lewisericeric Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 Hi All I've a brand new Barrus Shire 43 on my new build narrowboat. It's barely been on... Last night, I turned it on for battery charging and after about 20 minutes, the engine revs started altering/hunting and the exhaust was pluming out thick white smoke.... I tried to rev it to see if that would clear it, but it actually made it worse. Smoke was white. Very thick. What are the chances on a brand new engine eh? Anyone any ideas? I'm thinking an issue with injectors or coolant? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy D'arth Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 Water in the fuel most likely. Take the fuel filter out and see what is in the bottom of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan de Enfield Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 15 minutes ago, Tracy D'arth said: Water in the fuel most likely. Take the fuel filter out and see what is in the bottom of it. Almost certainly a fuel problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Brooks Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 What is the oil level like? Badly overfilled might cause something like that if it starts ingesting oil through the breather system. Also feel smell the oil for diesel in case the lift pump or injector pump was incorrectly assembled. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicknorman Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 White smoke is unburnt fuel is it not? Strong smell of diesel. Slightly different from steam, which doesn't smell much and disperses more quickly unless it is very cold. Anyway, if it is a brand new boat and engine surely it is for the builder to fix it? I had a slight problem with our new built boat and Beta 43 engine, although our contract was with the builder, he suggested it would be much better to get Beta out to sort it. Which was fair enough (although what actually happened next was a bit of a saga!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tony Brooks Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 Thick white smoke is normally considered unburned fuel but the way the OP seems to describes it, it sounds lime more than water in the fuel to me. Unless the engine is not firing at all there will normally be a carbon component in the exhaust so it tends to be greyish, just like burning lube oil tends to be blueish, and the colours often get confused. If an injector stuck open then it would make clouds of vaporized fuel but the engine would be misfiring rather than surging. As Nick says, get onto the builder or vendor. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewisericeric Posted November 24, 2022 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 Hi guys, tahnks for the responses. My fuel filter has a drain on it, so I turned fuel lines off and drained it. I've drained into the end of a plastic pop bottle. All looked like diesel to begin with but now it seems like tiny little spots of water, on the inside of the bottle right at the very bottom.... It did just start raining though at the same time, so worried it could be those just showing 😂 Does it take a while for the water to separate out from the filter when you've drained like that or would it be two separate liquids straight away? I've then put the engine back on and seems to be fine, but popping the revs up to 1500 did see one or two instances of it 'missing a beat' (?) or changing tone, but I have heard from Barrus directly that if I've no load/batteries this can happen and I've just had an outage with my battery system so leisures are currently disconnected at the moment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stilllearning Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 A few water bubbles in the fuel filter just shows that it’s doing it’s job of filtering out the water... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeanb Posted November 24, 2022 Report Share Posted November 24, 2022 Our Barrus Shire 45 was brand new in 2015 which had a small hiccup. We called Barrus and they put me on to their travelling engineer who sorted it pronto. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lewisericeric Posted November 25, 2022 Author Report Share Posted November 25, 2022 Thanks everyone. Had some further unusual activity yesterday when high revving. Called Barrus who said all of it doesn't sound quite right, so they're coming up on Tuesday to have a look. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ditchcrawler Posted November 25, 2022 Report Share Posted November 25, 2022 6 hours ago, lewisericeric said: Thanks everyone. Had some further unusual activity yesterday when high revving. Called Barrus who said all of it doesn't sound quite right, so they're coming up on Tuesday to have a look. Revs often pick up with fuel starvation, usually just before it stops Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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