Injector Nut

I (Jon) finished this job approximately April 20th.

One day we pull into Bundaberg Marina after having motored extensively for the previous four days. The next day we go to leave because the Marina is $54 a night. Ridiculous.

Unfortunately the engine wouldn’t start. We were in Bundaberg for a week while I tried to diagnose the problem, then made the problem worse, fixed what I made worse, and then with a magic spell and some incantations (mostly four letter words) the original problem of not starting was fixed as the engine roared to life.

To try and fix the original problem, I bled the engine repeatedly. I also changed both fuel filters. We change the primary filter whenever the vacuum gauge begins to register, but we haven’t changed the secondary filter in like two years. With regular changes to the primary, ti should rarely, if ever, need to be changed. But since it had been so long, I decided to change it. I asked Matt a question about it, and he was like, don’t you remember, you’re the only person who has done it when you changed it like two years ago.

The problem that I caused was that when trying to crack open the injector nuts to bleed air out of the injector lines, instead of the injector nut turning open, the injector adapter loosened. I subsequently couldn’t get the injector adapter to retighten. I also couldn’t get the injector nut to loosen.

The fuel line from the injector pump to the injector was obviously getting stressed with all the torquing. So eventually I had to take the injector line off at the fuel injector. This also involved taking the fuel return line off and pulling out the injector from the engine with fuel line still dangling on it. With the line and injector off the engine and sitting nicely on a cutting board I was able to attach a vice grip and a wrench, add a pipe to each handle to lengthen the leverage and yard with all my might on the injector nut. It finally loosened. I screamed in satisfaction.

The Perkins dealer in Bundaberg informed us after a day of calling around that there is no Perkins 4108 injector nut in all of Australia, but the dealer was able to pull one from another engine that fit.

With the injector adapter, injector nut and fuel line back together, I put the injector back in and reconnected the fuel line and fuel return line. I tried again to bleed the engine properly, and again, it didn’t start.

I tried again, It didn’t start. I tried an hour later, it didn’t start. I tried again, it didn’t start. And then an hour later with a few more 4 letter word incantations directed at the engine, myself, the boat, Justin, my ego, everyone who I wasn’t getting along with at the moment because they were ignoring me, the counter person at McDonalds (j/k) and basically the entire world, the engine decided to start.

The engine has now been running for a month absolutely perfectly so I’m pretty happy about that. I figure I just needed to keep bleeding the engine properly.

I also replaced the shitty plastic bleed valve on one of our primary fuel filters with a real metal screw. Fuel used to almost continually ooze from this bleed valve. It no longer does. This was not the entire problem, though may have been contributing to it.

For another rendition of this story, see the main Syzygy blog here.