Sturgeon Bay

I’m anchored here in Sturgeon Bay. Weather has been great, nice temps and light winds. Beautiful sunsets.

I started having motor problems late Monday as I was coming in here from Lake Michigan.

I went down to Green Bay on Tuesday, and picked up new seals for the low pressure lines from the local JD dealer. I went through the whole fuel system again.

Yesterday I left Green Bay and the problems continued. I spent most of the day drifting. Checked the return lines, then finally decided to consider other causes. Probably should have done that earlier.

It turns out that the motor hasn’t been stopping because of air or fuel starvation, it’s being shut off by the computer.

After some experimentation and observation I realized that the ECU seemed to be shutting down without warning or error codes. After a period of time ranging from minutes to an hour or more it would start working, but then fail again after 10-30 minutes of operation.

Today I went through the wiring and all the connectors and fuses in the harness during periods of power loss.

As a final step I removed the harness from the ECU and sprayed WD40 on the connectors. After reassembly the motor started and ran fine for ~ 2 hours to get back in to here. I’m cautiously optimistic.

In the meantime, I’ll get ashore to get some groceries and see the sights.