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optimax 150 - clogged air regulator, how does this happen and what would this do?
Hi,
I've got the fuel rails off one of my '06 opti 150's inside for the winter. After pulling my hair out with a bad idle problem and never really getting down the bottom of it I stripped them off before putting the boat away so I could tinker/overhaul indoors at my leisure.
A secondary thing to mention, and maybe this is related, is on this same engine I pre-emptively replaced the air compressor due to a failure on the other engine, and upon doing that I've had this "honking" noise ever since - had the same idle issue before and after, but with the new compressor I've had this pronounced air-related honking noise that comes out of the exhaust housing... For lack of a better idea to stop the noise (since I am sooner or later selling this boat) I planned to replace the bearings on my old compressor (which didn't fail, is still good working) and run that quieter compressor instead but now I think just maybe this clogged air regulator is the actual cause of the noise which surfaced on a new compressor too? Any chance of that?...
Anyway - so back to the rails. My air regulator came out with the screen completely clogged in what looks like soft oily carbon. In the picture below I scraped it off one little area, looks like I can probably just clean it away very easily, but also that this garbage was blocking the passages - is this something which has happened before to others? How does the stuff get in there and would it being this way cause a rocky idle when the engine was cold?
Second thing I noticed was the fuel regulator diaphram - not punctured however was initially not installed quite right, sorted was bunched up on one spot on the edge and there was a bit of corrosion that formed there that makes me think there was a void potentially causing a leak. That certainly would not be helping the idle either.
Jon
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