'THERE IS SMOKE EVERYWHERE!!' not what you want to hear 40mi offshore....

I posted this on BoatDiesel as well, if you are a member there that thread may be of interest.

So the wife and I are offshore 40miles Saturday enjoying glass like conditions on the gulf. Beautiful weather, zero waves, so what if the fishing was slow....

We had been on the bridge for some time and she decides to go grab some food for us, she opens the cabin door and hollers "THERES SMOKE EVERYWHERE!!!".

I immediately push and hold the shutdown buttons to kill the mains, although I was only bump trolling on starboard engine. I had turned port on/off through the day when needed, and I´m not even certain if port was on or off at this time.

I head down to the engine room, which is indeed filled with a whiteish smoke. It was a very strong smell and very eye watering and nose burning. I hold my breath and do a quick walkthrough of the ER looking for active flames or something to give me some idea of what is going on. I see nothing.

I could only take so much, eyes burning, had to get out. I head straight for the salon breaker panel, I instruct her to kill all the ac units. I kill every breaker that I feel could potentially be causing this. The smell was very electrical to me and my first gut reaction was it was a capacitor that had blown or an electric motor fried.

So after checking everything that I felt could be on fire and finding nothing, somewhat satisfied that we are not on fire we open windows, hatches, get fans going in the ER, get a fan blowing out of the hatch so it´s pushing the smoke out. Open the galley floor hatch to allow cross flow in the ER.

While waiting on the smoke to clear so I can do a more thorough inspection we bottom fish for a while and catch some vermillion snapper for dinner.

Once the smoke cleared enough for me to get in the ER without tearing up I do a thorough inspection of all electrical devices. At this point I´m almost certain we are dealing with a capacitor, or pump, or compressor, or electric motor of some sort. I go to each system one at a time, shoot it with an IR gun to look for excessive temp, then I have my wife turn the breaker on and then we turn ´whatever´ device it is on. We go through all the ac units, every pump, every bilge pump....etc and all appear to be in fully functional shape.

So, then we fire the engines. Stbd fires right up, no problem.

She hits the starter for port and only gets a heavy CLUNK. I´m like hmmmm... that´s odd.... these things usually fire right up.

So we stop there, I check the voltages on the port battery bank, all is good.

I get her to hit the start button again, CLUNK (this time I notice the lights dim). So, in my head I start keying in on the starter. Thinking maybe it got hung up engaged and the motor spun it for a while and burnt it up..... maybe the solenoid is fried and that was the electrical smell....

So I get her to tap the start button 3-4 times in quick succession. She does this and on the 3rd tap the engine spins and fires right up.... but there is a definite abnormal sound. I have her shut it down immediately. The engine ran maybe 10 secs or so.

This is on port engine, so the starter is outboard of the middle isle. There is no good way to access that side of that engine (that is going to change soon).

So in my head I have this starter theory, maybe the sound I´m hearing is the bendix or gear dragging, or maybe the bearings are shot/fried...etc But I cannot put my hands/eyes on the starter to really verify that is where the sound is coming from.

So with all other systems fired up and no smoke, we decide to just continue fishing on one engine and start trolling our way back toward the hill. We chugged our way back in and made the pass a little after midnight.

We dropped anchor at ft mcree and overnighted. The next day we relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. Made it back to the dock around 3pm or so. After cleaning up the boat from the trip and cleaning fish I started the process of getting the starter out. I was fully expecting to find a charred solenoid with goo oozing out of it.... what I found was a perfectly normal looking starter.

I had her attempt to start it again and only got the heavy "CLUNK" and dimming of lights. It sure looked/felt to me like the starter was properly functioning but was unable to turn the engine over. So, not sure what else to do at that time, I went ahead and pulled the starter (damn what a heavy sob).

So monday morn I take the starter into the local old school starter/alternator shop. He throws it in a vice with a 24v power supply (it is a 32v starter) and it spins just as clean and as pretty as you could please. It sounds great, bendix actuates/retracts like it´s brand new. He did say the teeth had a little damage and he suggested replacing the gear and, based on the symptoms I explained, the solenoid as well.

So, while praying it´s the starter, I have the gut feeling it´s something else. What could cause that much smoke but not leave a trace?

Just playing devils advocate for a worst case situation..... I know detroits can run backwards, and I am anal about holding the shutdown button even after the engine is off. But an engine running in reverse would definitely fill the engine room with smoke and leave no trace... When running in reverse there is no oil pressure (oil pump running in reverse), there is also no cooling water. Doing this for long enough (even at idle) would likely seize an engine right? Would it hydro lock it? How long would it take running at idle speed with no oil pressure to seize it?

I did check the oil, it did not smell burnt, it looked normal.

So, as luck would have it I got back to the boat late last night (have a meeting near the boat, using it as hotel). Didn't have time to really look at anything but when I got near that engine I could definitely smell the same smell as the smoke from saturday. I started sniffing around and the smell is definitely strongest at the air seps on port (the down engine). I smelled starboards air seps and they have no noticeable odor.

Based on responses to the BoatDiesel thread I'm going to open some inspection ports and run a bore scope up in the open cylinders. I'm then going to try to bar the engine over. I'll try to keep this thread updated with details as well as the BD thread as I know many here are not members there.

Real sorry to hear this. What transmission do you run?

You mentioned in an earlier post that you were going to drop the rpm on the engines for slow troll because you didn’t have trolling valves. I was going to say at the time I’ve seen in the Detroit OH manual when I set my engines up that too low an idle can cause improper oiling of the cylinders and the wiper ring will scrape the walls.
Fire on a boat is a scary thing. I was run a 46 Hatt years ago that went first loss of power to fully engulfed in fire in probably not more than 10 minutes. 6 of us ended up in the water 48nm off the coast of NJ. Never got a distress call off and couldn’t get to the raft. Luckily another boat headed to the canyon saw the smoke and pulled us out of the water. Having been through that I don’t think I could nonchalantly go back to fishing knowing the boat is filled with smoke.

If your batteries are good and the lights dim when you hit the starter tells me the engine is locked up.

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Originally Posted by racclarkson@gmail.com

Real sorry to hear this. What transmission do you run?

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Allison MH20

Any chance there's an issue with the vibration dampner?

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Originally Posted by rsmith

You mentioned in an earlier post that you were going to drop the rpm on the engines for slow troll because you didn’t have trolling valves. I was going to say at the time I’ve seen in the Detroit OH manual when I set my engines up that too low an idle can cause improper oiling of the cylinders and the wiper ring will scrape the walls.
Fire on a boat is a scary thing. I was run a 46 Hatt years ago that went first loss of power to fully engulfed in fire in probably not more than 10 minutes. 6 of us ended up in the water 48nm off the coast of NJ. Never got a distress call off and couldn’t get to the raft. Luckily another boat headed to the canyon saw the smoke and pulled us out of the water. Having been through that I don’t think I could nonchalantly go back to fishing knowing the boat is filled with smoke.

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Ironically, the engine which idle is dropped is starboard. The engine in question is port, which is idled at spec.

There was definitely some pucker factor in the beginning. Once I was fairly certain we were not actively on fire, and everything was shut down, it was just a matter of watching smoke clear.

We have a eartech headset system. As soon as she noticed the smoke we both put our headsets on so we could communicate clearly and calmly. There was never really any panic. I'm sure if flames had been involved there would have been more elevated.

That sucks. Why all the smoke? Where would it have come from, in that volume, except from the starter or the alternator? I wouldn't guess sneezing back through the intakes would have that sweeter smell.

Might wanna check if the alt spins freely before looking at more depressing stuff.
When I first started working on the genny, the old water pump was seized. The smoke and stink from that poor belt melting was impressive.

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Originally Posted by JuiceClark

That sucks. Why all the smoke? Where would it have come from, in that volume, except from the starter or the alternator? I wouldn't guess sneezing back through the intakes would have that sweeter smell.

Might wanna check if the alt spins freely before looking at more depressing stuff.
When I first started working on the genny, the old water pump was seized. The smoke and stink from that poor belt melting was impressive.

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The only explanation I have come up with for all the smoke is the port engine running in reverse rotation for some time without me knowing. When running reverse rotation the intake becomes the exhaust, so exhaust gas would have been coming out of the airseps.

When a detroit runs in reverse the tach and the oil pressure gauge will apparently both read zero, leading the operator to believe the engine is off.

Excuse my ignorance, but under what circumstances during "normal" operation can a DD engine wind up cranking/starting in the wrong direction?