For those of you following the saga of my extra engine and the problems I've been having, I have received some good news.

I sent the fuel injection pump from the original port engine - which now sits in my garage here on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula - off to Dr. Hino in Huntington Beach.

To go over some history, the original port engine was pulled out of the boat in Chicago because it suffered from this strange pinging sound. I was told that it ran fine, and the only way you could tell something was wrong was that it made a metallic noise that the starboard engine didn't make. Caterpillar of Chicago took the engine apart looking for the problem and couldn't find it. While that was happening, another 4788 with the same engines, model year, and virtually identical hours, suffered a starboard engine failure due to failure of the exhaust manifold which is a general problem on most boats and a particular problem on this powertrain. My previous owner bought the other boat's port engine when that guy re-powered and that engine is what sits in port on CP currently.

I should have the repaired fuel pump and the injectors from the installed port engine back the middle of next week. Re-manufactured injectors and a fuel pump should solve the current lack of unloaded RPM, extra fuel use, and smoking that the current port engine is suffering from.

This is good news vis-a-vis the trip as it means that we can stay relatively on schedule to depart April 30/May 1.

Interestingly - I learned from Larry Blaise, an forensic engine surveyor, that the bad fuel pump or injectors on the current port engine likely caused the turbo failure that I experienced on sea trial. When I was out testing the boat the turbo cracked and I found out that that engine had cracked a turbo earlier as well. What apparently was happening was that unburned fuel was getting into the turbo housing and igniting - cracking the housing. Additionally, the tach wasn't working and when working probably wasn't working well, so they may not have noticed that the engine wasn't getting up to 3000 RPMs unloaded. It seems I may have sent North Harbor on a wild goose chase when I thought it was a cooling problem as it was likely a fuel supply problem all along.