Beware the check valve ball on your Racor!

A word to the wise, your diesel may die for reasons not related to your filters being clogged. While crossing the Straits of Georgia last week, on a windless day, my trusty diesel did the old "thump, thump, thump, dead". I had just done my annual change of both fuel filters and had recently cleaned out my entire fuel tank, so I was completely surprised.

As it goes, this was not a bad time, given that we were a mile away from any land, but the lack of wind meant we were bouncing around and drifting with the current right toward that pointy island over there.

I immediately began working the problem and had replaced the primary Racor filter before you could blink. No luck. Engine started, but then died. What? It had looked clean, as it should. I went ahead and replaced the secondary filter. No luck. Started, then died. By now I was truly befuddled. We had gotten uncomfortably close to the the nearby hard rocks when a puff of NW wind allowed us to sail toward our destination of Nanaimo. While my boys sailed us along, I was down below cogitating. I knew it was a fuel issue.

1. It was not the filters.
2. I had no reason to suspect a vacuum leak as none of my fittings had been touched, or were loose.
3. After changing filters over the past 12 years I had never had my motor not run smoothly. The Universal 5432 has a bleeding screw near the injectors that always seem to bleed off any residual bubbles.
4. It was not a problem with my injection pump because during the short intervals of the engine running, I could feel each injection line had the normal pulses of pressure from the pump.

I would start the motor, then it would run for 3 minutes, or 2 minutes, or 1 minute. I must have done this 20-30 times, hoping whatever residual air in the system was getting worked out. I was getting concerned about various things, mainly losing battery power and what I was going to do if I couldn't get it working.

As we got to within about 5 miles of Nanaimo, I decided to call Victoria Coast Guard and request a commercial tow. The wind had died, and there was no prospect at that time of my motor working.  I was soon put in touch with Vessel Tow out of Nanaimo and they would send someone to pull us in a bit later. In the meanwhile, I kept thinking and problem solving.

Finally, a light bulb. Aren't our brains fascinating? I remembered how once upon a time, on this very blog, I had written about how a bunch of hair like gunk had fouled my check valve and prevented the ball from seating, and how this had prevented the diesel from running. I decided to pop off the plastic cover and inspect the ball.

The Goop. All that was below the check ball valve preventing it from seating. 

Sure enough, when I removed the ball it came up with a whole bunch of what looked like hair. I dug down into that area and pulled up more gobs of this hair like stuff. I got my dental tool and scraped out even more! Once confident it was clean, I put the rubber ball back, tighten everything up, and started her up.

Here is the Racor image of the check ball on a 200 series spin on filter like what I have.  There are also check balls on the 500 turbine series and many others.

Purr, purr, purr. 5 minutes later, purr, purr, purr. 15 minutes later, purr, purr, purr. Damn if that wasn't it. Never was my filters.



I called off the calvary and we motored in the now dead calm seas right into Nanaimo and eventually down Dodd Narrows and home.

If you have a Racor filter, do check the ball valve regularly to see it has not been fouled. I have absolutely no idea where and how this hair like stuff got fouled around the check ball when the filter bowl and medium itself was clean. Whatever.