Repair
Electronic control and marine electrical repair
Modern marine diesels are run by an engine management computer, electronic throttle controls and a harness that lives in a salt air environment. When those fail the engine can be mechanically perfect and still refuse to run. I diagnose and repair engine management, control and instrumentation faults.
Salt air gets into every connector
Engine rooms are hot, damp and salty, which is close to the worst environment you can put a wiring harness in. Green corrosion inside a connector creates resistance, resistance creates a bad signal, and a bad signal produces a fault code that points at a perfectly good sensor.
What is included
- Engine management fault diagnosis and code history
- Harness and connector corrosion tracing
- Sensor testing and replacement
- Electronic throttle and shift control diagnosis
- Instrumentation and gauge accuracy checking
- Charging and starting circuit repair
- Alarm and monitoring system faults
How it works
Read
Fault codes and history come off the engine management computer, along with live data.
Trace
The circuit gets tested rather than the part replaced. Most sensor codes turn out to be wiring.
Repair and protect
Repairs get made properly and connections protected, because a repair that ignores the salt air is a repair you do again next season.
Corrosion inside marine engine wiring connectors produces resistance that generates sensor fault codes on components that are themselves functional, which is why circuit testing should precede sensor replacement on a marine diesel.
Related repair work
Diesel Repair
Engine, transmission and generator service on marine diesels, from routine maintenance through a complete repower.
Engine Diagnostics
Find the actual cause before parts get bought, using engine management data, live readings and a borescope.
Engine Repower
Replacing tired engines with new power, including the mounts, controls, exhaust and propeller match that make it work.
Electronic Control Repair: common questions
My engine throws a sensor code. Do I just replace the sensor?
Not before testing the circuit. In a marine environment a large share of sensor codes are caused by corroded connectors or chafed wiring, and replacing the sensor changes nothing.
My gauges read wrong. Is that the engine or the instruments?
Either. Gauge accuracy is checked against measured values during a survey, because an inaccurate temperature gauge is genuinely dangerous on a marine diesel.
Can you work on older mechanical engines with no electronics?
Yes. I started on early model marine diesels and still work on plenty of engines with no computer anywhere on them.
Tell me what the engine is doing
Describe the symptom on the phone and most of the time the problem is narrowed before I arrive. Surveys are booked around your sea trial date.