6CTA coolant and walker airsep questions

[Nicholas]

Seems like every time I visit my boat I have to come back here to post a couple more questions…I really appreciate you guys for your patience and willingness to help us noobs…

Two questions:

1) the overflow tanks on both of my engines are bone dry. I checked the coolant level in the main tank of one engine and it’s about an inch below the fill cap. I read in another thread that the overflow tank should be kept about half full. Should i go ahead and fill it with a 50/50 pre-mixed coolant? Also, on the other engine, whatever genius installed the engines and re-did the floor set it up so that it is not accessible without removing the floor of the saloon. Before i pull the floor out just to check the coolant level & PH, is there any other way to check it? Can I just do any checking and/or PH testing of the coolant using the overflow tank?

2) I found a few drips of pink liquid under one of my walker airseps. It was oily to the touch and smells of petroleum. My best guess is that it’s diesel fuel. I noticed another drip on the edge of the airsep filter. I pulled the filter off and the inside of the airsep is totally coated with a fine black soot. Do I need all of this soot off so that the turbo doesn’t ingest any of it? Is the soot normal or a sign that something isn’t right? Is there any explanation that there would be a bit of diesel dripping off the edge of the filter, other than perhaps a leak somewhere nearby that happened to splatter on it?

thanks again

Topic

[Nicholas]

pictures

Thanks for the reply Tony and the advice on the coolant. As far as the pictures go, I had already cleaned up the drips of oily pink liquid (which I suspected was diesel). However, I’ve attached a photo of the airsep to show you where they were. The circle is where I found a couple of drops on the edge of the airsep filter. The star is where I found another drop or two, directly under the airsep. I suspected diesel because it smelled of petroleum, was oily to the touch, and recreational (non-highway) diesel is dyed pink in my area (everywhere?). Also, my coolant is green, I believe, not pink.

I’m stumped as to where it could have come from though.

I also attached a picture of inside the airsep with the filter removed. apologies for the focus issues, it’s hard to get a closeup with everything in focus.

After posting, I found this the walker engineering website, and figured what I thought was “soot” was actually some sort of porous material that’s part of the design and should be left alone:

NEVER attempt to clean
the inside of an AIRSEP unit, you will damage the material
inside the AIRSEP and it will no longer function properly to
process crankcase fumes or return liquid oil to the engine

[Tony Athens]

Not sure how I missed your post…Sorry.

1) Coolant bottles—Fill you engine coolant tanks 1st with coolant or water–Up to the top, engine cold. even a 40-60 mix is no issue. Then fill the plastic tank 1/2 way up with water.. After a few runs, the tanks should mix with the pink coolant if all is working right.. Use the plastic tank as a Level reference.

2) I need to see good pictures of what you are referring to as to “soot” or ? and or “diesel” as to your Airseps. Can you post or send pics so I can see it all ?

Tony

[Nicholas]

update – still not sure what to do about coolant

Just wanted to revisit this since i never got a reply. On the airsep question, i did a little more research and found the “soot” inside is actually part of the design and must not be cleaned out. Fortunately I didn’t…

No sign of where the fuel might have come from and it hasn’t happened again since the one time. I’ll just keep an eye out to see if it happens again.

As far as the coolant goes – i haven’t done anything yet but since I don’t know the exact coolant that’s in there, I’m considering adding a quart or so of deionized water to the overflow tank to let it mix in with the rest of the coolant. I assume that won’t be enough to overly dilute the coolant mix and would be safer than adding coolant since I don’t know what’s in there?

[Author]

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