at the dock, waiting to get scooped:

212rowboat

while I'm backing trailer down ramp, the boat dies... No biggie, turn the key.... Chugchugchugchug, notta... No fire... Drag her over by rope and winch her on trailer, drag her the 1/4 mile to my house and slap muffs on her... Chugchugchugchug.. notta- wait! Dieseling and coughing through hat.... 

Basics, right? Let's trouble shoot.... Pulled boot off dizzy and laid it across risers, and laid a driver across solenoid to turn engine... As suspected, no fire... 

Check connections... Good... Check wires, good... Concerned about ignition module, on the account I'll have to go beerless a week or so to afford replacing it, but let's start at coil and have a beer or two... 

Find multimeter, fire at coil but it ain't pushing to engine... Bad coil, right? I've seen this happen on other engines, and due to bad run of insulation in coil, causing a cavity to heat and crack it up internally, but... That usually results in misfiring of some sort of warning... I'm thinking ignition module again, and decide to start savoring the beer I have a little more... 

My games about to come on, and I decide to continue tomorrow... But I may as well jott down some numbers, such as coil and iflgnition module, to go.ahead and price them out.... 

I pulled the boot off the top of the coil, this time... The boot end on the dizzy looked brand new, which it is, so I didn't even think to look at the coil end.... But... Glad I did... 

Fellers, I've never seen an ignition wire rot... It was as rotten as it could be... A matter of fact, it was so rotten I think it was the rot conducting the electricity for my entire ride today.... I have a spool, and some boots and clamps so I string up a new one and she went: chugchugGRRRRRRRR.... 

I thought I'd share this, because in all my exploits I've never seen that, or even heard of it... Plus, as arrogant as this sounds, it may help someone walk through their own troubleshooting, even though I would have never thought to look at a simple wire, and mostly because its less than three months old, it should maybe demonstrate how a small thing can turn into a big repair bill if you can't t/s on your own. 

By the way... I drank all my beer... Call it celebration.   

212rowboat

Yup... diesels are hearty, but.... When something goes wrong it's usually serious (read: down time and costly)....  

212rowboat

Seals... add those... A runaway diesel is an ugly thing. 

212rowboat

Your turbo has a oil system, no? If the seals rupture it feeds motor oil into the intake, and there is nothing to stop it such as a butterfly valve... The engine can run on that, and you can't stop it until the oil is gone... Neither can you regulate it... most often they die when the engine blows by running wot until the oil is depleted. .... Always always always let your engine run a few minutes at idle before killing it... It will keep the seals from hardening prematurely when oil circulates and keeps oil on seals until they've cooled sufficiently. 

212rowboat

Gooooood.... Ounce of prevention, right? 

212rowboat

Most diesels were before the epa got a hold of them... now, high pressure common rail, piaziometric injectors instead of mechanical, egrs, diesel particulate filters and uera injection.... it's a good thing, if done correctly.... But diesels are in their period equivalent to gassers in the mid to late seventies... They'll figure it out, they just haven't yet.. right now the afore mentioned items burn twice the fuel of their predecessors, and produce only 75% of the emissions... Do the math... They are worse on the environment, until they figure it out. 

aero3113

Use dielectric grease in the boots!

jhofmann

As an engineman in the Navy, I saw first hand a 671 Detroit run away in the captains gig due to a faulty governor. The emergency shutdown was pulled shutting off the fuel, and closing the air inlet to the supercharger. The vacuum from the engine sucked in the seals, and the engine kept running off the engine oil. Not a very happy captain. USS BUCHANAN DDG-14 I the fall of 1984.