Howdy Folks. I live offgrid in Alaska. A lot of things are a real pain, take a long time and are expensive to get here. But one thing we have a lot of here because of the day/night cycles and frost damaged roads is surplus road maintenance equipment. So after having run a couple of old Kubota light plants for power here over the last 4 winters, I just bought another old genset - site unseen for $300 and made a 3 hour roundtrip to pick it up. The Ad read " Old Light plant for parts or repair, I don't know anything about it other than it will not start". There was one photo of the exterior. When picking it up It was being sold by a tow yard with about 300 old vehicles in it of all shapes and size. The seller was not there when I picked it up and that is the compendium of all the info I have. Now you the reader know what I know about it. I figured for the money I could use the he generic parts for my other gensets ( tank/ radiator/ tires, battery, etc) and the trailer and light mass for the materials. But before I did that I wanted to see if I could get it running. This morning was our first non-raining and sunny day since I dragged it home and here is what I looked at and done. - put a known good/hot battery on it. - cleaned one battery terminal and replaced the frayed end terminal clamp on the other. - confirmed oil level is correct on dipstick ( see part of an old service tag in battery box that says " bad oil leak/ one bulb out" without date/hrs) - added 3/4 gallon of water to radiator to bring it to full. - confirmed diesel fuel in tank ( looks, smells and feels like good diesel) there is about 5 gallons in the 25 gallon tank. - turns over and sounds like it hits a little, makes a little white/grey smoke from the exhaust, no start. - pulled screw on fuel filter and dumped it on clean surface, no water droplets in bottom, filter appeared 80% full when pulled, only slight grey residue dumped from bottom. Refilled with fresh known good diesel and reinstalled finger tight. - disconnected electric fuel pump - note it gives a sputtering but thick stream of fuel when on- with finger tip lightly over the output side it is very easily stopped with the lightest of fingertip pressure. Unknown if this is normal behavior or working but weak pump. - removed stop solenoid - confirmed function with key switch while uninstalled - reached finger in hole and confirmed rack moves freely. - disconnected hard line from fuel injector #1 ( left most) and cranked over - saw one little squirt then difficult to observe if it was even dribbling due to the convulsive engine rattling / movement when cranking over. - I note that the genset/engine looks complete except for half of the air filter cover and the engine has a lot of old oil about it. I also noted orange RTV to the autostop solenoid and to the plate of on the front of the injector pump. And that is when I came in here to let the battery charge up again off my pickup truck and write this post. I know only a little about diesel engines having owned some machinery and farm equipment over the years but I do not have a mechanics experience wrenching on them. I do not have a manual or even parts diagram for this engine and am admittedly a little reluctant to buy one given what it is. I guess I am mainly posting here to see if there is a common "gotya" I an look at with this engine. At the moment I suspect maybe weak fuel pump/ injection pump issue/ injector issue. When I go out in a minute I will likely pull the injectors and see if I can get some carb cleaner thru them after seeing if I can get any thing from the injector hardlines when cranking over. Tips or tricks appreciated. Thank you much.
Went just now and disconnected the the hardline from all 3 injectors and ruined it over. #1 and #3 give a pulsing squirt. However #2 , with the electric fuel pump on just flows....is that diagnostic for an issue on #2 in the fuel pump?
These are IMO the best genset engines in this size ever built. It is not supposed to pass fuel like that. So the injection pump is haywire. You will probably want to have all 3 rebuilt. Contact our member here thepumpguysc and see what he says. Orange RTV on the solenoid seemed to come that way from the factory. It was on all the ones I see. The electric pump, if factory, is the most reliable electric pump I have ever seen. Probably OK. It doesn't need to make pressure, just get the fuel to the IPs. I did have one of these become hard start/non start because of worn out injectors at 20k hours, but that does not explain the wide open injection pump delivery valve on that one cylinder.
I could be wrong but don't a lot of mechanical fuel systems go to the full fuel position when not running and the stop solenoid is energized? That could explain the fuel flowing out the unit pumps. It takes a few thousand PSI to overcome the spring in the injector nozzle, so its not like it'd leak into the cylinders. Thepumpguy has forgotten far more than I know on the subject. I'd definitely take his word ovet mine.
The solenoid on these is spring to close, pull/electricity to open. But the IP itself has a spring loaded delivery valve to overcome much like the one in the nozzle. So if fuel is pouring out like that something is very wrong and it needs to go to a pump shop.
Hey fellas, I really appreciate all the replies and advice. I am going to send a PM to thepumpguysc as you've recommended and go from there. I will be sure to circle back and post an update when I get some movement on the project.
Ciao psichicrhino, Ti invio il Manuale di servizio per ISUZU Engine 3LD1 . Saluti
Good Morning, I want to update you that I did reach out to the pumpguy on here regarding rebuilding the injection pumps. He let me know that there are no parts available for these and that they are now throw away pumps. I searched around online and priced one pump delivered for anywhere from $200 on Ebay, to about $150 on AliExpress ( with 6-8 week shipping time). I opted to order one pump thru Amazon Prime which gets me 2-3 week shipping here in my part of Alaska. I am going to pull the injectors while waiting on the one injection pump to arrive and see if I can clean them up or if I want to ship them off to the PumpGuy for rebuilding at $24/ea which is absolutely cheap enough. Part of what I come into this time of the year is that we could have our 1st snow in 4 weeks and some serious snow in 8 weeks and I do not have a shop to work on this generator in - I mean I could shoehorn it into my little workshop but would hate to have to try. I did also lay out 7 bucks for a digital workshop manual of about 160 pages for this engine. Looks like it gives me enough diagrams and info to pull the pump. This is one of many, many small projects I have to take care of before the snow flies or it will fall onto next summer's to do list. I know my course of action here is not what most would do here but I need to see if this is gonna be a runner or a parts donor before I put much into it. as I know nothing about it's history and whether the hobbs is telling me it has 8000 hours , 18000 hours or 28000 hours. Thanks again everyone for taking the time to look at and contribute to this thread. I will continue to update it as this project pans out. In the hopes that the archived info may help another down the road.
Grazi, Grazi Stefano!
I find it strange that there are no parts available because those pumps are still used on current production engines. But I have never had to experience that because out of dozens of customers that have these, I have never removed an IP on one, not even once. I have done a total of maybe 6 injectors on them ever. They are just reliable as a brick. I wonder what the previous owners did to it to mess it up so badly.
Only ever seen 1 fail and all it did was make oil. We pulled all of them and sent them out for testing. Replaced the leaking one and back to work it went.
I will never know what the history is but this is the 3rd 20-25 y/o light plant I have purchased here in Alaska. The other 2 were kubotas and from a contractor in Anchorage. But all 3 have markings of being rentals at one time and fleet owned at others. 1 of them still had Washington State plates and one has markings from a North Slope Company. I say that to say they likely saw hard service and deferred maintenance under many masters before ending up on my homestead.