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Better boat PERFORMANCE & FUEL Economy!!!
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Aug 16, 2024
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View Video Transcript
0:00
When we look in here at the Pistons, it looks like rust being built up on top of the pistons
0:05
and having rust inside of the combustion chamber is clearly not a good thing
0:14
There are many different aspects and features to a boat that are important to different people
0:23
based on what they do on the water and how they use their boat. You're going to need a bigger boat
0:29
But something that is generally relatable to any boater is going to be performance and fuel economy
0:36
When talking about filling up a 12 gallon tank of gas in a car, there's less concern
0:41
but there is a huge difference in that compared to having to fill up 120 gallons in the boat
0:47
And when we start talking about burning a lot more fuel than normal and losing performance and speed
0:52
this is something that no one wants. On a boat though compared to a car
0:56
The issue of carbon buildup is a completely different animal. And in order to understand how to prevent losing fuel economy and performance
1:03
we'll need to understand a little bit more about around what it is. Carbon buildup, in my opinion, is misunderstood and sometimes even used to mislead people
1:12
when it comes to how it affects the engine. It's basically just the residue left behind from burning fuel in order to run the engine
1:19
kind of like the ashes that are left after a fire. But it's completely different in the boating world compared to the automotive world
1:26
for two main reasons. The first being that most engines on boats are running around 4,000 to 6,000 RPM on a regular basis
1:35
which helps to burn carbon out of the engine, whereas the car is usually cruising around at about 2,000 RPM
1:42
Then the second reason for a difference is that there are way more cars these days that are running direct injection
1:48
which just means that the fuel is put directly into the combustion chamber of the engine
1:53
And outside of engines like an Optimax or a Yamaha 425, most boat engines are just fuel-injected
2:00
4-strokes that have the fuel being put into the system behind the intake valve, which allows the fuel to clean off the back of the valve
2:08
In the direct injection style of engine, because there isn't any fuel on the back of the valve
2:13
this is where you will see the most amount of carbon buildup on the back of the intake valve
2:18
causing issues and obstructions to the airflow into the cylinders, which is where you see the issues on the automotive side of this discussion when talking about carbon buildup
2:28
Now when we look at this issue on a boat, it's a lot different. Because we are talking about the fuel going over the valve and cleaning it
2:35
we don't see the carbon buildup on the valves as much. And also because of the higher RPM we see less buildup But the buildup that we do see is inside of the combustion chamber on top of the pistons and on the cylinder heads where the other side of the valves are This is where we also get into talking about the difference of mileage compared to engine hours
2:55
On a boat, we regulate the reliability and longevity of the engine based on its age and how many
3:01
hours have been put on the engine. Any engine built in the last 20 years or so is going to have the ability to display the engine
3:08
hours that are on it, as well as the runtime for those hours. based on how long the engine was running during the different RPM ranges
3:16
Though sometimes things can get a little altered when we look at these numbers
3:20
point in case is this engine here, where it says that we've got 17.3 hours at idle
3:26
9.2 hours under 1,500 RPM, 3.9 hours between 1,500 and 2,500, then 8.2 hours between 2,500 and 3,500 RPM
3:37
with only 0.1 hours, or basically no hours, above 3,500 RPM, which isn't really the case because the engine actually has 255 total hours on it
3:48
But that just goes to show you that glitches can happen when talking about computers
3:53
We'll talk more about this engine later, though, because the runtime in those RPM ranges were actually accurate
3:59
just the amount of time spent at those slower speeds being reported was off, which is why we had an issue with this engine
4:05
But say we do a lot of trolling with the engine, that is going to show a lot more hours in the range
4:10
of around 1500 to roughly 3,000, depending on how well powered the boat is with the size of engines on the boat
4:17
A bigger and heavier boat with less horsepower is going to need to run in higher RPM ranges to troll at a good speed
4:24
depending on what kind of fish you are trolling for and how fast you need to troll
4:29
Compared to a lighter boat with more horsepower that will be able to troll quicker with less RPM
4:34
This is important to note because it's in these lower speeds that we get back to talking about the example of the example of the
4:40
the carbon building in the car because of that 2,000 RPM range
4:45
If we are doing a lot of trolling, this is going to allow that carbon to build
4:49
And depending on how many hours are on the engine and how much the engine's life was spent
4:53
at either idle or low speed, like when we are trolling and like the example engine we just
4:58
had, this is going to tell us a lot about what is going on inside of the engine as it relates
5:03
to carbon buildup and having an issue with performance and fuel consumption
5:08
when that carbon builds up, it allows for different things to happen, like blowby and leaks
5:13
around the valves, and even massive amounts of buildup on the pistons and in the combustion
5:17
cylinder, which can even increase your compression ratios and throw off the ratios inside
5:22
of the cylinder. When we are talking about a boat engine, though, it's important to remember
5:26
that the air going into the engine has a way higher moisture content to it than that of what your car does which isn much of a surprise since we are running the engine across a body of water But with that moisture comes rust another reason why it so hard on an outboard to sit
5:42
for extended periods of time without fogging the engine. And we'll be using the 300 horsepower verado that we have on our Ocean Master as an example
5:49
for this. This engine sat for probably three years before we got it and put it on the boat to use it
5:55
It's got about 1,700 hours on it as well, so it's a perfect example to show you when
6:00
it comes to the carbon issue. When we look in here at the pistons, it looks like rust being built up on top of the pistons
6:07
and having rust inside of the combustion chamber is clearly not a good thing
6:11
But it's really just heavy carbon that's just caked onto the piston
6:18
And if we look at the back of the valves, some of the valves also have some rust and carbon
6:22
built up on them. more rust than carbon, seeing that the injectors clean the back of the valves like we talked
6:29
about earlier. It's kind of hard to see with the bore scope that we are using here, but it's the best way
6:33
to get a look at the valves without having to remove the intake manifolds and disassembling
6:38
the engine to look inside of the combustion chamber. Seeing that the engine has about 1,700 hours on it, this takes us back to talking about
6:46
when and how long does it take to build up carbon like this
6:49
We had an example earlier where we only had 255 hours on an engine and it had a little
6:54
massive carbon issue. But that engine never saw any RPM above 4,000, which allowed the carbon
7:00
to build up like that. Then on other engines with regular use, I would say that a good number
7:05
would probably be somewhere around the thousand hours mark, depending on how the engine is
7:09
being run, that is. There are a few things that you can do in order to help lessen carbon
7:14
from being able to build. Things like running wide open for a few minutes on your way back in
7:18
from a trip will allow you to get the engine temperature up and burn off any excess buildup. Regular
7:23
oil changes will also help, and then probably the most efficient way to almost eliminate
7:28
buildup would be to run something like ring-free or quick clean in your fuel every so often
7:33
which is a cleaner, that will clean the stuff out before it has the ability to build up and
7:38
cause you any issues. Which for most boaters, unless you're only idling around all the time
7:42
you'll never see an issue with this. But if you do a lot of trolling and idling, then you're
7:46
probably a candidate to use a fuel additive to help keep the engine clean. Before you get up there
7:52
over that thousand-ish hour mark and start to notice issues. Now when it comes to having to deal
7:57
with carbon, this is where we get into different techniques and dangerous scenarios. But if you are
8:02
buying or using older engines, it's good to know what you can do to clean them out. The best
8:07
test to see if you have a problem is to use the bore scope or to do what is called a leakdown
8:12
on the engine The bore scope lets you see what you are dealing with And the leak down lets you know where your problem is The leak down is simply a test where we put compressed air into the cylinder and see how much air leaks out of the cylinder
8:24
This is done by moving whatever piston for whatever cylinder you are testing to top dead
8:29
center on the compression stroke. If you have a massive air leak when you start the test, then you're on the exhaust stroke
8:35
and you'll need to take the piston down and back up again to get to the compression stroke
8:39
But when we put the air into the engine and find that we have a leak, we just need to listen
8:43
to where the leak is going. If we hear it at the intake manifold, it's leaving out the intake
8:48
valves. If we hear it in the exhaust, then it's leaving out the exhaust valves. And if we take the
8:54
oil fill cap off or the dipstick out and we hear or feel the air coming out of the crank case
8:59
then that means that the leak is going past the piston rings and into the crank case. On our
9:04
engine with the 250 hours, it was leaking out of both the exhaust and the intake valves. Now this
9:10
can get a little tricky when trying to clean out carbon out of an engine. And you can get a little tricky, and you need to be careful and pay attention to what you are doing
9:17
Just a disclaimer, you can destroy an engine if you don't do this properly, so you've been warned
9:22
If it's bad enough, these chunks can break off and get stuck around the rings of the piston
9:27
and it can score the cylinder walls destroying the engine. So make sure you follow the instructions to whatever product you are using
9:34
But one way of cleaning out carbon is to just mix up a smaller tank of, say, quick clean
9:39
or ring free, and just mix it up a little heavier. Again, do this at your own risk, but with that mixed up, you can run it through the engine at lower speeds, allowing the cleaner to clean out the carbon
9:50
After running the heavy mix of cleaner, see what your leakdown is, or look back in with the borescope
9:55
Like for us, this is some heavy caked on carbon, so after running some quick clean, the next thing is going to be using some more serious products like Yick or Yamaha internal engine cleaner
10:06
And this stuff will definitely do some work on any buildup, but it can take multiple doses to clean everything out
10:12
After running only one bottle through this engine, you can see how much of the carbon has been cleaned out from the top of the pistons
10:18
We only had one bottle of YEC available, so we'll need to run probably one, maybe two more bottles through the engine in order to clean all of this out
10:26
But you can really tell the difference from when we started. You only need to run the engine at a slow speed as well
10:32
You don't want to run wide open when doing this, because again, you can have those chunks break off and do damage inside of the engine
10:39
But this is an easier way of cleaning out the engine without having to disassemble the engine and manually clean it out
10:45
So let us know if you've ever had to deal with carbon in the comments section below
10:49
or let us know in the community at born againboating.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and get the bell on
10:56
Thank you all for hanging out, and we look forward to seeing you next week
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