Trojan Boat Forum

I found a great 9m and purchased my first Trojan on Friday!

I've been cleaning ever since and think that the boat is in great shape other than a few little projects here and there. One of those is to replace the fuel sender to make the gauge work again. It currently reads full with the ignition on - I'm thinking it's got to be just the sender since the gauge seems to be working. Does anyone know where the sender is? I have a small access port above the fuel tank where the three fuel pickups come out of the top of the tank, but cannot see the sender. Should I take the large rear access panel up? It's screwed down and has sealant around the parameter.

So far I am loving the boat! It has the crusader 350's and cruises great at 1800 rpm - 15 mph. I've been reading a lot on these forums and look forward to starting a project thread!

Cheers,

Joe Z

Hi Joe. You may have to pull up the other panel, the sending unit should have two wires on it and probably is around 2" in diameter, make sure there is a good connection and ground.

To follow this post up, I pulled the large panel up to get to the sender. I replaced it and cleaned out the bilge around the fuel tank. The 9m has lockers on either side of the fuel tank and this was a great opportunity for those to get a thorough cleaning as well. When finished, I cleaned up all of the old sealant and set the panel back down in a bed of fresh silicone. It looks new.

It's great to have a working fuel gauge! It's also very gratifying to see it go up after spending $$$ at the pump! I doubt that I'll ever pack on a full 191 gallons though!

191+ gallons is about what an offshore fishing trip here uses ...

Thanks for the feedback Joe. Good to know what the solution was for the benefit of others.

Thanks Big D.

It wasn't a hard job, but the old sealant was really a chore to get off. It was well worth the cost of the sender and the labor putting it in. I now know where my rudder linkages, rear bilge, and fuel fill lines are!

Here are some in-progress shots. As you can see, there are three fuel pickup lines coming out of the tank. One for each engine and one for the genset. I like this design because you can have a clogged pickup and only foul up one engine. I've run into this issue with other manufacturers who use one pickup for all engines. A real nightmare to troubleshoot on the water.



Old sender:

Do you have anti-syphon valves on each pick-up? Can't tell from the pics.

Big D wrote:Do you have anti-syphon valves on each pick-up? Can't tell from the pics.

I'm not sure. From what I can tell, the copper lines go straight into the lockers to the left and right where the water separators are then forward into the engine room. Each has an in-line service valve. The genset has a filter bowl mounted to it, so there is no inline filter for it.

If you look closely, there are 3 more 'bungs' on the top of the fuel tank that are just capped. I'm thinking that these could be for a return line in a different application. Not sure.

What do anti-siphon valves look like?

The flare fitting that threads into the elbow on top of the tank has a check ball in it. This is your anti-syphon valve. Also, keep in mind that if you're not getting fuel to your generator it could be that you don't have enough fuel in the tank. In most cases when a pick up is installed into a tank for a generator, it doesn't go all the way to the bottom like your engine pick ups. The reason for this is so that your generator doesn't use up all of your fuel when you still need some to get you home. My generator wont operate with less than 1/8th of a tank.

Hope this helps

Thank you Paul,
You make a great point - I didn't know that the genset pickup was set higher than the engine pickups. This could explain a lot about why my genset is off of the boat. The previous owner told me that he kept the fuel level under or around a 1/4 tank. He also had a lot of problems with the genset running. I wonder if he was just always running it out of gas?! Now I'm struggling to find a way to get the little 6.5 to pull fuel from a tank (out of the boat).

Also, thank you for the heads up on the anti-siphon valves! I didn't know they were in there!

[quote="zdek"]Now I'm struggling to find a way to get the little 6.5 to pull fuel from a tank (out of the boat).[quote]

Start with the simple stuff. I spent hours trying to get mine started a couple of years back, then trying to bleed the fuel line (disconnecting the starter wire then hitting the switch to just run the (electric) fuel pump without cranking)... only to eventually discover the rubber fuel hose going in to the pump was dried out and cracked, so the bugger was just sucking air.

Bad part of the hose wasn't visible - everything else looked fine - but there was a small crack in the underside of the hose a half inch from where it connected to the genny. Replaced with new hose, disconnected starter to prime, reconnected starter, and vroom-vroom she went!

Start with the simple stuff

Good call. I will start there. My feeling is that if I can get a strong battery on her with some fuel it'll run.

I have the older 6.5 MCCK that has an aperture start and mechanical fuel pump. For tinkering purposes, I've disconnected the water pump belt to keep the impeller from burning up. Of course, once I get her to fire and I think that it'll actually run that belt will be hooked back up and a bucket of water setup.

Has anyone else dealt with an older 6.5 MCCK with an aperture start?

Maybe I need to start a thread on just this project -