Good Morning Men, In the early 80's I was crew on a large commercial fishing boat with twin 3408 CATS. We had a coolant leak we could not find for love nor money. This old CAT mechanic came to the boat finally and showed us the trick to visually finding coolant leaks..... He made us turn off all the lights in the engine room so it was pitch black, then he went down there with just a Maglite and searched over the engines and in few minutes was able to find the small bead of antifreeze coming from a pinhole in an elbow on the cooling system......
He said that when looking for leaks it is best to do it in complete darkness, this way your eyesight is not distracted by all the shadows and colors in a lighted engine room or compartment. I would imagine if you were to pressurize the system (at night) and then look with a flashlight, you would find your leak pretty quick... Mike Skywalker 1978 34" Southold, NY -----Original Message----- From: Joseph Bognar via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> To: cnc-list <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> Cc: Joseph Bognar <jbog...@sympatico.ca> Sent: Fri, Jan 29, 2016 10:00 pm Subject: Re: Stus-List Mystery Coolant My A4 is fresh water cooled . If you have Anti Freeze in your motor . I am guessing that it is a closed system . You can pressure test your engine. There should be a heat exchanger on the engine . There is a sump under your mast step on the 30 - 1 also . The antifreeze may be coming from there from a previous spill Joseph Bognar 1979 C&C 30 MK 1 In Luff Again 11 Sent from Joe Bognar On Jan 29, 2016, at 1:59 PM, Ryan Doyle via CnC-List <cnc-list@cnc-list.com> wrote: Joe and Joel - thank you guys. Apologies, I was on "digest mode", so I didn't see your responses until now. I know it's engine coolant because as Joe said - "nothing else on the boat looks like it". Joel, I have a feeling you're right about the source. I think there was coolant in the aft part of my bilge - either it was spilled or the previous owner intentionally put it down there, and when it rains hard it's being pushed into the sump. If this is the case, I'm just surprised that it's retaining it's brilliant fluorescent green color after being watered diluted so much. It's very green. Looks the same as what's in the reservoir. On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 1:42 PM, Ryan Doyle <ryanpdo...@gmail.com> wrote: Replying to my own thread again here.. I've read a few times online that people sometimes add antifreeze to a wet bilge during the winter. Now I'm wondering if there is some residual antifreeze left in the aft portion of my bilge from the previous owner (I bought the boat in Oct), and it's being mixed with some rainwater and ending up down there. On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 12:46 PM, Ryan Doyle <ryanpdo...@gmail.com> wrote: I forgot to give the details on my boat - She's a 1976 30 mki and she's winterized and up on stands. On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 12:40 PM, Ryan Doyle <ryanpdo...@gmail.com> wrote: Hey everyone, Thank you for the responses last week about my tiller - which I went out to observe/fix today and then got distracted by another issue - c'est la vie. Sometimes after heavy precipitation I find engine coolant in my bilge. This ONLY happens after heavy precip - like last week here in NYC. I inspected the cooling system plumbing connections and hoses on my A4 and I've looked over the engine itself, there are no leaks I can see. Also, the level of coolant in the engine's reservoir has remained constant for months. If it was leaking from the motor, the level in the reservoir would be going down, right? That said, the engine is winterized, so the water pump hasn't spun since October. The fact that it only happens after it rains is really confounding me too. A constant leak from the engine would steadily fill my bilge no matter what the weather was, right? The water system on the boat is winterized with pink antifreeze, so it's not that. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance. _______________________________________________ Email address: CnC-List@cnc-list.com To change your list preferences, including unsubscribing -- go to the bottom of page at: http://cnc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/cnc-list_cnc-list.com _______________________________________________ Email address: CnC-List@cnc-list.com To change your list preferences, including unsubscribing -- go to the bottom of page at: http://cnc-list.com/mailman/listinfo/cnc-list_cnc-list.com
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