Short story is the freshwater cooling pump on my engine seized this weekend. Rickie at Hansen Engineering in Marblehead was great and I will have a new water pump tomorrow, $338 plus freight later. A friend mentioned to me that he thought the Westerbekes were Kubotas so I did a little research and found that they are Mitsubishi K4D tractor engines. Amazon sells a water pump for one of those for $56.50. Rickie did mention the pump wasn’t painted red which has me a little suspicious about OEM. Am I missing something here?
My 2006 Westerbeke 35D3 is a modified Mitsubishi L3 I believe. Many of the core engine parts are therefore interchangeable, but it’s very difficult to find information on this online. Rumor has it Westerbeke has a legal arrangement with Mitsubishi (and Kubota) not to advertise/disclose/supply parts.
In any case, Westerbeke start with the Mitsi (or Kubota) motor, then marinize it, and paint everything red. You may have noticed both metric and imperial fasteners on your engine??..this is why…starts in Japan, ends up in Massachusetts.
In any case, on your engine block will be a model number, look under the throttle stop bolt. It may be something like SL3, SL3, KD4, K4D…etc. This is a Mitsubishi (or Kubota) model number. From this you can obtain cheap parts from your local diesel mechanic. This includes fuel injectors, glow plugs, mechanical fuel pump, fresh water pump, oil filter (possibly…Westerbeke makes a remote spin on unit), and certainly all of the engine internals.
Please note this may not apply to the exhaust/intake manifolds, the raw water cooling system (pump included), the transmission, and possibly odd things like the oil pan and starter (things were altered to make the motor physically more compact)
I rebuilt my raw water pump last week $56 for new impeller and seals, I did find my old impeller was missing a fin. Where that rubber fin is and where did it get to I don’t know but it is no longer leaking and temp doesn’t move from 155 deg F
It was my freshwater pump that seized. The raw water pump would not be a K4D part. I haven’t found a K4D parts diagram like Westerbeke has for their engines but I’m sure I eventually will. Current project is getting the old pump off the engine without breaking any bolts. They’ve been soaking in penetrating oil since yesterday with more to come today.
Terry,
The fin is probably in your heat exchanger. Take the caps off the ends and if you are lucky it will be right there. Look for old zinc scraps while you are in there Don’t over torque the caps when you replace them.
PS I saved thousands on a rebuild by using parts for a K4D on my W-27a. Got them from an antique tractor part supply place online. Everything fit and worked.
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It was my freshwater pump that seized. The raw water pump would not be a K4D part. I haven’t found a K4D parts diagram like Westerbeke has for their engines but I’m sure I eventually will. Current project is getting the old pump off the engine without breaking any bolts. They’ve been soaking in penetrating oil since yesterday with more to come today.
Bruce, thanks for confirming what I suspected. I wouldn’t expect anything that comes in contact with sea water and the transmission to be Mitsubishi but anything else should be.
The freshwater pump can be rebuilt for about $70 . These are on every engine and are more or less the same design. Take the old one to Mitsubishi Dealer and get it rebuilt or buy a new one and paint it red!
My suggestion for getting those bolts out would be in addition to soaking them, hit them square on the head with a hammer several times. This will cause vibration and allow the penetrant to penetrate. Be patient!!
Joe Valinoti
S/V iL Gatto NS30U #221
Sea Harbour YC
Oriental, NC USA
The pump is off. Patience, liquid wrench, kroil and some smacks with a hammer. I started soaking them yesterday morning with liquid wrench and a friend brought me some kroil yesterday afternoon that I also used. One bolt broke free this AM first try, two more a couple of hours later after penetrating oil and smacks. The fourth one ( the long one) wouldn’t let go until this afternoon. All down hill from here.
I was able to find the attached document from Mitsubishi containing all of the engine part number details. The only issue is there are several sailing/marine engine variants based on the K4D block (see page 3), and I don’t know how to identify which one Westerbeke started with to create the W27.
There is a lot of of part number commonality between variants, so it can at least point in the right direction for ancillary components like water pumps, starters, alternators, fuel system components, etc.
If you compare the diagrams to the ones you find for Westerbeke, they look identical… should not be to hard to get the right part…? Where did you find this document, the other 2 and 3 cylinder Westerbeke 21/18 and 13’s use the same block …
Thor and others - I found the equivalent technical for the K2C (the Westerbeke 13) back in 2019, I may have the notes of where I found it somewhere. I’ve a bunch of other stuff relating to the W13 that I’d collected from around the web?
Maybe these manuals should reside on the INA nonsuch.org website?
I did a little more digging, and found the attached list of Mitsubishi engines used by Westerbeke, which indicates the K4D variant used for the W27 would be the 61WM. In fact all of the engines listed have a “WM” suffix, which I presume equates to “Westerbeke Marine”. This should make it easy to identify which part numbers from the Mitsubishi parts list are specific to the W27.
