Kohler Generator parts... had no oil at the end of season

[KSalibs]

Good evening, less than excited to by talking about this right now however i think it might be a reality... when i winterized my boat in October i went to change the gensets oil upon attempting to drain the oil i realized there was none... still unsure how this was the case but at the end of the day it is... On the way to have the boat hauled i ran the gen for nearly 2 hours and my only thought as to why it didn't cut on low oil pressure is perhaps I forgot to flip the pre-strart switch off.:smt021
According to my manual this switch is a bypass of the oil pressure cut off alarm... (still not certain i understand the complete function of this switch... here is what i have been doing... turn on pre-start switch -> start -> wait 5 seconds -> turn off pre-start switch... hope that is right...) When i got to the marina the set was running fine and providing power but i have to imagine the damage is done... so in anticipation for the worst i have been looking up or trying to look up rebuild kits for the set. I would want to do this repair myself if needed. I cannot find anything... closest i have seen is partsfortechs.com but they only sell very general parts... does anyone know where i can get these parts? pistons,rings etc...

Thanks again! (kohler 5E on a 2003 320 dancer)

 

[be_prepared]

I feel your pain... I don't have a Kohler, my '02 340DA has a Westerbeke generator, but I have often wondered why there isn't better instrumentation for the generator. The two 8.1 Horizon Mercruisers are pretty well monitored, but it seems like until the generator fails, you don't get a lot of warnings. Maybe the newer units are better, and there is more presented at the helm about the status of the genset? Clearly we can check oil periodically, but it feels like there might be a little more data available to give us a warning when we're heading towards failure? Maybe there's a NMEA 2000 interface to let you get genset info up to a MFD?

 

[Bt Doctur]

if there was no oil it would have seized,not run for 2 hours.

 

[bankyf]

Something isn't adding up, there is really no way that it would have run for 2 hours with no oil and it likely would have shut down for over temp if it didn't seize. I could be wrong, but I really thought my preheat switch was a momentary switch that you had to hold in. In the event that you do need parts... I spent some time last year researching when I thought I might have a situation. The Kawasaki engine(FD501D) was a very common engine with multiple sub-models. Unfortunately Kohler has the lockdown on this particular sub-model and Kawasaki dealers can't even look up parts. A kohler marine dealer should be able to sell you parts, but they won't be cheap. There are some guys in Florida doing rebuilds and selling fairly reasonable on eBay. Perhaps they could help you out with parts.

 

[KSalibs]

Thanks for the Help guys... I hope your right! like i said, when i went to drain the oil nothing came out... I filled with fresh oil and let it run through until it came out, all i saw was fresh oil... we shale see in a few in a few weeks...

 

[hottoddie]

Maybe you oil pressure switch has failed in the run position allowing the engine to keep running when it should shut down. Easy enough to check with an ohm meter. BTW if the engine runs and sound fine don't mess with it.