Makuni mx60 fails to start

[moiuk]

 

Just bought our boat with a mx60 installed, although it won't start up. According to the previous owner it was working fine a year ago when they last used it.

 

When I switch it on, the water pump starts and after a while there is a puff of grey smoke from the unit. A minute later there is a bigger puff of grey smoke, and then a minute later a cloud of grey smoke...  I panic at this stage and shut it all off..

 

Any idea of some basic stuff I could try to get it to start up ?

[hider]

First off be aware that the battery has to be well charged and in good order or the engine running and charging to get it fired up properly. The ignition phase draws considerable current, low battery or poor cable connections will cause this problem.

[mrsmelly]

2 hours ago, moiuk said:

 

Just bought our boat with a mx60 installed, although it won't start up. According to the previous owner it was working fine a year ago when they last used it.

 

When I switch it on, the water pump starts and after a while there is a puff of grey smoke from the unit. A minute later there is a bigger puff of grey smoke, and then a minute later a cloud of grey smoke...  I panic at this stage and shut it all off..

 

Any idea of some basic stuff I could try to get it to start up ?

Take the little magic eye thingy out of the side and clean it. If its sooted up it will cut the diesel off and shut down. Its dead easy to get at. Also the glow plugs on these are prone to failure so change that as a matter of course. Both these tasks are dead easy and done in minutes. I lived with an MX 60 for a few years on my udson and it was a great bit of kit but tempremental at times. Not as reliable as the webasto but if the mx60 is in good order its good if a little too big for a narrowboat. The seperate " Brain " can also pack in I had to replace mine. Take all the fuses out for five minutes and replace and try again.

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, hider said:

First off be aware that the battery has to be well charged and in good order or the engine running and charging to get it fired up properly. The ignition phase draws considerable current, low battery or poor cable connections will cause this problem.

 

Agreed. Classic symptoms of a flat battery not heating the glowplug enough to ignite the fuel. 

 

No point in cleaning the 'magic eye' as there is no combustion for it to be detecting. 

 

 

Try starting it with the engine running. The higher charging voltage will prolly make it burst into life. 

 

 

[moiuk]

Thanks will try these and report back.

[mrsmelly]

1 minute ago, moiuk said:

Thanks will try these and report back.

With all these heaters a fully charged battery is paramount but if yer batteries are good then the MX 60 is prone to quick destruction of the glow plug and sooting of the magic eye. I oft cleaned mine and kept glow plugs in stock. Good though when running correctly and very quick heat up.

[nb Innisfree]

I tried everything to get our MX 60 to fire up reliably but the introduction of low sulphur diesel (ULSD) cured it.

At the time (2009?) it also appeared to cure the majority of probs of these sort of heaters on the cut. So I would ensure fuel is of good quality.. 

11 minutes ago, mrsmelly said:

With all these heaters a fully charged battery is paramount but if yer batteries are good then the MX 60 is prone to quick destruction of the glow plug and sooting of the magic eye. I oft cleaned mine and kept glow plugs in stock. Good though when running correctly and very quick heat up.

Back along I addressed low voltage as a possible cure but it was to no avail, when ULSD cured the prob I found it would also fire up and run OK on low voltage. 

Edited May 30, 2019 by nb Innisfree

[OldGoat]

An item hardly mentioned on here is the fuel filter. My MX40 has a long tube containing said filter and  a fuel pump. After a period of checking everything else - I checked the filter.

'Twas blocked with years of crud.

Replaced, and all is fine now.  

[MtB]

5 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

An item hardly mentioned on here is the fuel filter. My MX40 has a long tube containing said filter and  a fuel pump. After a period of checking everything else - I checked the filter.

'Twas blocked with years of crud.

Replaced, and all is fine now.  

 

The volumes of pale grey 'smoke' suggest fuel is getting through in the OP's case however...

 

 

[WotEver]

4 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

The volumes of pale grey 'smoke' suggest fuel is getting through in the OP's case however...

Indeed. If it was a boat (or car) engine it would be indicative of non-functioning glowplugs, so...

[MtB]

4 minutes ago, WotEver said:

Indeed. If it was a boat (or car) engine it would be indicative of non-functioning glowplugs, so...

 

So...

 

We advise the OP to see post 2!

 

Let's rule out the obvious biggy before moving on to all the less likely possibilities.

 

[moiuk]

Boat is out of the water to be blacked at the moment, so will try it again on Monday.

[Jennifer McM]

That was our problem when we first bought our boat. the white smoke from unburnt fuel caused a few neighbour boaters to panic!

 

We start ours with the engine running as ours (MX80) appears to pull about 28amps when it starts, once it's running, engine can be switched off.

 

Not had any problems since in 3 years.

[moiuk]

Update:

 

So I tried to start it with the engine running..   Loads and loads of white smoke which made me and everyone around panic a bit.. But I noticed that the 'Burning' light was now green and so it had lit.  So I braved the smoke hoping that it was just burning off excess from the multiple failed attempts of starting and sure enough after about 30 minutes we had hot radiators (very hot!) and no white smoke.

 

So a success story - many thanks for all your help..

 

Just a service for it rather than replacing it now

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, moiuk said:

Update:

 

So I tried to start it with the engine running..   Loads and loads of white smoke which made me and everyone around panic a bit.. But I noticed that the 'Burning' light was now green and so it had lit.  So I braved the smoke hoping that it was just burning off excess from the multiple failed attempts of starting and sure enough after about 30 minutes we had hot radiators (very hot!) and no white smoke.

 

So a success story - many thanks for all your help..

 

Just a service for it rather than replacing it now

 

 

Excellent news, thanks for the update.

 

Yes the continued 'smoke' after lighting will have been unburned fuel and it will probably run fine now. The fact that it started ok with the engine running suggests the higher voltage from the alternator running is what the heater needed. Once running, you'll find you can turn the engine off and the heater will stay running. This all suggests your batteries are either old and tired or heavily discharged though.

 

 

[Jennifer McM]

47 minutes ago, moiuk said:

 

Just a service for it rather than replacing it now

We tried to get ours serviced, it was/is difficult to find a company to service it. We even contacted Mankuni (agent in Southampton) the guy said if we could send him the unit he would service it at a cost of £75, £25 each way for shipping plus parts and VAT! We had another 'think'.

 

Eventually we found an engineer who had serviced them, but doesn't anymore as it wasn't worth his while, he more or less said that it wasn't necessary, and gave my husband a good rundown of what to watch for, ie glow plugs. If you do find an engineer, please pass the info on, as well.... you never know 

Edited June 4, 2019 by Jennifer McM

[moiuk]

2 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

 

Excellent news, thanks for the update.

 

Yes the continued 'smoke' after lighting will have been unburned fuel and it will probably run fine now. The fact that it started ok with the engine running suggests the higher voltage from the alternator running is what the heater needed. Once running, you'll find you can turn the engine off and the heater will stay running. This all suggests your batteries are either old and tired or heavily discharged though.

 

 

Yes I did switch the engine off and it kept running which is great.  Its a new boat to us, and will be replacing the batteries and adding some solar shortly so hopefully it will start fine without the engine after that.

1 hour ago, Jennifer McM said:

We tried to get ours serviced, it was/is difficult to find a company to service it. We even contacted Mankuni (agent in Southampton) the guy said if we could send him the unit he would service it at a cost of £75, £25 each way for shipping plus parts and VAT! We had another 'think'.

 

Eventually we found an engineer who had serviced them, but doesn't anymore as it wasn't worth his while, he more or less said that it wasn't necessary, and gave my husband a good rundown of what to watch for, ie glow plugs. If you do find an engineer, please pass the info on, as well.... you never know 

If I find someone then I will let you know.  But it has been difficult so far to find any willing and eager volunteers

[MtB]

12 minutes ago, moiuk said:

If I find someone then I will let you know.  But it has been difficult so far to find any willing and eager volunteers

 

This is, I suggest, because people don't regard maintenance servicing as a 'high value' transaction yet for the technician involved, discussing it with the customer, explaining his charges, travelling to where the boat is, finding it, introducing himself to the customer and having a brief chat, going back to the van 500 yards away once or twice for tools, completing the service, writing out the bill, collecting payment, and making his way back home again is probably going to soak up a whole morning or afternoon of his time. Time for which he still needs to charge the same rate as say an urgent breakdown which a customer sees as a much higher value visit. Consequently spending time on the phone explaining why he needs to charge £250 for a service is usually wasted time as the customer usually says "HOW MUCH????" Leave it with us we will think about it, never to be heard from again. THIS is why no-one seems very enthusiastic about enquiries to service one. 

 

 

[Jennifer McM]

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

This is, I suggest, because people don't regard maintenance servicing as a 'high value' transaction yet for the technician involved, discussing it with the customer, explaining his charges, travelling to where the boat is, finding it, introducing himself to the customer and having a brief chat, going back to the van 500 yards away once or twice for tools, completing the service, writing out the bill, collecting payment, and making his way back home again is probably going to soak up a whole morning or afternoon of his time. Time for which he still needs to charge the same rate as say an urgent breakdown which a customer sees as a much higher value visit. Consequently spending time on the phone explaining why he needs to charge £250 for a service is usually wasted time as the customer usually says "HOW MUCH????" Leave it with us we will think about it, never to be heard from again. THIS is why no-one seems very enthusiastic about enquiries to service one. 

 

 

Yes, completely agree. This is why we gave up. As a newby though, it's one of the things you learn.

[MtB]

1 minute ago, Jennifer McM said:

Yes, completely agree. This is why we gave up. As a newby though, it's one of the things you learn.

 

And I can completely understand why people don't pay £250 for a service on one, electing instead to just call someone out once in a blue moon when it actually breaks down. 

 

[Jennifer McM]

1 minute ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

And I can completely understand why people don't pay £250 for a service on one, electing instead to just call someone out once in a blue moon when it actually breaks down. 

 

Good point. We probably have only used ours about a dozen times in 12 months, and that's when we found ourselves low on coal - so on balance??? 

[cuthound]

When I bought my boat in 2014 the Webasto had been serviced annually at an average cost of £175 per year.

 

My surveyor told me not to bother getting it serviced, but to always make sure it ran hard and never ran long enough to cycle into its lower power mode.

 

I have followed this advice for the last 5 years, the Webasto has given me no trouble at all and soon I will have saved enough from not having it serviced to buy a new one should it fail.

[Momac]

3 hours ago, cuthound said:

 

 

My surveyor told me not to bother getting it serviced, but to always make sure it ran hard and never ran long enough to cycle into its lower power mode.

 

My Eberspacher recently stopped after running on a low setting a couple of hours. The boat has been with me since 2014 and the heater not touched in that time. I suspect the heater may never have been serviced since the boat was new in 2003.

 

It was the ECU that had failed so not really sure if it was the low heat setting that caused the fault. The new ECU which was easy to fit. 

 

However I agree with idea if using the heater only on a high setting .