Generator Blues

Hey why did the generator just stop?

So you might think our lives are nothing but drinks on the beach, beautiful sunsets and warm sunshine. Most of the time that’s true. Unfortunately, a few days ago on the way from the Crookeds and Acklins back to the Exumas, the starboard Northern Lights Generator just shut down. @(*!#*(. So in the past this has happened due to overheating caused by low seawater flow. The rubber pump impeller was worn out in that case or a broken belt where the engine coolant pump wasn’t turning. In both cases the generator shut down automatically and nothing was damaged.

So of course I think that is the problem this time and tear apart the generator all ready to make these simple fixes. Huh, the strainer is nice and clean… the impeller looks brand new… the belts still there…

OK, let’s just start it again and see what happens. Within two minutes it shut down again. If I hold the bypass switch down the generator would continue to run. So the engine is still cold and it can’t be due to overheating and the oil pressure gauge shows good pressure.

Great Northern Lights technical response!

I call Northern Lights and leave a message. 2 hours later they call me back in the Bahamas and Scott tells me a little more about how the shutdown system works and he thinks it is a bad coolant temperature switch. This damn switch is of course on the backside of the generator between the generator and boat hull. My 2 year old grandson would barely fit back there.

Courtesy of Susan Cope’s yoga lessons, I am still pretty flexible for an old guy. I wiggle my way back there while at anchor here at Lee Stocking Island and with my assistant engine surgeon Jim Rubeor, we disconnect the suspect switch… No Bueno… In fact now nothing works. No lights on the control panel no action, no noise, no electrons… Nada.

Well crap, so now I figure I’ve really screwed up the generator. At least it would start before I started “fixing it”.

So we pull out the manual, the volt meter, Northern Lights you tube videos on the generator control circuit. We make sure we’ve got 12V where we need it and we do???? Now what. Go to start it and it works again. Grrrr.

Long story short it turns out the problem was the circuit breaker for the control circuitry was going bad and it finally got bad enough so that I could track it down.

Installed a temporary inline fuse and we’ve got power again. Victory!!!! Time to go to the beach.

Where’s my Margarita?

John