Starter solenoid

The first job on Monday morning was to remove the defective starter solenoid this was a fairly easy job I removed the mounting plate from the engine as I was sure that the new solenoid mounting bolts would not coincide with the old ones.

Defective starter solenoid

First thing on Wednesday I made a start on the water leak, to reach the offending fitting required the removal of the heat exchanger and the aft end engine lifting eye. Once I had removed the elbow and the valve the cause of the problem immediately became obvious, the elbow is effectively a right angle tap connector which had been fitted into a 15mm compression fitting with a sealing washer, the washer had broken up leading to the leak. In any event the end of  a 15mm compression fitting does not have sufficient area to support a sealing washer so I cut off the flange and found that a 15mm brass olive was a good fit on the remaining part of the elbow, I hope that the description is clear I should have included some more photographs however it all went back together and was fully tightened so that there was no movement in the fitting it had been quite loose as the sealing washer had disintegrated. I spent the rest of the day replacing the heat exchanger and after refilling the cooling system with water I had a good look round, everything appears to be tight. When there is sufficient water in the creek, probably next Monday, I shall run the engine for a proper test of the repair.

The offending elbow can just be seen hiding behind no4 injector

I ordered a new starter solenoid from Parts 4 Engines on Tuesday evening and it arrived on Thursday at lunchtime. As expected I had to drill some new holes in the mounting plate for the bolts to secure the solenoid. I started this morning by bolting the solenoid to the mounting plate before re securing the whole lot to the engine then once this was done I began to connect the various cables. Some of the connections were beginning to look somewhat frayed so I re terminated most of the smaller control cables for the starter solenoid and the engine pre heater which operates through a relay also mounted on the same plate, the main starter cable terminations were in good order so these were just re connected. 

New starter solenoid with pre heater relay above

Once everything had been re connected I turned the key and the starter motor immediately engaged and turned the engine over job done.