Our Runaway Diesel | Sailing Avocet

[@sailingsitka]

Now this is an entertaining video. Full of action, very well filmed...overall brilliantly done👏🏻 Glad no-one got hurt... especially Cleo baby...

[@sailingavocet]

Lol! Should have shown that Cleo was unaware of the chaos hahaha

[@dougfaulkner6799]

Had the same engine in my Morgan Outisland ketch, and had the same issue. Having grown up on a farm i recognized immediately what was happening and used a towel to shut it down. It's a terrifying thing for sure and im glad you got it shut down without injury. After assessing my situation i rebuilt the entire engine and had a mechanicel peice engineered to cutoff the airflow that led back to my cockpit binnacle. There are several companies now making them and they are a very worthwhile investment.

[@sailingavocet]

Good to know!

[@svlolalouise9763]

I too have a Perkins 4108 in my yatch I will now be more observant of oil levels

[@sailingavocet]

🫡👍

[@quinceycummings3385]

Scary situation, I witnessed a runaway diesel at the dock and it was terrifying. You both handled the situation so well!

[@sailingavocet]

Scary as heck!

[@DIYNauticalDream]

That was intense. Great recovery to say the least. Luckily you could stop the engine by blocking the air flow. I have looked at our Yanmar turbo intake and wondered how we could do the same in a situation like yours. So glad to hear it didn't happen again and you arrived safely.

[@sailingavocet]

Thank you! Definitely a good thing to investigate in case the unthinkable happens.

[@onlyhere4playstation864]

Terrifying!!!! I’m so glad you guys made it through! Love following your story! 😊

[@sailingavocet]

Super spooky, glad everything is okay…. Or is it 🧐 stay tuned ;) Thanks so much for following along

[@jeb533]

I watched most of your vids and you are a master. You have one of the nicest boats I've ever seen.

[@sailingavocet]

Well shoot! That is so sweet of you to say. Thank you for watching and for the kind words

[@mandygibson272]

You guys constantly amaze me! Great job handling a scary situation😅

[@sailingavocet]

Thanks Mandy!!! Xo

[@jimargeropoulos8309]

Thanks for the helpful information. Glad you caught things before troubles got worse

[@sailingavocet]

Definitely! Thanks for watching!

[@franksmith3602]

Just a thought or two. When you luck out again with a speed boat sail. 😅, take out a sharpie, do a inspection of the boat. Go out your face on all spots makeing the most noise. Noise is a early sign. Like a bad heart beat. Mark that noise spot. Write it in a log book. For this reason. When your board on the hook, and you've had all the sundowner bottie calls, your back can handle ( sailing joke ), check out the areas again but now there not under load. Tighten a screw, pound and glue a shim in, weld a stronger support. Add a new brace. U get the point. U should buy a hand held temp gauge gun . The ones you point at the motor, then you know if shes running hot. Checking the motor temp, daily , will teach you how she feeling , what's wrong before, what wrong, blows up in your face. Also, the temp, gauge hand held. Is great to tell you if your mate is horny, high heat, in the galley means the boats going to be rocking dont come a knocking.😅 again a sailing joke. But really you can take the sheets temp, hahaha. 😊. Your both smart... but dont think going over drills of the what if. Crap, man over board, fire drill, you wake and there 2 feet of water in the boat. Dont just talk, like the navy, for fun do the drill. Touch the life raft, go grab the ditch bag and drag it on deck. Know that in seconds, you can have the life vest, on and the E perg, really. Most, of those who, have to ditch , die, there not ready, they forgot where everything is. You hit a sunken, 40 foot container, at night, just right, the whole side of a hull can be ripped out in seconds, boat fills, you wake up thinking it's a wet dream Haha, good luck. Also, have pirate drills. They sneak up at 4am, no sound. 10 blacks with guns.they will kill you for the boat..

[@sailingavocet]

Wut

[@Snookbite24]

I’ve always wondered about your injection pump since this happened. My Perkins Prima is so wildly different, especially the Bosch injection pump. When I was getting mine running for the first time, the stop solenoid on the injection pump wasn’t hooked up. I was able to use a small plate to stop it and shut the engine down. After the rebuild, I forgot to hook up the stop solenoid and I didn’t have raw water hooked up so I was freaking out but I used a rag as I’ve been told a big enough diesel intake can rip your skin off. Glad y’all got that worked out. Great advice, don’t use your hand to stop a runaway!

[@sailingavocet]

Interesting! All engines have their quirks ;) thanks for watching and sharing your experience as well. I hope this video is helpful for other diesel owners!

[@SVImpavidus]

Some good advice and tips there for the Perkins. The Volvo 2020 is a Perkins these engines have a habit of running away under certain conditions. Sail Safe Guys, Ant & Cid.

[@sailingavocet]

They sure do! Thanks guys

[@mattjewett4473]

I've got this engine (and boat). I've only started the engine for my first time since owning. I'll definitely check my oil level and locate the air intake in case. Thx.😊

[@sailingavocet]

You have a CL41 too?? Check this out: www.svavocet.com/2022/08/29/cheoy-lee-41/

[@Smigu1]

I had my Perkins 4.108 injection pump rebuild twice. One month after the second rebuild the engine started "making" oil again (leaking diesel into the sump) I grew tired of it and just repowered the boat with new Vetus. The Perkins had other issues too though

[@sailingavocet]

Sounds about right! Come to find out the OEM seals are absolute garbage which is what caused ours to fail… again… but that’s a story for later. Once we upgraded to better suited seals everything was fine! Vetus was definitely a conversation we had

[@annafraley5388]

W O W . . . Glad you made it through all of those catastrophes seemingly unscathed..!!! Good show. 😎👏👍🥳

[@sailingavocet]

Thanks for watching!

[@williamdykes2750]

Professional level Immediate Action with the diesel. Very cool under pressure. Great public awareness video about it too. Renaissance couple.

[@sailingavocet]

Thank you William! It was a scary experience but I am happy we lived through it and can share it with others.

[@bigsierra9653]

I really had no idea this was a thing! You both handled it very well!

[@sailingavocet]

OMG BIG SIERRA 🤩🤩🤩 thank you for watching!

[@qtlana]

Great video! I love how you guys jump into problem solving mode and don’t panic, great example for us all!

[@sailingavocet]

Panicking leads to disaster! Gotta keep cool… even when it’s hard 😅 thanks for watching!

[@stormsail]

Thank You for the runaway Perkins video. My 4.108 blows a little blue smoke at startup but clears up when she warms up. When you had runaway did your engine blow blue smoke? Thanks

[@sailingavocet]

She blew a LOT of white/grey smoke.

[@kindsailing]

Another pro quality and informative video. It is always good to see your beautiful faces! This was really helpful to me as a woman sailor. I have an amazing marine electrician for a partner who handles most of the engine maintenance, but that is something I want to become competent at and this really helped. I think we'll even test stopping the engine manually so we know how to do it before it is an emergency.

[@sailingavocet]

Thank you!! Glad we could inspire a new emergency drill :)

[@pjc222955]

Great information 👍

[@sailingavocet]

glad you think so, thanks for watching!

[@cyrilraczynski813]

Same thing happened, Volvo 18 hp revs out of the blue to the max RPM, unstoppable. Clutch off/on and it run down

[@sailingavocet]

scary!

[@be.side.schepop]

very informative video. thanks!

[@sailingavocet]

our pleasure!

[@dc1544]

turbo diesels do this more often than non turbo diesels. Ones with turbos should be 8 inches higher than engine for marine use especially on a monohull sail boat. I didn't see a turbo on yours so it flooded and added diesel to the oil. I would remove and clean the glow plugs maybe even change them. This also happens when rings are really worn and diesel can leak past the rings into the oil.

[@sailingavocet]

Hey glad you mentioned this. We explain it all in further detail on our blog www.svavocet.com

[@jimmiaudet1174]

Very good episode!!! Well explained

[@sailingavocet]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it

[@HeyMichaelLeo]

Well done and good job on the video.

[@sailingavocet]

Thank you!

[@Kcsailing]

Truly helpful!

[@sailingavocet]

Glad you think so, thank you for watching

[@karlmabe1649]

Ok just had this on the berth 3 cylinder sole 80s engine I'm guessing old engine not used much hasn't helped was no time the I cut the batteries and hit kill switch it did stop and isn't seized so got some work todo next .Didn't see tomuch smoke in your video

[@sailingavocet]

Check out our latest upload

[@PeteThecurious100]

Thanks, I didn't know about runaway diesel engines. After all my years of farming; shrug ;)

[@sailingavocet]

Yeah! The more you know!

[@PeteThecurious100]

@@sailingavocet Cheers;)

[@martinmicheal4595]

Man you guys got lucky but you where so on top of it most people panic and the engine blows y’all did great

[@sailingavocet]

Indeed! This is just the beginning though… buckle up

[@57silverwings]

Who overfilled the oil.

[@C_C_SEA]

💯 ...primo! ...❤⚓🖖

[@sailingavocet]

Thanks for watching!

[@coolhand66]

You were very lucky really you should be at the bottom of the ocean really but you caught it in time and you got the engine to stop.

[@sailingavocet]

Not really the bottom of the ocean, but could have definitely been stuck with a very expensive paperweight instead of an engine.

[@coolhand66]

@@sailingavocet well you're right on that different paperweight

[@Mechone11]

Put my hand over a runaway 2x after high pressure pump was rebuilt wrong by a company doing it for 50 years , happened on a friends Catalina with Kubota engine no issues. I then fought with them on the phone until they came out and agreed they put it back together wrong

[@sailingavocet]

Sounds like we had a similar situation. But more on that in the next videos… Glad you still have your hands! It wasn’t an issue for Chris either but we would hate for someone to do the same and lose a finger. Better safe than sorry. If you’re into reading, we have a lot of the engine saga written out on our website www.svavocet.com

[@jackmagnium6115]

why not just get a completely different injection pump? like one off a cummins 12 valve(cp3 belt driven or crank gear drive P-Pump)

[@sailingavocet]

I’m fairly certain those are not easily compatible with each other but feel free to provide more sources for us to look over.

[@DowneastThunderCreations]

👍👍👍

[@sailingavocet]

Thanks for watching!

[@industrialdigital]

If you don’t use my drone footage in an upcoming video I’m going to curl up in a fetal position and cry myself to sleep.

[@sailingavocet]

SOON!!!!

[@Antipodean33]

Happened back in November and you're only able to talk about it now? You sound like you're talking about a death in the family or some sort of terrible medical problem, it's just a runaway engine, no big deal. I'll tell ya people these days are so weird, such drama queens

[@sailingavocet]

I mean… we’ve written about it plenty on our website we are just behind on videos and we’re finally able to share it. What’s weird is you thinking a runaway engine is no big deal despite the implications of potential (further) disaster.