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my 1982 Perkins is starting to overheat

stnick

lee nicholas
Past 2K in speed she over heats ! at 3k there is smoke in the engine room coming out the stairs !
Im thinking exhaust elbow. The new blower blew a fuse to making it worse..
Ill Try and remove the elbow ? Any ideas are welcome .
Trans Alantic diesal or i have a metal worker friend that can make one ! . Lee M 384 1982 - 132
 
Past 2K in speed she over heats ! at 3k there is smoke in the engine room coming out the stairs !
Im thinking exhaust elbow. The new blower blew a fuse to making it worse..
Ill Try and remove the elbow ? Any ideas are welcome .
Trans Alantic diesal or i have a metal worker friend that can make one ! . Lee M 384 1982 - 132

Lee,

What a pain! Which elbow are you referring to? I assume by smoke you mean steam. We experienced a similar issue to what you describe when we bought our 382 last year. Forgive me if you are already past this diagnostic step but it is worth asking:

1) Are you positive that your raw water impeller is in-tact?

2) If yes, are you seeing a healthy amount of water spitting out of the wet exhaust outlet?

Again, I apologize if it is pedantic to ask, but it is easy to forget these two checks once you get used to how reliable the Perkins is.

If yes to both questions, it is likely you are due for a heat exchanger service and not much more. A good muffler shop can do it for $90-150. I’d say about 20-30% of the tubes in our heat exchanger were obstructed with scale when we rebuilt the cooling system on our Perkins last year.

If yes to the first and no to the second, your situation is a little more complicated. You’ll basically need to take apart your raw water circuit and locate the obstruction(s). It is almost always scale at the heat exchanger, but there is also a choke point at the oil cooler where debris can get caught. Someone feel free to chime in if I am forgetting someplace, but that is what I recall. To save some hassle and potentially unnecessary work, you can remove, clean, and replace one component at a time and fit the raw water circuit back together to see if it keeps the temps down. It should be like night and day when you find the clog. Working properly, the engine temperature will be steady at 90C at 2500rpm under load.
 
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The smoke is not steam Black smoke like oil. Maybe oil already there and burning off as the engine heats. I ran some Cleaner thru the exchanger last month .
 
Interesting. Black, huh? Well you might be right about the issue being related to your exhaust system. At least one would hope it is! I guess you’ll have to get it hot at the slip and see where exactly the smoke is coming from.
 
Hey Lee, I thought you had this rectified with a new Elbow from TAD? I got my new dipstick tube yesterday for my Perkins. ... hoping I don't have to pull the starter to reinstall it but if I do, so be it. At least it will be right again.... mechanic (who will go nameless here) that rebuilt the IP a couple of years ago, apparently put it all back together but forgot to replace the dipstick tube so he forced it down in there apparently and straightened it sufficiently that when I pulled my elbow off for routine maintenance earlier this past Summer, I had to pull the starter and in turn, opted to pull the tube out to get it bent back to stock. It was too strong a steel to bend it so just ordered it new.... Gotta watch the mechanics... down to minor details.
 
Past 2K in speed she over heats ! at 3k there is smoke in the engine room coming out the stairs !
Im thinking exhaust elbow. The new blower blew a fuse to making it worse..
Ill Try and remove the elbow ? Any ideas are welcome .
Trans Alantic diesal or i have a metal worker friend that can make one ! . Lee M 384 1982 - 132
Try cleaning your air breather mine was plugged from the belt being shredded its just a screen any solvent will do . If your engine is starved for air it will overheat .
 
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