by miami | Jul 19, 2014
Even though my fingers and toes are crossed that all is well, we did start the engine and run it just a little late today. It sounds good, ( no knocking, no mechanical banging and crunching, and so far we have only one small oil weep. Normal for a 30 year old engine although I would love to have zero leaks!
Sure is pretty, don’t you agree? We will see how long that lasts.
Here is what we have done during the last two weeks.
Engine – pulled the transmission, bell housing, damper plate, four motor mounts, heat exchanger, oil cooler, fresh and salt water pumps, valve cover, injectors and lines, fuel filter, oil cooler hoses, oil pan.
All these were degreased and cleaned with wire brush in a drill, then washed, primed and painted. Gaskets, prongs and seals were replaced as needed. Then it was all reassembled with new filters, oil for the transmission and engine and coolant.
Fun.
Then while that was going on, Shelly added coats of varnish to the starboard toe rail, deck trim and removed the entrance hatch and trim to strip, sand and varnish. It looks great!
We have had some small very annoying water leaks, so to find the one aft we pulled the trim, pulled out the port (window for you landlubbers), and removed the wall panelling. It didn’t take long to find the leak when you could see it!
Kinda scary having a big old hole in your boat!
So that got sealed up, and we cut new paneling, varnished that and the trim, reinstalled the port and tested. No leaks!
For fun, she wrapped rope around the legs of the salon table as the chrome long ago began to rust…
The table top is teak veneer and has been refinished too many times so that the veneer has been sanded through and needed something. We tried to cut a piece of the paneling, seal and varnish and just glue and clamp it right over the old table, then pour an epoxy like on a restaurant table. The jury is still out on that project…
Goose thinks it is so funny that we work so hard while he just lays around and sleeps.
So now we are talking about what next. Tomorrow we run the engine at the dock to flush the engine coolant through a couple of times and bring it up to temperature. We need to check for leaks, and work the transmission at the dock before we take off.
Update… Since I didn’t get this post finished yesterday…
We had leaks. Coolant, fuel and oil. The coolant and fuel were relatively easy to stop, but the oil pan leaks are not. Gotta love a challenge!
Tinkered with it all day. Rode the bike 5 miles to walmart for broiler pans to slide under the engine to catch any oil and keep the bilge clean. By 4 pm most everything looked pretty good. Tested the engine at the dock in reverse for a while and I think we are ready to go.
Next .. The old town of Wilmington NC – 20 miles up the river from Southport and 50 miles from here.
Take off time it is. Very soon. Maybe even in the morning. Our friends from Marathon on Luck Of a Fool are already there and waiting to show us where the happy hours are.
Easy peasy. (With a running engine and working transmission!)
by miami | Jul 11, 2014
Did you know that right in front of the bell housing on the back part of the engine, (accessed by removing the propeller shaft coupling and transmission), is a part called a pressure plate or damper.
It is a basically 5 big steel springs set into three connected steel thin plates whose function is to take up the torque when the engine is shifted into gear and allow the transmission to smoothly change from forward to neutral to reverse. You have one on your car .
And did you know when the pressure plate explodes while the engine is running it makes a LOT of noise as pieces and parts get flung around the back of the bell housing like a washing machine.
Then you have no transmission. And if you are out in the waterway, you have no propulsion.
We learned these things last week.
For the last ten days we have been in Myrtle Beach, at a dock, with engine parts all over the place.
The hurricane passed us by with no harm last week, the weather has been very nice, and it is kind of cool to be able to turn on the air conditioning during the day when it gets hot! (Kind of cool – get it?)
The old plate. And the heat exchanger out and ready for repair.
We are almost all fixed. Waiting for the welder across the street to finish up an exhaust elbow that needed looking at while it was off. (As long as the transmission was off, and we were already at the dock, we took the opportunity to take a bunch more off and clean, fix, overhaul…
Ryan was very happy to help degrease and clean the engine. Hehe. He has also been back on his bowsprit working to make the underneath part look as good as he did the top part…
Shelly has been varnishing and painting. With access from the dock, a place to lay things out, and not having to worry about moving the boat, we are in maintenance mode (again).
Engine parts all cleaned up and painted ready for reinstall..
The new pressure plate is in and ready for the bell housing and transmission.
We did have a very nice trip up from Georgetown to Myrtle Beach. And we are really very fortunate to have broken down here. The marina is relatively inexpensive, and very cruiser friendly; there are a multitude of great repair facilities and parts, and the wifi is awesome!
The Intracoastal waterway along this stretch is made up of connected rivers. The Waccamaw was flooded due to all the heavy rains, and flooded with weekend boaters. We saw lots of floating debris, trees, logs etc and actually bumped one floating log with the bow that scared the crap out of all of us.
What was amazing was watching all the parents chugging their beer and hauling their little kids on their tubes and things behind their pontoon boats at full throttle through all this debris.
Not only was I visualizing one of the kids getting run over by someone looking back at their kids instead of where they were going, but we could easily imagine one of those speeding inner tube things getting drug over a floating log at 30 mph and ripping the poor little kids to shreds. Definately braver parents than we.
Every single waterway marker has an Osprey nest with young ones screaming to be fed. You can just see the chicks heads at the top of this one.
So that's the news fit to report. Future plans are still in the air, although our next scheduled stop is Wilmington, only 50 miles further. We have to be in Northern Va in early September but that seems a long time away.
