In this video, Simon will show you how to do a yearly diesel generator service. This service includes changing the air filter, oil filter, oil, belts, coolant, changing any bad hoses, impeller, cleaning the heat exchanger and putting on a new anode. When we first got a boat, we let others service our engines for us. Time after time we were disappointed to find that things were done wrong or not done at all. Discover how to service a diesel generator on a sailboat yourself.
If you want to be a happy boat owner you need to fall into one of two categories:
- You’re super loaded and happy to pay for ‘experts’ to service your boat (and deal with things not actually getting done).
- You’re good at learning how to service your boat so that you can save money doing it yourself and actually get the job done correctly.
We started off in category number one but are no longer loaded. Why? Because we paid money over and over only to get substandard work at best. Often we had to pay several times to get poor results.
There are still jobs that we can’t do ourselves but we follow a golden rule of boaters.
Always (and I mean always) get several referrals for an ‘expert’ and get them from boat owners that can verify that a job was done well. Any other jobs that can be done by us, we do ourselves. Year after year we add more jobs to our belt 🙂
So, in this video Simon will show you how to service a diesel generator on a sailboat. If you’re not accustomed to working on engines, it can be a bit daunting but it really isn’t difficult at all. And it’s absolutely imperative to have your heat exchanger removed and descaled. In the early days, our genset (another word for generator) overheated month after month.
Six ‘experts’ charged us to tell us that our generator needed to be replaced.
Fortunately for us, we asked one last expert and he told us the generator was fine – it just needed a good service. Simon helped the final expert take apart the engine, clean everything up and get it working correctly. Since then we’ve never had another problem.
Have a go at servicing your own engines. Often, the worst that can happen is that you don’t tighten something enough and get a small leak. The more to do it yourself the more confidence you’ll have and ultimately the more self-sufficient you’ll be.
How To Service A Diesel Generator On A Sailboat
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Any Questions or Helpful Comment?
Youtube has removed the ability for me to enable comments on my videos. The reason is due to Sienna, our 8-year-old daughter being in some of the videos. I think YouTube has started an initiative so that kids can’t be bullied or inappropriate things written in the comments. That being said, if you’d like to get feedback from us, your best bet is to leave a question or comment here on the blog.
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