I just joined this group and have a dilema to present:

My boat has a large engine room and I want to add a genset to it. BUT
it must be diesel as I dont want any gasoline aboard. I can buy a new
marine diesel gen set with warer cooling for $7,000 or so. I dont have
that kind of money to spend. But I can buy a new diesel, AIR COOLED,
getset for under $1000. With the gen set in the engine room I will
either have to supply a MINIMUM (probably more) of 1000 CFM of cool air
and exhaust it as well. This is not altogether too dificult, BUT that
air I am supplying will be SALT air and will promote corrosion in the
new gen set, I am sure.

So I am wondering about the possibility of converting the air cooled
diesel to a water cooled diesel with a salt to fresh water heat
exchanger. I read somewhere once that someone did this by coiling
copper pipe around the head of the engine for the fresh water part and
used a wet exhaust to cool the exhaust. But with no details of how the
fresh water cooling was actually constructed on the engine, and my
limited imagination in this area, I dont see how it could work. I
think it would take more than cooling the head alone.

Does anyone have any ideas along these lines??