An oily situation

One of the first bits of maintenance we did was an overhaul of the generator. It was in real need of a service -- the heat exchanger was completely clogged.

The coolant was more particles than liquid, and the rest of it was in a surprisingly rough condition considering it really only had 1300 hours on it -- light use for a generator of this size. We swapped all the fluids, changed the impeller, gave it a good cleaning -- the works.

This turned out to be a mistake. Almost immediately, it proved to be troublesome. The diesel lines kept sucking in air -- causing it to shut off randomly. The filters that had been left with the boat didn't fit quite right -- causing an oily mess.

The worst problem however, was that it seemed like every single gasket had simultaneously failed. The generator now had a slow, consistent leak -- with the core of it being between the dynamo and the engine block. This generator was a large, bulky thing -- near impossible to properly work on, even in our admittedly large engine room. This oil leak caused other problems as well. Right below the generator -- and more importantly below a hole in its catch pan -- lives the shift linkage for the main engine.

This gave us a new problem -- the throttle was no longer connected to the engine