A Big Milestone - A Fitting Day for a Westerbeke Resurrection

So after 3 weeks, I finally got my pump back from the injection shop on Friday.  It was all rebuilt, shot blasted and painted. Hopefully it would work, but unfortunately I had a bunch of family Easter stuff going on for most of the weekend so I had to put it on hold until this afternoon.  When I finally freed up, it was go time.

It only took about 10 minutes to re-install the fuel injection pump and timing shim, and getting the governor tie rod and spring back on the pump rack in the little hole in the side of the block was surprisingly easy because I had tied on a piece of fishing line onto them so if I dropped them inside the case I could retrieve them easily.  Because I've done it several times already, the rest of the fuel system was easy, but time consuming (2 hours). 

Once everything was back together and everything checked and re-checked, I rolled the engine over to the shop door, grabbed a pail of water and starting battery and hooked up the ignition panel. My son came over to the shop and we checked to make sure power was going to the glow plugs and fuel pump. It took a bit of time to get the high pressure side of the fuel system primed, but once it was, it fired right up and sounded great.  We ran it through the throttle range with no issues other than adjusting the throttle idle setting (a bit too low).  Also notable was that there was zero smoke and there was good water flow out the exhaust.  

I'm ecstatic that this milestone is complete. My original plan was to get the rebuild done 'over the winter', so technically spring has started and I missed my deadline, but I'm still calling it a win.  Of course there's still a ton to do to get the motor back in the boat and installed, but this was a big one.

Here's a link to the YouTube video if you want to hear it purr: It's Alive!