05-31-2018, 09:43 PM
Hey Gents,
Thanks for the quick replies and suggestions. The guy at Power Tech echoed your suggestion, but he went on to say these things:
1) there is already a petcock on the top line, but he says it is really tedious to use and can take 3 or 4 hours to fully burp out all the air, so they don't recommend using it.
2) Instead, he says to pull the output hose off the thermostat at the top, press fit a water hose to it, and turn on the water. He said as soon as fluid starts flowing out of the thermostat side, it is burped. He said it would only take a very small amount of water.
I didn't know how to find this thermostat or how to manipulate the hoses, so I went to a diesel mechanic and had them help me. They first tried using the petcock and even running the thing with the radiator cap off for a while. We couldn't get it to get very hot. We decided that maybe it had worked the air out of itself already.
I drove off this afternoon, and ten minutes later I had another high water temp shutdown!
I went back to the mechanic, and he tried the flushing process described above, but we were both skeptical based on how it went that there was much there to be burped out. Also, I was confused why I was seeing good heat drop (25F) between the hose going into and the hose going out of the radiator, even at the point when the thing shut down. It seemed to me that an airlock would stop the flow mostly or entirely.
Anyway, I glanced over at the scroll fans that exchange the air in the generator compartment (separate from the big blower fan that cools the radiator), and wouldn't you know: both of them were free-wheeling instead of spinning hard like they should.
What's weird is that both were dead, and I just had one of them replaced at Newell a few months ago. Seems strange to me that they both died so suddenly.
So that's almost certainly my problem. Well, one of the problems, since the radiator fan motor was also dying a slow death as described above and also needed swapping.
I'll have to source the fans and order them before we can run the genset with the doors closed, but I think I can run it with the bay door open if I need it between now and the time I get the parts.
I'll update here again if it turns out I was wrong or that there is more to the story.
Thanks for the quick replies and suggestions. The guy at Power Tech echoed your suggestion, but he went on to say these things:
1) there is already a petcock on the top line, but he says it is really tedious to use and can take 3 or 4 hours to fully burp out all the air, so they don't recommend using it.
2) Instead, he says to pull the output hose off the thermostat at the top, press fit a water hose to it, and turn on the water. He said as soon as fluid starts flowing out of the thermostat side, it is burped. He said it would only take a very small amount of water.
I didn't know how to find this thermostat or how to manipulate the hoses, so I went to a diesel mechanic and had them help me. They first tried using the petcock and even running the thing with the radiator cap off for a while. We couldn't get it to get very hot. We decided that maybe it had worked the air out of itself already.
I drove off this afternoon, and ten minutes later I had another high water temp shutdown!
I went back to the mechanic, and he tried the flushing process described above, but we were both skeptical based on how it went that there was much there to be burped out. Also, I was confused why I was seeing good heat drop (25F) between the hose going into and the hose going out of the radiator, even at the point when the thing shut down. It seemed to me that an airlock would stop the flow mostly or entirely.
Anyway, I glanced over at the scroll fans that exchange the air in the generator compartment (separate from the big blower fan that cools the radiator), and wouldn't you know: both of them were free-wheeling instead of spinning hard like they should.
What's weird is that both were dead, and I just had one of them replaced at Newell a few months ago. Seems strange to me that they both died so suddenly.
So that's almost certainly my problem. Well, one of the problems, since the radiator fan motor was also dying a slow death as described above and also needed swapping.
I'll have to source the fans and order them before we can run the genset with the doors closed, but I think I can run it with the bay door open if I need it between now and the time I get the parts.
I'll update here again if it turns out I was wrong or that there is more to the story.
2008 Newell #1234
Boulder, CO