Dreaded Fuel Cell Whine?

[cyauch]

one step closer to sea trials! but need a second opinion on a possible fuel cell / pump whine. i checked pressure regulator and screens on pump assy. all were clean with no obvious signs of paint or dirt but...

Monday night fired it up and the pump assy making gawd awful noise. then after engine warmed up it would surge then act like starving for fuel. let sit for 10 minutes and it would do same thing. temp gauge got as high as 160. irked, backed into my shop and let it sit. read a ton more threads about it here so checked the regulator and other stuff.

tuesday night was gonna check pressures and put clear tubing on for coolings but decided to fire her up first. ran flawless. no high temps and she never surged or dies. pump assy WAY quieter. so wondering if i had a little air in the system initially.

so on cold start she was quiet. let run for a while, turn off, then restart, theres a noticeable whine again. before i run out and replace anything figured id get some opinions. temps seem good. hovering around 125 - 130 with ears on at idle

some videos:


cold start video

key cycle after warm up

restart after warm up

 

[Lou C]

Is your fuel filter clean? Changed recently?
What about the anti siphon valve on the gas tank, this is an often overlooked case of fuel starvation. I had it on my engine years ago.
160 is not running hot that is actually the temp that the thermostat is set to open up. 120-130 is too cold.

 

[cyauch]

Thanks Lou.

I did check the anti-siphon valve based on info gleaned from other threads. What i did was remove the access cover, disconnect the fuel hose and remove the fitting. I shook it and it made noise (like a rattle paint can) but sprayed some carb cleaner and made the whole thing shiny anyway

And i think read somewhere on here that t-stat is a 165* stat so while i wasn't alarmed by the temps, i included the info anyway. While i had the engine out i did change the filter, pull the entire t-state housing off and cleaned the housing and stat. There's wasn't a ton of gunk on the stat our housing, but more of a film. My next plan of action for the cooling system (raw water) is to do the clear hose mod on all the hoses, i just didn't get it done before i dropped the engine.

I'm on a well so the water coming out of the ground was 62*. that might explain why i was seeing initial temps in the 120 - 130 range

Gonna triple check all the fuel connections just to make sure i'm not sucking any air in prior to the fuel cell. Would assume anything after that would be spraying fuel all over the place if i didn't have that stuff tight

 

[cyauch]

banged this out on my cell. sorry for typo's and weirdness. thumbs hurt

thought i had this licked. good news is transom seal leaked resolved. but this pig fell flat on its face when in the water. off loaded from trailer and tied to dock. let it idle for 15 minutes or so to make sure no transom leak, no exhaust or cooling leak at the Y, and power steering or oul leaks. all good and water temps around 150.

pushed from dock, put in gear and did a few circles at idle. engine purred and gimbal bearing and drive sounded great!

idled out to river area for another 15 mins then gradually increased throttle. started to plane then rpms kept dropping, backfire / popping sound from engine, fuel pump whinjng like a drunk crack *****, then died. sounds like a wind storm right before it dies. have to wait a min before i can get it fired back up, then does similar before i even shift to gear. if i cycle key so pump stops whining, i can idle a little longer. if i let it drift for 5 mins or so it will fire back up but within a few mins the sputtering, whine, whoosh of air the dies.

keep in mind two months ago ran great. fuel cell whine was present and planned on dealing with that this winter. then underwater strike on outdrive and transom seal issue. engine stayed covered in my shop two weeks ago with only impeller changed while it was out of boat

i pulled anti siphone valve again, verified if moves easily, cleaned again, can bliw one way but not the other, and with. little effort i can make it sound like a rattle can of paint. going to say that good

pressure regulator removed again. swear filter there looks good. and given it ran great prior to removal, im gonna conclude injectors and regilator are good, as are cap and wires. i should probably pull, inspect, and replace plugs but im working on laws of probabilities here based on work done or not done and prior performance with known work done

im of the mind set this fuel pump is toast for starters. where the filter screws on is severly corroded. dump fuel from two filters with no water separation so im thinking fuel supply good. did notice both time i pulled filters the fuel was about an inch below top of filter lime it wasnt full.

thoughts? yes, i am gonna replace plugs and wires. but what about this fuel pump? if i put a pressure gauge on the high and low sides would it matter if i have it in thw water or not? i cant get it to stumble with muffs on and i really dont want to go over 1k on muffs anyway.

is it even possible to tear the pump apart, try and clean it some more, and have some improvement? money is tight and would have to save a while for a genuine VP replacement, but i could eat the cost for cheap knock off in hopes it would confim the pump is the prob. i c a low and high press pump is 100 or so, and for another the whole pump assy....cheap china knock off i know.

at a cross roads here as well as stumped. tips or suggestions appreciated. videos if the engine and pic of where filter mounts. i swear i thiught it was clean last week but i must have saw the light color in inspection mirror and thought that was 'ok'. i remember being on the phone when i was looking at it so i probably got sidetracked. crap

o, and it doesnt do the popping sound at idle, only when giving it throttle or ahead at least one third. the more applied the more popping, whine, stumble. and i can feel air being sucked into air intake

engine poppine and whinjng

engine popping, whoosh of air, then dies

 

[alldodge]

Is the above pic that of the fuel filter housing?

What motor?
What is the fuel pressure?

 

[BRICH1260]

I refurbished my fuel pump myself as a winter project four years ago. It was pretty easy with just basic tools. I did mine a preventative and was not having any symptoms at the time.
Once apart, I cleaned all parts and applied paint remover to the inside of the cylinders, the paint peeled off easy. I just left bare aluminum side walls. I had some build up in the cooling jacket that I addressed also. Actually I got a better understanding of how the pump worked after doing this. Or you could buy the knock off ebay brands for a couple hundred bucks. heck, you could buy four or five of them for the cost of an OEM.

 

[cyauch]

Is the above pic that of the fuel filter housing?

What motor?
What is the fuel pressure?

Yes, that's where the filter makes contact. In retrospect, i believe previous owner probably didn't wipe that thing down before installing new filter....if it was ever changed at all.

Motor is 5.0l GXi-E.
I didn't make it to the fuel pressure test yet. I planned on doing that this past weekend but got bogged down in this issue while boat was in the water. And I'm unclear on the proper testing for pressure.

Can i hook pressure gauge up with boat out of water and on muffs? If so, i won't be able to test WOT pressure while its on muffs right? And with a TS / Hurricane getting ready to slam into us (again!) it may be a week or so before i can get it back into the water.

 

[cyauch]

I refurbished my fuel pump myself as a winter project four years ago. It was pretty easy with just basic tools. I did mine a preventative and was not having any symptoms at the time.
Once apart, I cleaned all parts and applied paint remover to the inside of the cylinders, the paint peeled off easy. I just left bare aluminum side walls. I had some build up in the cooling jacket that I addressed also. Actually I got a better understanding of how the pump worked after doing this. Or you could buy the knock off ebay brands for a couple hundred bucks. heck, you could buy four or five of them for the cost of an OEM.

I assume u didn't reuse existing o-rings?

 

[alldodge]

Can i hook pressure gauge up with boat out of water and on muffs?

Yes, that will give enough info to see how its doing.
Low 8 +/- 4 psi
High 50 to 60 psi

 

[cyauch]

sweet. then i'll go do that now. thanks!

 

[cyauch]

aight. so heres a vid of the high side. the engine had been running for 5 minutes or so and the needle was steady on 49-50. then i started to hear the whine come and go. thats when i grabbed the phone and started the vid. as the whine gets more pronounced the more the needle bounces like a two dollar trick on dollar day.

went to read low side and kept getting zero. after a few wtf's and a cold one i went back at thinking that shrader valve was seized. i was able to push the pin in and not a drop of fuel came out....even with engine running. (i know i know. not a good idea...but i am a retired Seabee and i did stay at a Holiday Inn....once....years ago).

after jacking with for a while fuel finally started to dribble out, eventually some semblence of pressure and spray. But...snd theres always a but...the damn *** that presses the needle pin in the valve fell out or broke and i dont have another adapter to fit that smaller valve. have to pick one up tomorrow and try again

i also noticed the connector for low press pump had green corrosion on the two pins so theres that.

i assume engine would stay running with only one pump right? until u give it throttle i guess.

so heres the vid of the high pressure reading. will post up low tomorrow hopefully

fuel rail press reading

 

[alldodge]

I would say your low pressure pump is the issue
Its either loosing connection or there is a restriction between tank and pump

The motor may run with the low stopped but then the HP pump has to pull fuel thru low and the aeration starts

 

[cyauch]

Thanks AD. So every time i come on here and read responses and look for more info before i ask questions, things start to make sense and make me think about situations i've encountered during this two-month ordeal. I'm still going to get an adapter today so i can verify low pressure. I suspect it may actually read something, maybe, since i knocked some crud loose playing with that shrader vale on the LP. But pretty confident the problem will re-emerge.

But an example of putting the puzzle together: I've come to the conclusion the previous owner may have done some maintenance, but other things were overlooked. This fuel cell may be one of them. Or, maybe the person saw the corrosion on the filter flange housing and said screw it, sell the boat (i can understand after seeing the cost of genune VP replacement )

But when i pulled the motor, i didn't disconnect the fuel cell at all other then the tank feed line. 6 weeks later when i dropped the motor back and did final checks of hookup on engine, i noticed the LP connector was disconnected but HP wasn't. while i may have, i'm pretty a n a l about tagging and bagging electrical connectors when i take apart because it may be weeks before i can get back to it. and i coiuldn't pull it apart without pressing that metal clip / bar in. and pretty sure i would have disconnected the HP connector also.

Maybe i was on borrowed time this summer? boat ran fine all summer. It would die out if you gave it quick throttle then back idle (like when backing off trailer) and the whine was always present.

So putting together what you said about HP being able to yes pull fuel would work, the whine would be there, so it makes me now wonder did i really disconnect that LP when i pulled engine (again, i doubt it because it wouldn't interfere with removing the engine at all) OR was the LP bad / disconnected when i bought the boat because previous owner new it was bad and didn't want to replace it.

Could be a coincidence i guess. Still, I'll get the LP reading later tonight and post what i find. Probably gonna pull the cell, disassemble, and inspect anyway.

Thanks!

 

[Senior B]

The engine will start and run with a bad low pressure (Boost) pump but will fall on its face when you try to get up on plane. Have you removed the high pressure pump from the cell to check its intake screen? That's the one that will get clogged up from paint ect and will cause pump wine as well. I've reworked many of these pumps that folks replaced as suspected bad and 90% of them work just fine after being cleaned up.

 

[cyauch]

Thanks SB.

Yes, i removed both but i now question if i really 'cleaned' them. By that i mean yea the screens looked dirty and kinda matte black looking. but once i re-installed and didn't notice any real improvement i dug deeper into the threads here and on the web. In hindsight, i doubt i got it as clean as i thought i did.

Bottom line is i'm gonna scramble to get this adapter for the LP pump and get a reading before the rain hits. Then once i back it back into my shop, I plan on pulling the entire cell apart and inspecting to decide if its even worth trying to rebuild or just spend the money and get a new one.

This storm is supposed to blow over us pretty fast so tomorrow and most of Thursday I'll have something to do

 

[cyauch]

what a day. got adapter but didnt use ptfe tape on connector gauge so a little fuel leakage some weirdness but i think i now know where my problem lies. first

no pressure when first started

then

LP reading while moving throttle

held steady at 10. next kid cycled key on and off a few times. i think the press drop is again due to leak at gauge from lack of ptfe tape. heavy rain was coming so kinda got in a hurry

key cycle on and off

so heres where the weirdness comes in. on first start no pressure....until i jostled the electrical connector to LP

no press till connector jostled


so i feel good in that i think oumps work...ok. i was able to wiggle that LP plug to get zero psi then heard HP start a growing whine within 20 seconds. i unplugged LP connector and did same. i also swapped HP and LP connectors and was able to sporadically reproduce same symptoms. this leads me to believe the LP connector itself is suspect and not the plug

so i now feel the issues is the LP and specifically the electrical connector. with the green corrosion i saw it kinda makes sense. im still going to pull the entire assy and give it a good cleaning and see if better to replace whole thing or replace LP and HP pumps

my concern is the electrical connector. i dont mind doing a proper splice of a new connector but does anyone have a potential source? diagram im looking appears i have to buy the entire harness.

 

[cyauch]

ignore my last about the connector plug source. Was able to find it by searching for VP and OMC. Sweet!

Also, dunno what's up with the sound on the vids. Please let me know if you have any probs viewing

 

[alldodge]

Hope that is the fix