PSimmo

Hi Tony, Thanks again. I will go ahead with removing the head and would be grateful if I could take you on up your offer to come and give me an idea about the bore wear / gasket once I have done this, as you have suggested. I'll let you know when I've done this, which may be later this week/weekend (but it depends on when I can fit it in around work). Thanks

UPDATE Battery charged and reconnected. Removal of injectors- 3 of the injectors were very sooty as can be seen from the photos that have hopefully uploaded. I’m not sure if this is the right end to count them from, but starting with 1 at the gearbox end, once bolts were removed the injector itself was very difficult to get out, I had to slowly ease it out over 5 minutes or more, the other 3 pulled straight out. Injector 2 was the only one that wasn’t covered in soot. All 4 of the injectors were sooty (I have uploaded a photo of one of them), I removed and tested each one with jump leads and they were smoking hot in seconds but struggled to glow red, probably due to the amount of soot on them? You could see the heat crackling the soot. Compression test carried out. It wasn’t possible to fix the tester clamp in place on injector 1 (due to a bolt in the way on the side of the head), so I tested the other 3, with results very low of between 1 and 4 bar… We are moored just near a boatyard, and fortunately one of the guys there was happy to come and have a look to make sure I was carrying out the test correctly, which he said that I was. He went on to say that if there is no compression in any of the cylinders, then it is likely that the head has lifted. He said to take the rocker cover off and turn the engine over, and if the valves are all moving as they should, then this strengthens the case in his view that the cause is that the head has lifted. I did this and the valves do appear to be all working fine. Any thoughts welcome, on where to go from here?

I've uploaded the photos onto my canalworld gallery, 2 are old photos that were in the folder that came with the boat, and 2 existing. Hopefully these links below will take you to the photos-

I had thought a compression tester was a much more expensive bit of kit, but at 40quid, I'll order one of these and give it a go- https://www.vidaxl.co.uk/p/210004/17-piece-compression-tester-diesel Larkshall and Chris, good to know the K4 are common/popular engines, I've spoken with diamond diesels as well who have said they have all the parts for these engines, I just need to let them know what we need. The battery we have is a Lion 96Ah 680CCA. I have it on charge, to give it another go but I don't actually know how old it is, as it was already on the boat when we bought it over a year ago. It may well need replacing. I have taken a couple of photos of the engine, but not sure how to upload them onto here. Will look into it when I get a minute.

Thanks Chris, I was just doing some research today and came across an NB for sale with a Boatserve (who I'd not heard of before) K4 engine, on the link below- http://www.apolloduck.hk/image.phtml?id=438027ℑ=3 From the limited photo on the link, our engine looks very similar to this one. Did you change your Boatserve engine for any particular reason? Our NB was fitted out in Stoke-On-Trent by Barry Wren, and I believe Boatserve's yard used to be in the same neck of the woods. Had struggled to find much information on them, but your post clarifies that they are no longer operating. I'll call Justin and add photos of our engine on here tomorrow.

I will take some photos of the engine to upload and I'll see if I can find any identification details on it. There's a photo of the engine when it is brand new (at least we assume it is this engine) in the files that came with the boat, which could be useful. Thanks larkshall for your offer, we'll certainly bear that in mind.

Tony, It was very nice to meet you and I appreciate your time this evening, including writing this update to the forum. If there is anyone out there that could recommend anyone/help us look into our options further, it would be appreciated. All the best.

Thank you all very much for your responses, and to Tony for the offer. Tony I shall email you directly as you have suggested. RCR engineers determined loss of compression and the suggestion of a new engine. I will come back to you with further info soon. Phil

Hi there, This is my first post, although I'm regularly reviewing other topics for help with our liveaboard narrowboat! Thanks in advance for reading. We have a Mitsubishi K4E keel cooled engine (4 cylinder 1.4l) in our 52ft narrowboat, which will not start due to loss of compression concluded by RCR. We have been recommended 3 options: 1. Overhaul/rebuild; 2. Replace with a used/recon engine; 3. Replace with a new engine; We have looked into new engine prices/fitting etc and it's simply unaffordable for us. Any advice on options 1 or 2 would be really really appreciated, and if further information would help, I can see what I can provide you. Many thanks for your time.