I'm gonna pull it back out again.
I'm gonna pull it out and we can see that.
Thankfully just after a service, it's right up at full.
So our, our oil level is good.
And the second part of that, that oil system that we talkd
about is the transmission oil here.
This is the sound drive that comes
off the back of the motor and down through the hull
and then we've got a propellr on the bottom of that.
And so we need to be checking the oil,
just by cracking that oil filler stroke dipstick.
And we can just pull that off.
I can clear that out.
You'll see that there's two marks on the dipstick
the bottom one, the course being a minimum
the top one being the maximum.
We're gonna pop that in,
but we're not gonna screw it up.
We're gonna sit it in and then we're going to
take it back out again.
The oil on this is very clear.
I can see.
I'm not sure whether the camera can pick that up.
That the oil is just over halfway
on that dipstick, its actually more, almost to ful.
So that's perfect.
And wipe that down again and connect that back up.
One thing we do not want to do is overfill the oil.
- Yeah
- That can cause more damage than running this,
the engine with low oil.
Because it can build up pressure in the engine,
which can cause seals and what have you to blow.
So, just as long as we've got
between our minimum and maximum.
We wanna make sure,
that the oil looks like oil and doesn't look like milk.
That would indicate that we've got water in the oil.
And again, then perhaps we've got a seal that's broken
down between the cooling system of the boat
and the oil of the engine and the oil system.
We don't wanna it overly black or thick.
Certainly we don't wanna, we can feel the consistency
of the oil to, to see whether there's any obvious grit
or anything, but generally speaking that
will be just, oil viscosity.
It will go black, the oils regardless.
They only need to be run
for a short time and it all ends up black.
If we've run the engine,
then we want to let that engine sit for a period of time,
maybe five or 10 minutes before we check the oil.
Because that oil has gotta make its way
down through the, through the engine back into the sump,
before we test that all level.
- Next one.
- B for batteries.
Obviously we need power to start the engine.
And we also need the engine to be generating power back
into those batteries.
This is our engine battery,
and what we're looking for here,
it's nice clean battery would
expect that on a boat like this.
The connection to nice and firm,
so we can give them a bit of a wiggle.
The terminals are not moving the,
the cables to the terminal without moving.
And also we've got no corrosion
or anything happening on the top of those terminals.
So, that's a good looking battery.
But if we find that we've got corrosion happening
on these terminals, or these terminals are loose,
we wanna get our spanner down here.
We wanna nip those up.
We've also got house batteries.
And so again, same as with engine batteries
we need to be checking that the connections are nice
and secure, they're nice and tight and not moving.
And then we don't have any corrosion
around those terminals.
Just like your car.
If you see corrosion
start to buildup on those battery terminals.
then we wanna to get a water brush into those,
get rid of the, the corrosion and then apply a bit of
protectant, that inox is fine for that.
Something that's going to stick
around those terminals and the clamps that go on them.
Also, we wanna be checking the connections
to our battery switches as well.
Looking at these connections here.
We can see that we've got a battery isolator switches here.
But these are some major connection points here,
that we wanna make sure are nice and firm as well.
You'll also see just over here,
If we're having to work on the engine at night
our lights aren■t on on at t electrical panel inside.
But if I were on and we're needing to work
on the engine at night for an emergency.
We've got a little, trouble light here
that we can just turn on to illuminate the area.
- Next one, another B, another B.
- Belts.
Okay, okay.
So, we're working into belts and I've mentioned before,
that we've got a, we're generating power through the,
through the engine to put power back into the batteries
and that's for an alternator..
So, we need to make sure that that belt is good
and Sound.
It's not frying, it's not overly loose.
We also don't want it overly tight.
The best thing to do there, is to talk to your mechanic
and see what deflection you should have there.
But we want a little bit of deflection without too much.
We don't wanna to see those belts flopping all
over the place.
Particularly when the, when the engines running.
On the front of the motor, I've actually taken
off the belt guard before we started this video.
And I can access these belts.
Now, this is the deflection we were talking about.
There's not a lot in there.
That's the sort of deflection that we're looking at.
It's not bar tight,
but it is fairly tight is only about, lets say it's
probably five mil of deflection in those belts.
- L for leaks.
- Yeah.
- We've got, we've mentioned
that we've got a cooling system
on the boat, water, fresh and salt.
We've also got an oil system
and we've also got a fuel system.
So, all of those have the possibility of generating leaks
around the engines.
The engine is vibrating, the engine is
moving components do become loose over time.
Maybe someone forgot to tighten something up.
So, we're checking over all of these components.
We're having a look down
in the bilge, to see that there's no water sitting
in the bottom of the bilge.
There's not oil sitting in the bottom of the bilge.
Salt deposits, the water may have evaporated off
But it's an indication that there's been salt water,
somehow getting into that, into that engine compartment.
Corrosion is another good indicator,
that we could have a a salt water leak.
If we've got unexplained, corrosion
too much corrosion happening
we wanna find out where that's happening.
And that's why we need to always be monitoring,
keeping the engine clean.
Wiping away in the oil leaks, wiping away the fuel leaks.
keeping the bilge's clean.
If you do get leaks in your fuel system,
apart from tightening up a few nuts here and there.
You wanna be careful these are diesel engines.
they run injectors, not spark plugs.
So, the fuel was running through,
fine almost like hydraulic lines.
- Under very high pressure, is that right?
- Yeah, probably is.
I'm not a mechanic.
So I don't know what the pressures are involved,
but I do know that we don't wanna to over-tighten those
and these modern engines are self priming.
There's a, there's a nice, simple way of priming,
but they will tend to, to prime themselves.
If you aren't getting fuel leaks,
then it's probably best to gt your mechanic to have a look
at it as soon as possible.
- Yeah.
- Basically anywhere where we've got hoses terminating.
We've obviously got either some sort
of fluid flowing through most of these hoses.
So we■re checking any hose clamps, we checking caps,
filler a caps and what have you.
If you are on this side of the engine, our filters.
So we've got here, we've got a secondary fuel filter,
we've got a primary fuel filter over here.
And we've also got an oil filter down here
by the oil dipstick.
Those areas, they're attaching to the engine.
Again, it's a point where fluid is flowing
through those filters and back
into the engine and that's a potential area for leak.
We're also looking out for leaks
on certain joints in the engine.
So, where we've got gaskets and what have you,
we've got up components.
We may see a seam running around the engine or down otr
fittings, we're looking to see if there's any oil seeping
out of any seams we see on the engine.
Basically, anything that carries fluid or holds fluid in,
we wanna be checking that for signs of leakage.
- We've made on to E, which is the exhaust.
we're looking for water.
That's coming through that exhaust system, the water,
the salt water that runs through the system
and cools the freshwater system.
Then finds its way
into the exhaust system.
It builds up and then it gets spat out
by the exhaust gases.
So, we'll see when we start the engine up, we want to coe
to the of boat, look over the side and make sure
that we've got that flow
of water being pulsed out of the boat.
So, we're checking our exhaust the E in our Wobbles
We've got plenty of water coming out of here.
the pulsing of the water is fine.
It's where the water is accumulating in the exhaust system
before he gets blasted out by exhaust, gases.
And then it accumulates again,
before being blasted out again.
So that pulsing
of the salt water is fine.
That's what we'd like to see,
Whenever we turn the engines on.
Okay the last of our wobbles can is sound,
we can here the engines running.
Its actually quite, quiet.
I can hear the distinct knock knock knocking of the diesel
But its a smooth sound,
I've got no bad vibrations and what have you.
I'm happy with that motor.
If I don't get that,
if there some sounds that am not happy with.
I'm gonna calling my mechanic to come on down have a look.
- Yeah. Thank you for watching.
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until next time.
Thank you very much.
Join us in the next episode
for more how to videos
so you can built confidence in your catamaran handling ability
See you then!