Giles and Paula's Great Retirement Adventure
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Today we moved diesel around the boat and tested various scenarios. We know that the engines fail at about 30%, so we wanted to double-check that there was actually 30% of fuel left in the tank when that happened. I know that we know, but Sasga basically don't appear to trust me or Chris (or 8 Volvo engineers for that matter) to have a brain and so we wanted to prove there was fuel left in the tanks at the point of failure not just me being a dumbass and not calibrating the tanks properly
We got to the point of failure and then emptied each tank, and sure enough, we got about 400 litres out of each tank after the engine failed.
A really important point is that we could suck all the fuel out using a 50LPH transfer pump, but the fuel lift pump could not pull (or at least was shut off by the EMS at about 30% fuel. Maybe the fuel lift pump is not man enough to lift when the fuel gets below a certain level, perhaps the addition of an electric fuel lift pump would solve the problem. Or I could build a high-level "day tank" that was filled by electric transfer pumps and gravity would help the fuel lift pump (this has some elegance as I could make sure that the fuel in that day tank was super clean and water-free before it gets to the primary fuel filters.
400 hour service booked as well.
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Sounds like you're on to something @Giles. I'd venture a guess that as the tank volume gets lower, you lose the hydrostatic head that assists in pushing the fuel out of the tanks. As you lose the hydrostatic head as the tanks are mostly depleted, sounds like the lift pumps can't keep up with the fuel requirements so the ECM kicks in and kills power. Not sure if you could have them install a lift pump system that works in tandem or a more substantial lift pump. I'm sure the fuel pickup in the fuel tanks is intentionally set higher than the tank bottom to allow for small amounts of water that might inadvertently make their way into the tank. As diesel has a 0.84 SG, any water would settle out on the bottom of the tank. Hope they can get it squared away soon!
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Sakura is lovely. Thanks @Giles for showing us about. Shame about the weather (winds)..
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That dog bone turned out well! Seamless transitions
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Thank you. There is a tiny irregularity where the 2 buries cross in the middle. Not enough to cause structural concern, but it is fucking with my OCD, so I have bought some Dyneema chafe-guard sleeving that I will integrate over the middle 200mm. The trouble is, it is coming from, Australia, so won't be here for a while....
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I got these decals made many months ago. They were to replace the rather small one (for some unknown reason, Sasga only put a decal on the starboard bow). Today, we got around to affixing them. There is one on the port side too now....
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Paula and I popped down to SAKURA in filthy weather earlier today. I wanted to show @Madame-Buttonfly the new decals. We wandered to an adjacent pontoon, so that we could see the port side and the decal. Here she is with her I-don't-like-all-this-fucking-rain awning on....
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some inspiration for the board bar
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Any developments on the fuel issue @Giles ?
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