While I have the Yanmar 3GMD motor out of the boat I want to knock off the rust that is slowly creeping in. The paint on the motor is starting to fail, which makes sense after 34+ years of service. Today I spent a few hours and 10 canisters of brake cleaner getting the build

Harold, a retired diesel mechanic who has generously donated his shop and knowledge, and I ripped into the motor today. What we found was both better and worse than anticipated. The Good: All the major internals seem to be in fine condition. The issues seem to be limited to the piston. The Bad… We initially

In the last post I mentioned that cylinder 2 was having some blowby issues. I took the head in for testing in the hopes that it was cracked and the issue. The head came back superbly. That meant it was time to dig deeper into the motor, which meant pulling it and putting it up

VICTORY! Billabong’s Yanmar 3gm finally fires! (Read text under video too!) Harold, a diesel mechanic and fellow Shilshole Bay Yacht Club member, came out today and helped me troubleshoot the motor. With experience backing him we found the air leak pretty quickly. It is coming from the external fuel filter. We bypassed it straight into

Billabong’s Yanmar 3gm is having a hard time firing. I am fairly certain it is due to fuel issues. When I pulled out the primary and secondary fuel filters there was a lot of gunk that came out with it. Clogged fuel filters restrict fuel flow and can cause issue inside the motor if not