Winterizing a Diesil

After you have the raw water system purged and filled with pink. Remove the raw water impeller give it a good spray with silicon and store in a zip lock. Helps keep the blades from taking a set or cracking. I agree with keeping the batteries on the boat. It has to get extremely cold to freeze a charged battery. Charts are available, try google. When your doing your winter projects, put the charger on for a while once a month or so.

 

FF,
If you crank a diesel cold while injecting fogging oil in the intake will it start?
Will it start if the engine is warm?

Easy Rider

 

"If you crank a diesel cold while injecting fogging oil in the intake will it start?"

Depends mostly on the temperature,cranking speed and time.

It takes a while to create and maintain enough heat in a cold engine cylinder to fire the fuel..

With out block heaters many winter start drills will be 15 to 20 seconds of cranking , 45 second wait and repeat 3 -4 times to get her going.

So it usually wont start on the fogging fluid if cold.

"Will it start if the engine is warm?"

Damn right it will, so a Quick bump ,instead of a long crank might work.

But to a freshly operating engine , Fogging Fluid is fuel!

And WOW! will it smoke!!

FF

 

Question,typically we have always changed the oil as part of the winterizing process on diesel engines but i am wondering if this is really necessary anymore with the ultra low sulphur fuel of today and the very low hours of run time per season of many pleasure boats,what do you guys think?
Steve

 

During a TV interview a retired engineer from Shell oil said that the quality of engine oil has reached a level where oil changes are no longer necessary at all, as long as the filter is changed in time and oil is added to maintain the proper level.
This happened many years ago on Dutch TV. It immediately drew a lot of attention in the media, but the spokesman was not available for further comments and seems to have disappeared completely. Whether he was facing a law suit or big money bought his silence remains a mystery.

 

"LubeOil is the cheapest Insurance Money can buy" said by an old Diesel Mechanic with 60 years of practical experience in operation and maintaining a 2.2 Megawatt Diesel powered Powerhouse in bush Alaska. Do you really want to take your chances with any other procedure, on your most expensive investment. It isn't JUST the acid buildup in LubeOil that is the issue, in changing LubeOil as you do your Winter Layup routines. There are many other contaminants in WasteOil, that are hard on metal surfaces.

 

Good question Steve. As CDK states modern oils have very long service life. Modern fuels are cleaner. I always follow the engine manufactures guidelines for engine hours, oil changes and suspect that I throw many, many, many liters of perfectly good oil away. On the practical side, When winterizing you are typically on your hands and knees dressed in your work overalls, tools everywhere, greasy hands, generally inspecting , servicing the motor, tensioning belts, cleaning sea grass out of heat exchangers or whatever so why not do the whole cycle, saves work come next season
Something to consider with marine engines is that they run cool and short run periods may never bring the oil temp up enough to evaporate the moisture in the air. This implies contaminated oil. Service manuals always have recommended oil changes scheduled according to service cycle.. the marine cycle would be Heavy Duty.
I guess the scientific approach would be to take an oil sample and have it analysed. Perhaps you find that at 250 hrs or whatever your recommended oil change guideline states , that your applications oil still has remaining service life.

 

"During a TV interview a retired engineer from Shell oil said that the quality of engine oil has reached a level where oil changes are no longer necessary at all, as long as the filter is changed in time and oil is added to maintain the proper level."

It is common in the large truck industry (which frequently was the engine source for marinization) to use "by pass" filtering and oil sampling every 25,000 miles to keep SYNTHETIC oil almost "forever".

200,000 + miles is not rare , tho when the big filters are changed the make up oil will be a few gallons , so brings new additive package materials.The Additive package is about 15% of the oil, and is required to help clean the engine.

Big hassle is trucks run almost every day , some boats every month , and winterizing its known it will be 3 -7 months of sitting.

Synthetic oil gets better fuel mileage (2%-3%) because its thinner and drains and scrapes more easily off the working surfaces like cylinder walls.

NOT a desirable feature for a pickled engine.Synthetics are great , but not if the engine needs the protection of oil covered surfaces.

IF you want a real education on out of service engine storage find an aircraft site and see the procedures for Radial engines being put to bed.

FF

 

Years ago Cummins did some testing re oil as the newer oil that claimed it could run for extended change intervals.
So they got several trucks in fleets in the US doing the same job and some they ran them changing the oil when Cummins spec said to other the other trucks they ran to the oil manufacturers claims.
What they discovered was that the longer you used the oil the additive package was used up and then the trucks oil consumption started to go up and then you top up the oil and hence the old oil gets some new additives and then shortly after it starts burning oil again.
The trucks with the long change interval used much more oil than the ones where it was regularly changed.
They put that down to a clever marketing scam, yes you can run a large oil change interval BUT you will actually use more oil.
The base oil doesnt actually change but the additive package gets used up.

 

Current lube oil prices prove the old diesel mechanic wrong Bruce.
In his time it may have been true, but a can of synthetic oil nowadays is twice the price of a bottle of Jack Daniels....