Onan 15kw MDJF won't start...

[MarioG]

Wow, where do I begin. last weekend my gennerator started knocking really hard. I thought I had blown the engine. after I returned from my trip. I trouble shooted the genny with a friend of mine. he cracked each fuel line going into the injector and found one that was bad. the knocking would go away when he cracked the line. we removed the return line from that injector and no fuel came out. well, I removed that one injector and had it rebuilt. we reinstalled it last night but we could not get the genny to start. We found water in the primary and the secondary filters which I just changed before I left last week! I don't get it, aside from the knocking it ran fine before I pulled the injector. anyhow, I now have the genny receving fuel from a clean 5 gal jug. we get fuel coming out of the inlet and return lines on all the injectors but still it won't fire. I gave up and came home. What the heck happend?

 

[SeaEric]

How many hours on this unit? How is the compression? Did you give it a shot of ether?

 

[MarioG]

Hi Eric,
about 2000hrs. the compression should be good, it allways started right up and ran flawlessly until a couple of days ago. No i didn't give it a shot of ether yet.

 

[doc g]

Mario, I assume you primed it after you had it apart? If it's got fuel and compression it will run ...............Pat

 

[MarioG]

I beleve it's well primed usuing the primer pump. fuel comes out of the return side of all injectors.

 

[MarioG]

Re: Onan 15kw MDJF won't start... (UPDATE!)

Well I just got back from the boat. after going over all the steps to prime the injectors I gave it another shot and reprimed the engine. I was shocked to find what I thought was fuel was actually water! I primed out almost 1 qt before i got clean fuel. after that it fired right up and is running smoothly and normal again. The fuel polishing truck is coming tomorrow to pump put the forward tank, clean the tank and the fuel.

Lesson learned!

 

[SKYCHENEY]

Good to hear you got her running. Do you know where did you picked up that water?

 

[MarioG]

the forward tank is really fouled. bad fuel load probably and it's the least used tank. I run the mains on the mid and aft. something to think about.

 

[Boatsb]

Lucky that you did not destroy the injectors. How much water does it take to fill the separator? Maybe adding a larger separator would be a good idea if you run the genny alot.