viewer Dave reached out to me on a Renault single cylinder marine diesel engine that he bought as a spare for his sail boat, lets see how it survived after sitting 21 years in a shed,
Hey guys how's it going. This is dave. Dave contacted me on a inboard diesel from what was that, like a sailboat or something that uh would you buy for a spare a long time ago and yeah? I bought a sailboat brand new in 1980 and had it for about 20 years and the water pump won. It was hard trying to find parts for and everything else, and so i went looking online for something to uh to replace just the water pump, and i found this guy in california we're in massachusetts here uh he had the whole engine exactly the same engine that I had, and he had actually said that he'd uh rebuilt most of it and that he would be willing to.
He didn't want to part it out, but he'd be willing to sell the whole thing. So i bought the whole thing. Yeah shift here. Yep had a chip here, and that was been fun.
I all i did when i got it is i made sure it had compression and that's pretty much i built a little cradle for it and i stuck it in the shed 20 years ago. So it's been sitting in the shed for 20 years and then 10 years after i bought it, i sold the boat. I told the kid that i sold it to. I would uh be more than happy to hang on to it if he needed it.
Well, that's been 10 years ago now, so here we are so here we are and we're thinking about retiring and moving somewhere else, so we're starting to get rid of stuff. So let's go check it out, maybe a little bit hard to see. Perhaps i got light. It's been sitting back in here for since 2000, so well, that's a nice little tractor too.
That ought to make things easy to move. So it's right down there in the back in the corner. You can see the see the little bit of blue sticking out yeah. The blue thing, so it's a result: single cylinder, eight horsepower diesel with the transmission.
It does have trains on it too, like photo reverse the whole thing, yeah cool, it's the whole thing all right, guys, we're gon na do a little bit of digging we'll get that out of there. Now we can see it a cute little thing, so here's the injector - this is the you can pour fluid in here. This is where the intake is yeah, so the injectors there. This is the fuel filter, no oil filter and it doesn't have a oil pump.
It has like a sling thing on the bottom of the connecting rod. Okay, like a like an old air cooled motor, same idea, yeah starter on it a little primer circuit. Is this a primer or that's just the oil fill huh yeah. Now, let's see yeah, that's the reservoir yeah, that's what that is, and it had an alternator up here.
You put that on your other motor yeah. I did take that off nice. Let's wiggle this thing out of here there you go. Let's do it! Oh so dave said he went and poked in there a little bit beforehand.
You said you want to go spin it over and it doesn't seem like it's got any compression nope all right guys now that we're back at the shopping on the lift to get a little bit better. Look at what we got going on. Try to educate ourselves. A little bit see that not sure what that is, maybe a charging system like a voltage regulator condenser on a diesel, maybe just for noise on the charging system. A couple wires cut off for that wires cut off here, and what do we got for a wiring harness? This should not be very much needed to run a diesel. One is gon na. I don't know if that's a temp head sensor or a glow plug. I see no, he pointed out too there's no um plug there and i think, there's another location up here.
So it's missing a couple of the plugs for the cooling system. They would look probably something like that, and this is the exhaust coming out. Slash mixed with cooling water, which is common on a boat. Let's say this: is our water pump? That's the injector, i would say unless we see something else with a wire going to it, that would be the only one.
That's a glow plug again or may. Not even have one at all, i may not use one, some diesels, don't have them our fuel pump and then down to another, so it might be a primary and a secondary, there's a little hand, prime on that pump, and that one to the fuel line. I think we've got to blow that out before we even try. I don't know what that is, sticking in the middle of it right there pop that line off blow air back through it uh 12 volt starter.
That should be fairly simple. We just need a heavy 12 volts coming to this side, and then you put a positive 12 volt sure that should pull the cell and we didn't make it crank. You see anything else, that's kind of screwy, we'll check for crankcase oil. Who knows what's in it.
One thing: that's got me a little questioning and it may just be the way it is or it may have been uh. He may have been snookered when he bought it too. So all the paint's missing from the head, like it, got real hot and overheated and the fact that these plugs are out, so it may be good it. It may be cooked we're gon na go, find out all right.
So, let's i want to see if there's oil in it and before we do anything before we start drawing anything in, we want to go. Take this line off of here and uh back below through it. So we don't have sucking any crap in forget whether we checked it at his place or not. It doesn't look familiar.
Let's go, i don't know if you would ship a motor with oil on it. It's halfway up the stick good. Let's get the line off there quickly, we'll blow air back through there to get the crap out of it because he said he had it for 20 years. But who knows how long it sat for me on the other end when the other people you bought it from 21 years? I am just dropping everything all right.
Let's give that a little feels good know, diesels, i'm not that familiar with diesels, but they never stopped me before. Right generally, sometimes they have two pumps on. They have a primary pump. That kind of just draws the fuel up, and then it has a secondary pump that kicks the pressure up, because you need uh on an injection uh diesel with an injection you got ta overcome the compressions. The ejector directs. Try that again, the injector injects fuel directly into the cylinder directly into the cylinder where a lot of times you are injecting by the valve, pretty sure that's how that works. So you need pressure. Uh fuel pressure, that's greater than the compression that the engine has in on a diesel that's fairly high, because on a diesel it does not use a spark plug to fire.
It uses the heat of squeezing air together to fire, the uh air fuel mix. That's in the chamber and again the injector has a timing on that. I'm not quite sure. What's controlling that, i would say right there it's going through, so this may just be a filter and then there's a pump over here.
I'm not sure if that kind of looks like a filter yeah, let's uh pop, that off before we go any further, i would take some fuel being it somewhere unless, when they took it out, they disconnected fuel from it and ran it all the way out yeah. I whacked you in the head. Sorry go try to capture some of that got some weird looking stuff happening in there. It's a weird pattern of goo.
Let's see if you could steer it with some paper down to the cup drop that a little lower and do a skipper come on fingers. I kept a little think about uh diesel. It grows microbes, a little bacteria. I guess that grows in diesel.
I guess every fluid has its own problem huh. I don't know if that's gon na have enough room for us to get that out of there. Screws up against the pallet looks like it's free. Well, i wouldn't say that was full, but it wasn't empty.
Neither let's see how our filter and stuff look a little dark for diesel, but not terrible good. I am going to take an air gun and blow out. No i'm not. Let's uh, i don't know what i want to do.
What do you want to do? Let's so we're not going to pump any more gas gas diesel up into the injector, that's kind of what i'm worried about. I just want to push crap up into the injector and have the injector get screwed up. So let's go get a jumper pack and put it on here, we'll throw a little bit of oil down the intake just for the so uh fact of kind of lubricating, the cylinder a little bit and we'll spin it over. Maybe yeah we'll spin it over with a little bit of oil in there and just kind of watch and maybe it'll pump a little bit whatever is left in the system out of it.
So we give a little puff to that intake case, there's dirt or mouse. Crap in there good, let's get some oil in there there's a very slight chance that they could actually start on that. I don't think it will. I don't think we have enough heat generated, but let's go see.
First of all, even if the starter works ain't, nothing on the starter around it right on the starter, bolt see anything up there we go, maybe jump all right. Let's hear what she sounds where that transmission is growly, i wonder if uh there's a ford in reverse. Here's the lever - i don't know if it's in gear there we go that's neutral, but let's listen to it sounds terrible. It definitely sounds like it goes through a set of gears going out to that transmission, though it's probably just like a a flywheel with a straight cut of gears hitting another gearbox, and you just have forward reverse, there's no clutch, because in a boat you know the Prop slips in the water you just kind of be kind of quick with it when you put it in gear, just like a regular gas outboard uh, let's see so we are going to need to get fuel to it. And again, i don't know if that is a glow plug or if that is a cylinder head, temp sensor, it's kind of in a weird place. I think for a i'll tell you what if we could put our finger behind it now we're not gon na get in there. Let's just pop that out real quick, i i like, i said i don't think it's a glow plug doesn't have the look to it. The wire seems kind of small for glow plug.
Usually they draw a fair, fair amount of current, but let's just go pop that out real quick that exhausted just hanging on there. I got that out of our way, let's uh and i'm pretty sure that's going to be a head sensor. So yeah it is just in the cooling jacket. So that's what it is.
It's just temp uh measuring the heat of the water that's going around. So this has no glow plug. So it's going to fight us a little bit because uh of that fact between getting fuel tool getting enough uh of the engine, spinning up to uh generate some heat to start getting the fire. Let me uh go take an air gun.
I want to blow some of the crap out in that water jacket should be good, it's definitely evidence of mice all over it, so exhaust. I think the next thing would be a good idea to find is where's the throttle we may want to uh educate ourselves on that, not sure what that is, you would think to be a bar or a level or something that a cable or a linkage goes To somewhere on the injection side of things, so that runs down, i would think it would be right on that pump somewhere. What's this spring loaded, is that it right there? What's that we'll get a better light? Yeah one thing with the diesel is uh. When it's running you can't shut it off.
It's not like. You have spark to just go turn the thing off, i'm guessing that's going to be it, but you would think there would be some some other kind of throttle on the boat that controls that where's, that no i'm going to say is that decompression? No, i don't think so. I won't uh it wouldn't be down. There would be up on the cylinder head somewhere.
I would think, let's just keep, look and see if we see anything that imitates a throttle, so that's gon na be primer for the pump. This lever is forward neutral in reverse, i'm not sure what that dead wire is the hot lead. That's still hooked up. Let's get that out of. There should probably just take that right off and we're gon na have fuel in and fueled out. It's gon na be a pattern going around yeah. I'm not seeing anything are you is that that same lever from there? It is so, if that's the same lever going to the other side, it would have been cable down to here yeah. So that's what it is.
That's our throttle right there not sure which way it's full throttle and which way is idle. At least we know where to run and grab in case it does go to run away. I would think you would pull cable. I think that would be full throttle.
That would be idle and then it's got like a governor set up on it. It seems like because you just it's a diesel just trying to maintain rpm it'll run, there's not a very big window of where they run. You know say they idle at 650, full rpm, it's like two grand it's not like a gas motor where you're going from 650 to like four grand or so i know i think, if sorry to lose, if we can get it so that we can crank it Enough we can possibly get it to cough and fart on just dumping some oil in the intake, possibly i'm not sure of that. So let's go give that a shot.
I kind of want to spin over for a little bit anyway and uh get a better idea. What we got, if that's the case and then we'll start getting into the fuel system and hooking that up and priming it and getting it to go, so you can probably dribble a little bit in while we're cranking so popping a little steam out the other side. Let me set you up on the other end. Let's get that faintly.
Distinct smell of a diesel, which is a good sign, uh, give a little bit more oil in it, so so so so wants to. Okay, you don't have having this compression to run and getting enough heat plus. Also it's the timing of when that fuel gets squirted in there is how is fairly important, but a lot of times on a diesel. You shoot some ether in there in a little fire up, i'm trying to avoid doing that, but we'll give it a shot.
This, the starter's not taking any heat at all. Well, maybe a little. I let that cool off a little bit we'll try it one more time, i'm waiting for that to cool down a little bit. I want to get rid of all the wiring.
That is doing nothing on this and, like i said it's a mechanical diesel, so it doesn't really need a signal from anything. Let's give another shot, not quite sure if you could flood it, i'm sure you can. I'm gon na go get me a better oil. Let's see if i got a, i think i got a drum kerosene around here somewhere.
I should run on that. Let's go try it with some kerosene see if it likes that a little bit better. Well, that was quite entertaining of a smoke screen. So back yep.
Try it out again see if i can baby feed it bottle, feed it, keep it going. Hell she'll, run good awesome. We go uh change, some air out of here, real quick and we'll start getting into that fuel system. It looks like we could back feed or backfill the filter housing. I think we'll wiggle, all this back in there to the back and then we'll i got to come up with some kind of. I guess we just use pale. I mean a uh, something like a pail to just have a line go in and out of it doesn't need to be fancy emma where's the hole going in blind. So i'm going to run this up i'll come up with some kind of just some kind of container as long as you run the two lines in it, even just the one line in it and the return towards it, i think i got it yep.
I think we need a bigger container of fuel huh i got ta, give you a reach around hold on. I would figure out gon na piss out that hole in a second. The other part is any air that gets trapped in it really screws them up. If you run a diesel out of fuel, it kind of fights you a little bit because you got to get all that air out.
Usually you crack the line by the injector. Let's get that case, it's got to do. It's got to get through the filter and fill up the the inside of the filter. Let's pull through the top, we'll call that right there so look at the feed line coming from the pump up to a t and then up to the injector.
Actually, no that's how it's going. This is the feed okay, the metal lines, the feed, and then this is an overflow and a return going back, but it looks like it has one going back to the pump too. I don't know, maybe it's kind of keeps a smaller circle and anything that's not used is kicked out of this one. That's my guess.
I just do a couple hoses on there and a cup so the one that is being held underneath. That's our intake and that's going to be the return, and we have that little primer on here. I don't know if i should i'll give it a little bit. I don't know if i should crack that line, maybe right there.
Let me see if you get anything out of it, see if i feel any resistance, it feels like it's doing something we go, grab a wrench and throw it on there see we'll bleed from you know, location or location yeah see if that gets us anywhere. Basically, wouldn't keep on going if that pump is any good until we start seeing fluid coming out of there. If we don't, even if this pump is kind of put, we still might be able to get it on the the fact that we filled up the filter, housing and try bleeding it up top, but i would prefer to try to get it just so we have A assessment of what's good and what's not good on this thing too, what i might do that might need a prime also, let's i'm just going to correct this one loose, it will take that little that little turkey baster i got the little feeder, we'll shoot. Some fluid in there at least get the part of the pump wet.
The other thing too, kerosene is thinner than uh diesel. I don't know about how much, but you figure that's the intake right. You should try putting some on both sides. I'm gon na hurt right.
I don't know how much of a cavity there is up above it, but i would think that it's just like a regular fuel pump that has like two little check valves in it and sometimes when they sit sometimes when they sit, they stick probably wouldn't hurt. This may have even had like an electric pump that fed fuel to it. Yeah from here you know i may have even had not been gravity feed. You know yeah, let's here's the other end of that line and i need one of those on the other side. I don't think it's going to prime for us, i think, like i said, i think it had to be either a little pump that fed that maybe not sure i'm going to go lock them up and we're gon na see if the fact that the filter housing Is full whether that will prime itself and get itself to go? Let's go find out. Another thing we could probably do is we just go feed it a little bit and you know run it on the bottle and then hopefully it'll prime its upset just trying to get it to crank over. Let's go see what happens if just from straight cranking. First, just for some luck, that'll run on the injector she's.
Definitely pumping fuel back and the thing is not in the cup as evidence of what's going on, here's here's what was happening hold on one sec, yeah, that's not gon na work. You need to be in there at least you know, flu's getting up to the injector, though we may have just pumped that thing dry, that who knows where's that throttle there. It is, i don't know, what's wet so well, definitely foamed up the cup. It was definitely flowing through there pretty good back to there.
I don't know if we just used everything up. Let's go crack that and see. If we can see any fluid in it, i actually see it bubbling around. It cannot have it tight.
All the way now saw air coming the threads. I think that might be what it did. I think i might have used up the uh. What was in that float? Let me go fill that one more time, yeah, so just pretty much emptied that out we'll try that a couple of times, though, and see if we can get that to you, know prime itself and go through.
If not, it's just the fact that i don't have enough going to it all right, so i got the filter. Housing filled again at the camera. You can kind of see the return line, we'll get an idea what's happening with that. Let's let her fire up again and possibly the private other thing i was thinking too, is: if that was leaking a little bit there.
It would probably be sucking air and not drawing through the pump, but let's see yeah, that's exactly what it did. It ran it purged all the fuel through the system until it started blowing air out. So it is not drawing fuel in through this side, whether there's something wrong with that pump or i'm just not catching something not sure, but i definitely think uh she's not doing what she should well run, i'm happy for that. I don't know how much more we can go do with that again we're missing free plug. You, don't can't run it very long anyway, with no cooling system on it. It's not hot at all. But again you don't want to cook it in that aspect of things. A friend of mine ended up getting a free, sailboat, 23 foot.
I think it's all day day sailor with no engine in it, so whether he gets that together or not - i don't know, but if he does and he's able to uh put a motor in the hull of it. I think it's set up for a little outboard. Kicker right now, but if he ever gets that all together, i think i will gift this to him, because it's it's liquid cooled. I don't know how much of a value it's going to be to me to try to use on something we could.
I mean maybe a generator or something like that, because the very fuel efficient - and i think what do you say it was nine and a half horsepower right around there. So that's a decent size for a generator to like a 6 000 watt, generator 5000 watt generator. Would be good for that, but who knows all right? So we go for one more time, but i want to see if i can make it idle, i'm not quite sure which way is which, but let's go see if we can get to like, like calm down, see if it'll chug along no, it's not doing what She's supposed to be doing it, the idol, i think, will work, but it just dumps the fuel off so fast, like how full the cup is. Every time it's just emptying out that reservoir and i do have them correct right, yeah.
I wouldn't be putting fluid back. This would be the intake. The other thing, too, is. I wonder if it's sucking air through a bad bad line.
Yeah i just want you, can get an idol out of it. Yeah she'll idle. Oh, she got fuel good. The lever was kind of stuck.
I was only moving between this far and it kind of popped down further and that's where the idle circuit was so. Yes, it will idle nice. I don't know if gravity if we get that up higher and kind of get it primed a good way to do that. I do think i found where the problem is, so it's going to hook up a auxiliary tank and have gravity feed come from up above, but that line is totally toasted and he's peeing everywhere.
So what was happening was just sucking air from there. It couldn't do anything so i'm gon na go cut all this right off of here, we'll put a line right to this and we'll feed it again and see how we work out yeah. That was our issue all right. So this is our new conglomeration.
We got a new plastic line, got rid of that braided line. That was on that i was looking like, i said, cut that off there have a feed going to there and then feed going back to the tank and the tank is higher. Let's try. It's got air in it.
It shows the air is right there. Let's go. Try running that primer, it looks like the fuel is moving good. I don't know if you can see that right now, it's right there, so i'm going to keep priming that i did fill the float, the float, the filter housing back up again, let me go run that a couple of times see if we can get that to Totally fill up with fluid and we'll try it one more time and see if we can get a maintained run out of it. I think, if that is working, we should be able to keep on pumping. We should be able to push fluid right out of here right and that's a little on the low side. So, let's get i don't know how much it does each time, it's a i'm sure, not very much wait there. We go all right.
That means we have fuel going through that pump. I think this is a good sign. I would like to you know, run it for at least a minute or two not too much of you overheat it, but all right step back contact throttle all the way down. Yes, so that's more like it there's only one problem: i can't shut it off.
I got ta starve it for air already. I was trying to shut the air supply off to it, so you do some copy hand over big diesels when they run away you throw a rag or something over the intake, but it had another breather going to the crankcase, so it was still sucking air from The crankcase it wouldn't shut off yeah, i don't know if it has a what it would use for a fuel a shutoff. The throttle is all the way down. That was a slow idle, i think was like 400 rpm.
Maybe i got it to chug down to yeah. Sometimes you know like a fuel shut off is generally how it is or decompression that you open up and it allows it to shut down. I don't know, but i do know she's a runner and actually does quite well seems like it could do awesome in its uh futures. I really don't have a a plan for it right now.
I do have a friend that bought a bot. He got it for free. Actually, he was on side of the road for free. It's the fall time a.
I think it's a 23 foot, oday sailboat and it has a little. You know a little pad off the back of it that you would put like a little gas kicker motor to go run around, but this would be also good for that too and uh. If he ever gets that boat together. He'll uh offer him this motor.
To put in there, essentially, you just have to put a hole through the hall with a direct drive shaft and prop going out of it and that's it i'm sure. There's probably already you know um amenities locations in the boat for that. But if i get a chance i'll take a spin over i'll show you the boat, that he got this line's leaking too, as i was trying to show it. It was pissing out of here, which is the return also and then back to the to the pump.
But it seems like everything functions like it should that would probably even work, even if it was below grade again. It was just sucking air. Through that line. It was never going to go prime itself cool.
It does quite well a little loud with no exhaust on it, but hey a couple of freeze, plugs and uh the cooling system, and it needs an alternator babies. It could probably just use like a one wire alternator from like a gm or something and just run with that. If it doesn't need to be anything fancy all right guys with that, i'm gon na go sign off. If i get a chance to go, show you that boat and uh we'll have some fun next week with something else until then i'll see you later so here we are at justin's place is the boat i was talking about. You wan na give a quick little backstory to how you came about it. Yeah well, uh, my wife and i were driving down the road and went by this uh. It's a boat repair place and it was sitting sitting in front of all the boats and had a big free sign on it, and i said to my wife, like oh free boat, and she says: don't even think about it. Well, you didn't you think about it.
All you just went right for it. Yeah grab it. You were good, so we got back to the house and she had bought a bunch of stuff that she you know she wanted. So i said just because of that.
I'm gon na go get a boat and she i thought i was kidding and then i uh i vote so well. If you get it together, i'm not sure what it has for a whole setup, but i i'm sure they do inboards on these too, but a little wonky there with that yeah it's from sitting on the they're supposed to sit on the keel, the weight's supposed to Be on the keel out on the boat, and it's been sitting on this trailer for so long that should pop out once the weights off of that it should settle back out and if it doesn't, you can still sail it like that. That shouldn't affect it. That much but anyway, so it's a like a nine and a half horse single cylinder, diesel, electric start yeah, and i don't know if you put it right there somewhere in the hole and have a shaft that comes out and run a propeller it'll work yeah.
If you ever get to that point, you get her, you know order you're, welcome to it. If not, it might turn into something else. Yeah price is right, though yeah would it have inside it had like uh a berth in the front, yeah and then birth in the front, and then it's got two little benches uh looks like the table goes down. You can probably one person can sleep on the table, that's all full of stuff right now.
You can't see yeah all the sails are in there uh the um uh. You know the tank for the pulleys are in there there's some rigging in there. Most of the rigging is already on the sail. Neat yeah.
I i've heard these are good boats. I think so too yeah some people race them because they're little they're, pretty quick. I guess yeah, i think, there's a class just racing. These are yeah all right guys with that.
I'm gon na go sign off again. Thanks for hanging out with me have a little bit of fun a little bit of wrenching and maybe we'll see it again get installed in this sometime in the far future. All right guys take care, see ya.
Some marine engines use a 'clutch', the idea is if the prop runs over a log or lines in the water the clutch will slip.
I've seen maybe a half dozen of these little engines that are used as pump donkeys for irrigation here in France. I think the mystery serpentine collection of tubing in my pigeonniere might be the cooling system off one.
You know when peoples trucks and stuff go run away, they are always trying to stick rags and stuff in the intake to snuff it out.
But cant you do the same thing to the exhaust? Infact ive seen that blocking the exhaust can kill an engine pretty fast. You should test if thats a thing to kill a diesel motor
1979-81 Renault Couach Marine RC8D diesel…👍👍 Drop the storage oil and refill with a Delvac/diesel oil. Don't try to block the air off with your hand on a M-Benz diesel⚠️😮it will suck yer flesh right into the motor😮use a board.
You should use Diesel oil in that. Kerosene does not have proper amount of lubrication and energy in it to work 100%. So much fun to see you american Gas guys fiddle with diesel engines… All the time screaming here that you have air in your fuel system… Nice small diesel engine!
Sooner cool if it has a lead keel I would chop it up for the lead I’m a lead junkie great video thanks for sharing I’m glad you got that little diesel running
I swear if its got an engine doesn’t matter how old or obscure mustie will get it to cough fart and run the man could make anything run
The boat looks like a Catalina 22… they don’t have inboard engines. To fit one would require a angled skeg moulding to take a stern tube for a drive shaft. You’d need to ballast the boat fore and aft so that she sits level in the water. You also need to fabricate an engine bed inside somewhere just behind the companionway step (there is a keel winch located there so it won’t be straightforward) and it will need careful alignment for the transmission, thrust bearing, and packing gland in the prop shaft and stern tube. You will need to also route water cooling with intake seacock, strainer and water cooled exhaust outlet, maybe from the transom, just above the water line and ensure you have an anti-siphon elbow to prevent water flooding the boat via the exhaust system… hope that helps.
just saw mustie cameo on the wheels through time duesenberg video, never expected to see him there taking a Video of the car they were filming..lol
My guess is the reason that the cylinder is rusted is that it may have been replaced or rebuilt. They usually aren't painted.
Not 100% sure but I reckon the fuel tank would always be above the engine level on a sailboat. Don't know why your setup would suck air out of the overhead tank, though. There is nothing like the sound of single pot diesels idling at very low rpm, not something we see much these days.
I have that same jump box. Wasn't cheap but after they bought one at the water department I worked at for 20yrs. We used and abused the hell out of it! Jumped backhoes, industrial generators, huge compressors that ran bullets that rams it's head under the road for water service lines.they probably make higher amperage ones but little blue is badass!!!