Caribbean Northern Lights

Parts and Power:

Tortola, B.V.I.
	Distributor:
	Parts and Power
	P.O. Box 850
	Road Town
	Tortola, B.V.I.
	Phone:	284-494-2830
	Fax:	284-494-6972
	E-Mail:	partspwr@surfbvi.com
	Web:	www.boatdiesel.com/parts&power

News:

Happy New Year and Best Wishes to All for 2010 from everyone at Parts & Power. I wanted to give a little update on what it happening here in Tortola

A OLD NEW FACE
Sanchez Christopher has rejoined our Service Team. He joined us right out of high school as an apprentice in 1991 and worked his way up to be one the finest young marine engineers anywhere. We were disappointed when he chose to leave 4 years ago, but are delighted to have him back with us again.
Many of you may remember Sanchez. He has a bright, positive attitude and always finds a way to get the job done, no matter what the obstacles. For those of you who attended Service Schools with him, you will remember him as the class cut up.
Welcome back Sanchez.

2009 SEASON OUTLOOK
If the numbers of boats out are any indication of the upcoming Season, it should be a good one. We are seeing a lot of boats out in Sir Francis Drake Channel and along the North Shore of Tortola. There are significantly more Super Yachts than last year.
We are also seeing a lot of new faces, of the cruising transient boaters, in the Store these days.
The BVI Charter Yacht Society, and the Crewed Yacht Association, have been Marketing very aggressively this year. The value that a vacation on a Crewed Yacht offers is truly amazing. When you consider that all the lodging, food, drink, local travel, water sports and entertainment are included in the price of a charter, it is a hard deal to beat. With people being careful about spending this year, we hope to see an increase in business there.

PASSING OF A YOUNG FRIEND
Victor Smith, our 23 year old apprentice, was tragically killed in November. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He had been with us for a year and showed great promise. He had a positive, upbeat attitude and was a hard worker. I once asked him what he liked to do most. He told me, “It doesn’t matter as long as I stay busy”. He had grown to be a big part of the Parts & Power family and he will is truly missed.

KELLY SOARES
Kelly Soares, our Service Administrator, has the thankless job of trying to keep our Service Dept under control—no easy task. Kelly is the daughter of Dean Soares, of Anegada. Her uncle is Mark Soares and her grandfather is Vernon. The Soares are a rather famous old Anegada family. They own Neptune’s Treasure Restaurant and Hotel on Anegada. They own the commercial fishing vessel “Argus III”. The vessel is fitted out with all Northern Lights products. They have a pair of L6108A Luggers and an old M854B Northern Lights generator which is still running strong after nearly 20 years and 20,000 hours. If you are ever on Anegada, make a point of visiting the Neptune’s Treasure Restaurant and reading about the fascinating history of the Soares family.
We’re lucky to have Kelly. For, even though she is only 5 feet tall, she manages to keep all those guys in line.

SERVICE DEPT
Our Service Dept has shrunk a bit as result of the economy, but we are lean and mean as they say. Dan Durbin remains at the helm of the Service Dept. His depth of knowledge and experience is hard to match. He still gets out in the field to supervise and do the occasional job. Sebastian John remains as our Chief Engineer. He has taken over more responsibility with management and is everyone in the Service Department’s “go to guy”. Wilbert Vyphius is our generator specialist and all around Service Engineer. Royston McAllister joined us a year ago as a Service Engineer following the departure of Royston Ault, who returned home following the untimely death of his wife in Guyana. Kelly and Sanchez round out our Service Dept. They remain ready to assist with any of your Northern Lights problems.

Northern Lights will be attending the 48th Annual Antigua Boat Show from 7-11 December 2009. This year Operations Manager Larry Repman will attend from the factory. I will be attending from Parts & Power. Of course Flemming Niehorster, from Seagull Services, and Steve and Janetta Miller, from Marine Power Services, the Northern Lights dealers on Antigua will be present as well. As of this writing, the Organizers are expecting over 100 yachts to attend. Although these numbers are down from a few years ago, they are still impressive, considering the world economic climate, and up from last year. In the past, between 50-78% of the yachts attending had Northern Lights products on their vessel.

We started attending this show over 10 years ago. At the time, I had been getting complaints from captains and engineers about problems with their generators. One even said: "isn't there any other product we can use other than Northern Lights?". This was very alarming to me because they were getting 15,000 hours + from their generators without a major overhaul and their problems were very simple to resolve. In the case of the one captain, his complaint was excessive smoking on the dry exhaust with big gobs of carbon spitting out onto the white cushions on the top deck. We adjusted the valves and replaced the injectors and the problem went away. The captain was ecstatic. The sad thing was this was called out to be done annually in the Operator's Manual. It was obvious that we had an education issue and not an operational one.

As many of mega yachts are continually on the move and not often near a dealer familiar with their equipment, Antigua gave us a unique opportunity in the Caribbean to visit with these crews and make sure that their equipment was running right, and they didn't have any questions. The first few years that we did the show, we had lots of complaints. In fact, we brought an engineer with us one year to address the complaints. The vast majority of these complaints were addressed at the Show and everyone went home happy. After a few years, the complaints and problems went away, for the most part, and we were left with mostly questions. Now the most common response to our question of "How is it running?" is "Great, I wish the other one was a Northern Lights," or "I had Northern Lights on my last boat. I sure wish this one had them."

After a few days of visiting boats and answering questions, we throw a party for all the crews. The party is arranged by Seagull Services and Marine Power Service, and is always a hit. It is an opportunity for the crews to get away from brokers for a few hours and for us to thank them for using and supporting our products. In the past, we've held the party at Temo Sports in Falmouth Harbour. This year, due to scheduling conflicts, we are holding it the Yacht Club Restaurant, Cloggy's. The party will be Wednesday, 9 December, at 1800 hrs.

Many land based Standby Generators do not get enough hours accumulated in a year to qualify for an oil change. Therefore, it is very important to do an Annual Maintenance on those generators. We usually use the advent of the Hurricane Season as our time to do this.

First and foremost is to change the oil and filter, if this hasn't been done since last year. This is the life blood of your engine. Changing the oil (on time) alone on a Northern Lights generator can extend the life of your engine to 15,000-20,000 hours or more. Failure to do so can shorten engine life to less than 2,000 hours. Considering the investment you made in this piece of equipment, this is very cheap insurance.

While at it, change all of the filters: both primary and secondary fuel filters, air filter and coolant filter, if so equipped. Again, this is cheap and easy insurance. As discussed in previous tips, this is the time to change your engine coolant. You need to drain, flush with a good quality flush that is safe with aluminum components, then refill with a 33% or 50% pre-mix Ethylene Glycol coolant. Remember, if you have to add water, ONLY use Distilled Water. Check for water in your fuel tank. You do this by the use of water paste. Drain any water present of by pump or drain.

You might consider a tune up. On a Diesel Engine, a tune up consists of adjusting the valve clearance and testing the injectors. Most engine manufacturers recommend doing this every year. Not many engine owners actually comply with this recommendation however. This will eventually result in a rough running engine with smokey and smelly exhaust fumes. It can also result in a noisier engine. I recently did this to my own generator at home after 1600 hours and it made a world of difference.

Finally, test your Emergency Shut Down system. This consists of testing the Shut Down circuit at all of the switches (usually low oil pressure and high coolant temperature), and testing the switches themselves. The latter requires the switches to be removed and tested under pressure or high temperature. The time and expense to do this is often in excess of the cost of replacement switches. So, to save time, money and several trips, you might consider just having the person performing the work to bring replacement switches with him (or her) one time. For most standby generators, this is all the maintenance you will have to do for the next year, unless your generator runs for more than 250 hours, or you get bad fuel. Make sure you make the time, or the appointment, to get this work done.

Don't wait until you have a Hurricane bearing down on you before you do. Everyone will have their hands full then and you may find that your often-forgotten generator will let you down when you need it most.

All coolants come with an Active Ingredient we generically call Supplemental Coolant Additives, or SCA. The purpose of this ingredient is to make good quality water less corrosive to your cooling system. It does not make poor quality water acceptable. It also cuts down on what is known as “liner pitting” in wet linered engines.

The products have been around for many years and greatly extend engine life in terms of cooling system corrosion. But the active ingredient in these products dissipates over a period of time. When that happens, they need to be replenished in your cooling system. There are many SCA products available: Nalcool, DCA and Racor to name a few. It is important to consult your Operator’s Manual or local dealer to find out which ones are acceptable in your engine.

The way to determine the level of SCA in your cooling system is to use a test strip designed for the purpose. It will tell you the level of corrosion protection in your coolant. When low, you add the appropriate amount of SCA. This is very useful and, indeed, essential to getting the expected life from your engine.

A simpler way of doing this is to just drain and refill the coolant in your system annually. If you use a good quality coolant, the SCA is already in there. Of course, if your engine holds a great deal of coolant, it is more cost effective to replenish the SCA.

If you fail to keep the levels of SCA up, the consequences are corrosion and liner pitting. Liner pitting is the natural result of the combustion process in wet linered engines. It manifests itself as 2 vertical rows of pitting 180 degrees opposite from each other on the outside of the liner. It occurs when vapor bubbles collapse due to the expansion of the liner. SCA coats the liner and reduces or eliminates the pitting.

Is there the possibility of “too much of a good thing”? Unfortunately, yes. The SCA have to stay dissolved in the coolant and held in suspension. If you get too much in the coolant, certain parts of the mixture will “drop out”. They crystallize and float around in your cooling system. They can lodge in water pump seals, causing them to leak, among other things.

One of the biggest service issues that have come to plague us in the last 15 years is coolant quality. It used to be that when the radiator or header tank was low, we would just top it up with fresh water. In the mid 1990s we started seeing a marked increase in internal corrosion problems. This may be due to changes in metallurgy, but my suspicion is this is more the influence of the popularity of Reverse Osmosis Water Makers at around that time.

In any event, this has become a most serious and insidious problem. We have seen it manifest itself in many ways. We frequently see freeze plugs (commonly known as core plugs and water jackets) rusting out. Those are designed to be sacrificial and tend to corrode out before the block. The problem is once one starts leaking, all the others are close behind. This may mean stripping down a great deal of the engine and removing the cylinder head in some cases. We recently had a large 6 cylinder wet linered engine (an L6414) in our shop whose liners had literally rusted through and were leaking coolant into the oil pan. In a dry linered engine, a rust hole in the liner means a new block or, effectively, scrapping the engine.

The shame of all of this is how terribly preventable this situation is. If we just put acceptable quality coolant in our engines and flush the cooling system annually, it has the potential of saving $1000’s of dollars. The customer with the L6414 paid nearly $25,000 to overhaul his engine.

What is acceptable quality coolant? Any “name brand” pre-mix coolant is acceptable for most diesel engines. Some manufacturers specify their own brand, and in such cases it is a good idea to use theirs. Most manufacturers use a MIL spec, ASTM, or SAE specification which most quality coolant manufacturers adhere to. Use a pre-mix, whether 50-50% or 33% (the latter being more than acceptable in the Caribbean). If unable or unwilling to use a pre-mix, make sure that any water that is added is distilled water only. The presence of any minerals will accelerate the corrosion practice.

When you flush your cooling system, be sure to use a good quality radiator flush. We like Loctite 18E because it seems to clean all the rust and scale out of most cooling system with one application. After following the instructions, keep flushing the cooling system with fresh water (this does not need to be distilled) until it comes out clear and free of debris. Then fill it up with your pre-mix coolant and you’re good for another year.

In addition to providing corrosion protection, Ethylene Glycol coolants also protect against freezing (luckily not an issue in our Market) and boiling. A 50% mixture of Ethylene Glycol Coolant (EGC) protects the cooling system from boiling to 226 degrees F (109 degree C). A 40% mixture protects the cooling system up to 222 degrees F (106 degrees C). The pressure inside your cooling system raises the boiling point even further, but it is nice insurance to have the ECG mixture in case of a pressure leak in your cooling system.

In the next Service Tip, we’ll discuss Supplemental Coolant Additives, what they are and how to use them.

It is among the most remarkable sailing vessels ever built. It is a 297 foot leviathan, with 58-meter rotating carbon-fibre masts that displaces 1,404 tons. It is The Maltese Falcon. Showboats International calls it "one of the most innovative sailing yacht projects ever." And which generator sets power the Black Bird? Northern Lights, of course.

Northern Lights is known throughout the yacht industry as the standard bearer for power production solutions. Northern Lights’ key virtues - Reliability, Durability and Simplicity - make them the generator sets of choice for the most elaborate megayacht projects in the world.

Perini Navi chose four Northern Lights generator sets - two M6140AL2's (280 kW @ 50 Hz), one M6125T (155 kW @ 50 Hz) and one MP668H emergency set (80 kW @ 50 Hz). Together, they power not only the traditional sail yacht features on the Maltese Falcon - the lights, the air conditioner, the windlass and so on - but they also provide power to the unique technology of the Dyna Rig sailing system, a first of its kind.

Northern Lights’ powers the yachting world’s most demanding applications and elaborate dreams. Contact your sales representative to learn how it can power yours, too.
Innovative, visionary Maltese Falcon powered by Northern Lights

Northern Lights Factory Trainer Bob Senter delivers a brief generator overview from the engine room in a video shot at the Trawler Fest in Anacortes, WA.

Video courtesy of PassageMaker Magazine.

The Northern Lights M944T is the new industry leader in power density in the 32-40kW range.

Producing a conservatively-rated 38kW at 60 Hz (1800 RPM), or 32kW at 50 Hz (1500 RPM), the M944T is based on a heavy-duty industrial block engine and custom marinized for optimal marine performance.

The cast iron, two-pass exhaust manifold promotes even temperature control and is formed of sturdy cast iron. The cupro-nickel heat exchanger is built with removable end caps for easy cleaning. The gear driven seawater pump is self-contained with no unreliable belts. The turbo charger is fresh water cooled for safety.

All systems on the M944T are designed to provide reliable power production in a small space. At 38kW, the M944T is smaller than some competitors’ 32. And because power is produced at a low 1800 RPM, engine wear is dramatically reduced.

Easily customizable, the M944T is an ideal set for increased power in the footprint of 25-33kW machine. Further maximizing engine room, is Northern Lights’ exclusive new base frame and sound enclosure configuration (see table on back). Add custom panels, mufflers or even a front PTO to power your winches, bow thrusters or deck gear. The M944T meets all current emission standards, providing clean and quiet power production.

All the reliability, durability and simplicity that has made Northern Lights the industry leader for five decades are on display in the M944T.

The sound enclosure shares a base frame with the generator set, creating a compact power and sound attenuation package that reduces noise and vibration while maximizing engine room space.
This design allows for the easy installation of an additional set of vibration mounts for a smoother, quieter package with only a minimal increase in height.

Technicold by Northern Lights is proud to introduce the marine industry’s most advanced solution for electrical load management – the variable output Automatic Linear Load Bank System. The Technicold Automatic Linear Load Bank System is the ideal solution for a vessel requiring electrical load balancing. It is the only fresh-water cooled, non-modular load bank commercially available that features variable outputs to manage electrical load on each individual 3-phase leg.

By supplying a supplemental electric load to the generator, Technicold load banks ensure that the generator is always properly loaded. A ship’s load activity is easily monitored with the load bank controller, which tracks phases from the ship’s electrical panel. The digital controllers analyze the data and transmit commands to the load bank processors. When the vessel’s power usage fluctuates, the controller uses pre-programmed parameters to manage electric loads, ensuring optimal loading of the ship’s generator sets.

Units are available with the optional PLC system that includes a full-color touch screen.

“High-energy demand systems like air conditioning, stabilizers and bow thrusters are becoming more common in all types of vessels,” said Clive Cox, Technicold director of engineering. “With multiple staterooms, power configurations and night-versus-day demands, properly loading your generator set can be challenging. Without proper load management, the generator set can run under-loaded, leading to potential maintenance issues. A fully variable load bank can manage your generators’ loads to ensure optimal performance.”

Power production and climate control are among the most critical systems on any vessel. A climate-control provider with the experience of Technicold, backed by the power production specialists at Northern Lights, is uniquely qualified to produce a load-banking solution that truly sets the industry standard.

The Technicold Linear Load Bank will be on display at the American Superyacht Forum in Seattle, Washington from May 11-14. About Technicold by Northern Lights (www.technicold.com) Technicold by Northern Lights has been an industry leader in marine environmental control systems since its inception in 1981. Technicold offers a comprehensive line of chilled-water air conditioners from 24,000 to 180,000 BTUs, a line of chilled-water air handlers 8,000 to 32,000.