Make Me Laugh Again

In January of this year (yes it has been 10 months!) our MasPower 8kw generator failed. Our first thought was bad fuel. Another boat in the Panama Posse had issues with their fuel that had been gotten at the same dock as we had (La Cruz, near Puerto Vallarta) the fuel was dyed purple indicating no road tax etc. it felt gritty. We pumped out about 150 gallons and gave it away in Barra de Navidad, Mexico and refilled (at about 20 pesos to the liter for 160 gallons) bled the fuel system and tried a variety of fixes to the engine. I got a boroscope to look inside the tank while it was empty, looked very good.Nothing worked, generator still not working. Other issues, the control panel on the generator has a “button” that shifts the controls to a remote panel. That had pushed through the outside and part of it was missing. Discussing this with MasPower we determined that the panel “might” be the cause so we replaced that panel. Note: we are in Mexico so getting parts is more than a little difficult. Needless to say this did not fix the problem.
During this time, I had some illness (still unidentified) that put me down for about 2 months, I lost 25 lbs, and was severely fatigued. I have recovered, but I am still seeing a doctor about what it was.
Finally we started looking at what else it could be, with help from MasPower more diagnostics were done. We determined the Exciter coil was shorted and that repair part was a new generator end. As I said we are in Mexico, so the price of sending the generator back to them for rework was huge as in Not going to happen. We evaluated running the watermaker from a small generator and discovered that it is too big to run on a Honda 2200 generator. I looked for a generator repair person/team here in Banderas bay. I had someone in June who was able to confirm the exciter was bad and that I had wired the new control panel in correctly. So, I ordered the new generator end and had it shipped to the boat. This took about 6 weeks to get from Florida to the boat. We of course were back in the states by then.

When we got back to the boat in early October, I could not get the tech who had diagnosed the exciter to come back to the boat, or answer my calls. He had spent about 3 hours of his time working and not accepted any money, he said he would get paid when it worked. Oh well, he is one of about 3 or 4 that were involved that did not get paid, even when I was standing there wallet out and ready to pay.

So, here we were on the boat with a new generator end in a box on deck and a broken generator in the engine room. This is a bigger job than I want to tackle. So, I turned to Facebook and the local sailors for recommendations for someone to work on the generator. After a half dozen failed attempts I found a group Richards Marine Service who came down and gave us an estimate and showed up today (Monday 10/17/22). By noon they had the box off the generator and out of the engine room, they had also found out the bearing on the back end was bad which is what caused the exciter coil to fail.

$600 fuel in Barra (this is approximate, 160 gallons at 20+pesos to the liter and ~20 pesos to the dollar), the fuel wasn’t bad.

$229.43 for the controller

$76.94 for the import tax and shipping in Mexico

$2418.68 for the generator

725.40 for import tax and shipping in Mexico

$1,280 INSTALL ESTIMATE

10/21/2022

The repair shop for the exhaust mixing elbow repaired both the original and the one I we installed in 2018. Both came directly from MasPower, one on the generator when new (?) the other purchased in 2018. Both have a piece inside to direct the seawater in the direction of the exhaust, in the case of the original, this piece is broken off so the sea water just goes straight into the exhaust. What I was told is that the original, while it won’t leak exhaust into the engine compartment, won’t last very long if used. We are putting it in the storage for spare parts.
I was told the cost to have a mixing elbow made of stainless steel 3,500 pesos, about $175 US. This compares to $210 that I paid in December 2018 for a steel one. 

So, this generator came with NO instructions on how to hook it up. The three guys looked at the old one (they took pictures) and did the best they could, when they had it ready to run, they tested it and only got 81 volts. We tried hooking up a charger to the battery, and  it still only got to 81 volts. We called Mastry and walked through the connections to the voltage regulator where we discovered that the two GREEN wires from the exciter were NOT supposed to be hooked up to the regulator, rather the two wires that came from the breaker were supposed to be used. So, those two green wires are supposed to be left unused capped and insulated. Generator tested SAT! Frequency runs a bit high, but voltage is correct and it runs!!!! Total repair bill was $1,462, the extra $182 was for parts, repairing the exhaust mixing elbow, and installing the raw water impeller on the generator and the engine.