SDA236 Stripping the Starboard Side

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]In this episode of Sailing Dark Angel, [music] we're wandering more Luperon trails in search of adventure. We find bats, cows, deserted buildings, steep cliffs, [music] and more. On the mooring, we tear down our starboard Volvo Penta MD2030 [music] engine to diagnose cooling and head gasket issues.

[00:00:20]>> [music] >> If you like our videos, please smash that like button and don't forget to subscribe and ring the bell. It's free for you and really helps our channel.

[00:00:33]>> [music] >> Any mosquito weed out here? Little bit.

[00:00:35]Hold that. Let's go.

[00:00:37]Trying a little different trail this time. This is kind of following along the waterline.

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> It's rocks like this one here and this one here that really give you confidence standing at [music] the edge, doesn't it?

[00:01:53]This is your idea. Which [music] way do you want to go?

[00:01:56]You're going to walk through that.

[00:01:57]That's spider web.

[00:02:00]That's why I'm having you go first. Oh boy.

[00:02:03]If you decide to come in this way and you see these markers, don't follow them. Contact uh Handy Andy or Papo and use their knowledge. [music] Get them to guide you in.

[00:02:14]We've even seen the Armada get stuck here.

[00:02:17]You can see that this used to be some kind of a finished pathway, walkway, [music] something.

[00:02:22]It is not now, but I just saw a giant crab over there yesterday. Watch my camera.

[00:02:26]Do not fall in with that camera.

[00:02:29]You can fall in. Don't Don't take that camera. Yeah, nobody wants to fall in from here. I don't see the crab. It's not deep enough there to uh cushion the fall a whole [music] lot. No.

[00:02:43]Do you want to go inland?

[00:02:44]>> [music] >> Yeah. Okay. Let's go inland.

[00:02:48]There's no story about witches or anything here, is it?

[00:02:52]Blair Witch Project.

[00:02:53]>> Blair Witch.

[00:02:56]I'm pretty sure that didn't take place in the Dominican Republic.

[00:03:05]How cool is this?

[00:03:16]Looks like it's been abandoned for a while.

[00:03:19]Sounds like it, too.

[00:03:21]Pretty big.

[00:03:22]Pretty decent.

[00:03:25]All the way through.

[00:03:42]Something in there.

[00:03:43]I don't know what it is.

[00:03:45]Careful.

[00:03:48]Careful. See it?

[00:03:49]First. Oh, they're bats.

[00:03:51]Cool.

[00:03:52]But probably they're not vampire bats.

[00:03:57]Floor is a little gross.

[00:04:02]Ew.

[00:04:03]Slimy muck.

[00:04:08]That must be the garage.

[00:04:10]That would be my guess.

[00:04:12]It's where they park the bats.

[00:04:15]Batmobile to the cave.

[00:04:17]Right now.

[00:04:19]Mhm.

[00:04:21]What's going on there?

[00:04:23]I'm just going to pass by you, okay, dude?

[00:04:26]Hi, buddy.

[00:04:27]Cuz we were going to pass [music] this way.

[00:04:32]Hi, sweetie heart.

[00:04:34]It's okay.

[00:04:35]What are you doing? We're just passing by, okay? What are you doing? Oh, there's another one.

[00:04:41]Yeah.

[00:04:43]Hi.

[00:04:46]Okay.

[00:04:56]Bye.

[00:04:57]Bye.

[00:05:06]And if you listen really close, you can actually hear the mosquitoes [music] chomping.

[00:05:21]Just bouncing along that trail.

[00:05:43]Look, stairs.

[00:05:46]Yeah, at least they're just playing [music] these out tunes me. I'm pretty sure she wants me dead. Shh.

[00:06:06]Oh.

[00:06:07]Is that what you were pointing at?

[00:06:09]Beached.

[00:06:11]Son of a beached.

[00:06:38]Can you get this?

[00:06:39]Can you get up?

[00:06:42]Wait, wait, wait. This Where do you want me? Out of the way?

[00:07:00]It doesn't sit exactly flat. There is a bend in it, but there's no crease in it.

[00:07:04]I don't care about a little bit of a bend. Let's see. That's fine. A bit of an issue there, but I don't think it's a big issue.

[00:07:13]There we have a head gasket. Now we can start tearing [music] down an engine.

[00:07:20]On the port side, when we were in Florida last, my buddy Matt and I tore it all down and put it all back together, which was awesome cuz Matt's a big, big help and had way better idea what he was doing than me. I'm a gas engine guy. I'm not a diesel engine guy.

[00:07:34]I can build you a race car. You want to do 9-10 seconds in a straight? I can build you that engine. Diesels, I got nothing.

[00:07:41]>> [music] >> So, I'm just going to go on what Matt taught me and hopefully what I can see online and see if I can redo this one.

[00:07:49]This blue head gasket, step one is because this is a bedroom, you got to get all the bedding and everything out of the way. And even worse, we've been using it for storage. Down here this is mostly water. There's a sheen of oil on top, which we'll pick up with this with these. These are oil absorbent rags. We got a box of them. We're going to order another box of them. We got a bunch of paper shop towels coming on, but we've got to get all this out first.

[00:08:13]And then you're going to clean it. So, what we're going to do is pick up all the oil with oil absorb rags, we call them diapers. Drain the water out once we've got it clean. And then we have to clean the actual surfaces in here cuz we got to climb in here and do the work.

[00:08:24]We've got the engine bilge cleaned up as best we can. I do have a water leak coming from somewhere back there. We're going to have to investigate that. Got a whole tear down assembly to do to get down to the head gasket.

[00:08:35]Uh this bar this comes off. This is just handy right now for leaning on.

[00:08:40]Uh we got to take the exhaust assembly off the back of the engine here.

[00:08:44]Goes down there to the water mix.

[00:08:46]Electrical box has got to come off. The heat exchanger's got to come off.

[00:08:50]Alternator's got to come off. The water pump on [music] the front, all the sensors have to come off. Then you're down to the valve cover, air intake, injectors, fuel delivery system, glow plugs, and that takes us down to the head itself here. And once we get the head off, we can see [music] if the head is in good enough shape that it can be refinished. So, what are you starting with, Captain Dave?

[00:09:13]Got to put the gloves on.

[00:09:17]I hate wearing gloves.

[00:09:18]Hate it.

[00:09:19]Hands sweat.

[00:09:21]No glove, no love.

[00:09:23]And then I'm going to start [music] by taking the exhaust off. We're going to put pieces and parts into baggies that I'm going to use a marker and label so that we can figure out what's what when we go to put them back. The first thing I'm going to do is take this electrical box off.

[00:09:40]So, I've removed the cover. Now, I just have to remove this [music] bracket.

[00:09:45]And then this box will swing out of the way and I should have a little bit more room to get a wrench in underneath it to get that off. With the box out of the way, now you can get at these two bolts fairly easily with a wrench.

[00:09:56]All right, so the exhaust elbow's off.

[00:09:58]You can see it's been [music] getting some kind of build-up in here.

[00:10:01]But, there's build-up on the on the inside there.

[00:10:07]And you can see it going down into that elbow. That's a new elbow last year.

[00:10:11]Year before last. Going to take the front one off. We got no fluid out of the heat exchanger or the exhaust, so it's empty.

[00:10:17]>> [music] >> That's interesting. Not necessarily a good thing. I mean, no mess to clean up, but now we've got sensors that these wires have to come off of.

[00:10:26]Oil sensor [music] sending unit.

[00:10:31]And temperature sensor here.

[00:10:34]So, these those [music] have to come off. You got to turn Remember where they go to put them back on. There's a hose right here.

[00:10:40]That's a coolant hose.

[00:10:43]And that's running right around on a 90 over to here.

[00:10:47]And that's got to come out.

[00:10:49]See where the connector with the band is there for. The other clamp is here for it. And then there's these [music] six screws. So, these four are bolts.

[00:10:58]These two are studs, and the studs are what this box hangs on.

[00:11:03]And I don't know why the nuts weren't on it. Like I said, I didn't put the nuts back on it last time, but that whole box needs to go together properly. We just had a horrible experience on the other side with that box breaking [music] and falling off.

[00:11:14]Landing in water we didn't know was there and shorting everything out. We needed a new one, so let's not play that game. What I almost forgot about while I was trying to haul this thing out is this coolant hose down here.

[00:11:26]There's one in one out. You got to take them both off the [music] heat exchanger, obviously, or you're not going to get it out, so you got to get at this. My case it's 5/16. [music] Pull that clamp.

[00:11:36]Pull that hose down and out of the way.

[00:11:38]And then this [music] whole ridge should slide off. I've got the four studs out, or sorry, I've got the four bolts out.

[00:11:42]Just two studs to slide off of. Now those two studs go into the head and I'll probably try and get them off the head later, but let's burn one bridge at a time here. All right, the heat exchanger's off.

[00:11:53]And uh now you can see that we can get down to this side of the engine. There's the gasket for the heat exchanger.

[00:11:59]So here's the heat exchanger.

[00:12:01]You can see there's build-up everywhere in here.

[00:12:07]The heat exchanger tube itself like there's the raw water side.

[00:12:11]There's the coolant side and it's just plugged solid with whatever this crap is. [music] And look at this.

[00:12:19]It's like milk.

[00:12:22]So something's gotten into the coolant and uh trashed it. Maybe it's oil.

[00:12:28]So I don't think there's water in the engine cuz I can't see anything on the dipstick. There's no water indication of any kind of coolant in the engine.

[00:12:36]But man, something sure got into the coolant in the heat exchanger.

[00:12:51]Now that would pour right out of there if that was off. So I just need a quarter inch wrench for that. Okay.

[00:12:56]Okay, so we got the electrical out of this side and it's gone. Now I don't know where it went. Here it is.

[00:13:02]Okay.

[00:13:03]So we know this white wire Mhm. goes to this [music] sensor. Okay. The white, the green wire goes to here.

[00:13:12]Next, we need to get the uh So we want this rail [music] off for the uh glow plugs.

[00:13:18]Got all the electrical disconnected.

[00:13:20]The next step is to take the valve cover off, so I took these [music] three acorn nuts off. Okay.

[00:13:25]With washers.

[00:13:27]And then the valve cover itself there's no gasket. [music] Why is there no gasket?

[00:13:35]There's one but there's no gasket on this side.

[00:13:40]It's only got [music] one gasket.

[00:13:42]This gasket's missing.

[00:13:44]See the big long one that goes all the way around?

[00:13:46]>> Yeah.

[00:13:46]That goes That's [music] this one.

[00:13:48]But there's a small one that just goes here and it's missing entirely. Okay.

[00:13:55]That's a problem.

[00:13:57]So, what we have over here >> Somebody put it together without the gasket.

[00:13:59]>> [music] >> Holy Okay. So, I've disconnected the fuel lines from the from the injectors. Still got one nut on the rail for the [music] glow plugs I can't get at it, but um there's two bolts on the back of the head that hold the fuel water filter bracket. So, those need to come off.

[00:14:20]But, uh first things first, [music] I've taken the belt off, but I have to get water pump assembly off the front.

[00:14:27]And [music] that part is just a whole lot of no fun.

[00:14:30]Oil pressure sending unit, that's the line running to it here. Got the water pump off the front of the engine here.

[00:14:38]Taking the bolts off the back now and then these [music] all come off.

[00:14:44]There, there, and there and that gives us allows us to take off the uh take off the head. I was hoping not to take the fuel lines off, but I have to.

[00:14:53]So, I'm just taking [music] the separator stuff right now, but what I have to do is take these fuel lines here off because I need to get at these head bolts.

[00:15:01]And to get at the head bolts I have to take [music] the injectors out. Okay.

[00:15:03]And I can't take the injectors out with these in the way. So, you can see we got the front off where the water pump is.

[00:15:09]>> [music] >> We got the rear off where the exhaust is.

[00:15:13]I didn't take the starter or the alternator off, which [music] is nice.

[00:15:16]But, you see I can't get to these bolts here underneath the injectors until I take the injectors out and I can't get the injectors out past these. So, I've got to take these off. Problem is is >> [music] >> these nuts are hollow and they will break.

[00:15:30]And so, I've got to use a 14 mil wrench and I only have one 14 [music] mil wrench. The other one's going to be a crescent wrench and then you got to try and torque them apart and it the bottom nut is turning and the top one is not, which is not cool.

[00:15:41]So, once I get these off, then I can take the injectors out, then I can get [music] at these head bolts, and then we can take all the head bolts off and I think that's it to getting the head off and then we can see what we're dealing with. Oh yeah, I [music] I also got this.

[00:15:55]I also got this off.

[00:15:57]Um as per usual, we were working away on the engine and we ran into a snag.

[00:16:01]Injectors on this thing take a 27 take a 27 mm deep socket, which of course we don't have. When we did the other engine, we borrowed Matt's and I used a breaker bar to break them free and didn't have one. So, we thought we were stuck and that we were going to have to order them in from Amazon and wait 2 weeks. Good news, uh took us 3 days to get there, but the hardware, sorry, the automotive store here, which is an auto motive parts place, has a 27 mm deep socket and a breaker bar.

[00:16:29]So, we're going to go down and um see if we can break these things loose.

[00:16:34]And that's one step closer to getting the head off this engine.

[00:16:42]Which one?

[00:16:44]Oh, shut up. That easy, huh?

[00:16:47]Do you Do you need something?

[00:16:48]>> the right tools.

[00:16:58]Uh that's all burnt.

[00:17:01]Weird.

[00:17:06]He's a butt.

[00:17:09]That's soot.

[00:17:13]I don't know. That one at least brought the fittings out with it.

[00:17:17]Okay.

[00:17:20]Oof.

[00:17:24]All right, so the next step, you can see it doesn't look real good in there, but the next step is to get the head itself off. So, I've taken the bolts off from back in here, from here. We've got the front of the engine off, here.

[00:17:37]So, now we've got [music] to take these three head bolts out, and these head bolts out.

[00:17:44]And that should release the head.

[00:17:47]Should, unless I'm forgetting something, and we both know I'm obviously forgetting something. What now, Captain Dave? Well, I don't have an extension bar.

[00:17:56]My 1/2-in drive breaker bar is great, but I don't have any 12-mm [music] 1/2-in sockets. I've only got 3/8, and I don't have a breaker bar for a 3/8, and I don't have a long ratchet extension for a 3/8, and I don't have a pipe that'll fit over it.

[00:18:10]So, what we used, [music] we followed my golden rule from when I had my own shop, is don't force it, get a bigger hammer.

[00:18:19]See how hard I can hit that oil dipstick, too.

[00:18:33]By the way, it's highly recommended that you don't do this to your ratchet. Very bad for it.

[00:18:39]Also, I'm using a rubber mallet cuz it's got [music] give, instead of a steel hammer.

[00:18:46]And these have to be tightened [music] down a specific order.

[00:18:50]They probably need to be removed in a specific order, too.

[00:19:02]Another baggie?

[00:19:04]I will, yeah. Absolutely.

[00:19:06]Now, I believe, oh, are these shorter?

[00:19:09]These are shorter.

[00:19:11]So, the short ones go down in front of the cylinders here by the glow plugs.

[00:19:20]Now, you're going to get a little bit of convincing cuz it's not going to want to go.

[00:19:26]Even more convincing cuz they're not there and they're not there.

[00:19:30]I should probably get those.

[00:19:32]Dave wanted me [music] to also show you that I have labeled all the baggies so that we know what's what.

[00:19:42]And it's almost kind of in order so of how we took it out. So uh the further out we get um these are the ones that we would put in first.

[00:19:55]You need another baggy or is there a baggy on the go?

[00:19:59]Oh, we had one for this but you're going to want one for you're going to want one for valves anyway, so.

[00:20:04]Okay.

[00:20:06]Do you want a big one or a small one? Uh it's Some of these parts are really long and this whole rack is long, so yeah, big one.

[00:20:14]I'm noticing though all the oil in the engine so far has been just oil.

[00:20:19]What does that mean?

[00:20:20]It means all the sludge and everything was in the coolant side. On the other engine there was coolant in the cylinders.

[00:20:30]Okay.

[00:20:33]All right, so I'm going to get a baggy for that. And here's the push rods.

[00:20:37]Well, the reason the rocker assembly has to come off for the valves, here's your valves. Mhm.

[00:20:42]And I took the push push rods out but you can see that there's a couple of head bolts >> [music] >> that are underneath the rocker assembly and there's no way to get at them without taking the rocker assembly out. That's why I had to take it out.

[00:20:58]Oh.

[00:21:01]I thought Oh, look at that.

[00:21:04]The tops of the pistons are black, Just burnt black.

[00:21:11]Pre-combustion chambers, look at all the soot.

[00:21:13]Yep.

[00:21:14]But I don't know if that's from from just now from soot.

[00:21:21]>> [sighs] >> Looks like it might be leaking from there.

[00:21:27]Might be a leak down here.

[00:21:30]See all the soot on that? Yep.

[00:21:32]Let's hear about it.

[00:21:33]>> Well, the gasket did not want to come off. You can see there's [music] a lot of gasket residue on there. That's all going to be taken back off. I'm going to gently take it off with the razor blade and then sand it really [music] smooth with a couple hundred grit sandpaper. Okay. Um but you can see there's a build up here.

[00:21:48]Uh-huh. And build up here on the gasket.

[00:21:50]Yes. That should not be there. I think what's left in the middle of here is just pieces [music] of the um of the assembly for the injector.

[00:21:59]There's some rings and crush rings and stuff that go on it.

[00:22:03]And they're going to have to be pulled out somehow.

[00:22:05]This is all got to be cleaned off and then the whole thing's got to be sanded [music] perfectly smooth. There's all kinds of gasket residue everywhere here.

[00:22:18]>> [snorts]