Sunday, January 27, 2013

Waiting on parts...

This Monday or Tuesday the waterpump comes in.  Then the sleeve for the tubestack.  I bought all new hoses and all cutting them to the correct sizes.  O'Reilly's Auto parts let me go back into the store room and rummage around in their hoses for awhile.  Got what I need!
I am painting the parts that I took off the engine and I'll get some photos of that and post later.  Big thrill right?  Can't hardly wait, eh?  Well, I am doing this for me also.  Keeps track of what I did and how.  Kinda.


Here is Swiper the fox helping me with the water pump.  I had my little girl help me on the boat.  By help I mean she was in the V-berth and playing while I was getting the cooling system apart.

Here is Dora helping me.  Actually she is laying down on the job.  Those bits next to her are impeller parts that I found in the cooling system.
My new favorite!  Limited edition I found at Safeway.  So good on fries!



Saturday, January 26, 2013

It's exhausting....

This is the aluminum exhaust elbow.  You are looking at the inlet for the raw water after it has gone through the heat exchanger.  The water gets injected into the hot exhaust gases and cools it down so you can have a rubber hose handling the exhaust gas and the exiting raw water used for cooling. I think the corrosion is from the stainless bolts into the aluminum.  Dissimilar metals can cause corrosion.  The rest of the elbow looks great.  I wasn't even going to take the elbow off but after looking at the bolt holes, there is no way that is going to go back together again.  Luckily I have a spare.  Can't be cheap.  I'll buy another one for back up.  I am also going to coat the bolts with TefGel or something similar to stop the corrosion.  Going to have to ask around about this.






Here is my spare.
 So being in the middle of taking apart the cooling system in our Wauquiez Centurion 42 that is how I found the exhaust "problem-to-be".  Appa has a 50hp Perkins Prima 50.  A funky engine if there ever was one.   As you might remember, I pulled the raw water pump due to it leaking like my 2 year old's diaper.  The generic diapers not those Huggies I buy now.  Or actually my wife buys.  Wait, I did buy some last week.  Hopefully she will be out of them soon but I digress.  Anyway,  the previous owner screwed up the pump by installing it wrong.  Evidently when replacing the raw water pump, you put the pump on and then tighten the bolts only part way.  This allows the shaft and the key to get seated correctly.  Failure to do this results in the shaft on the pump to get chewed up.  Which mine was.  Now I need a need one.  Or replace the shaft.  Shaft=$200.  New pump=$300.  Actually a new pump exactly like mine new is $600 but since my motor is actually a rebadged Volvo-Penta MD22, I can use their pumps.  Thanks to Stewart's Machine shop in Ballard for doing all the leg work on this.
I plan on keeping the old pump as a spare since it works but leaks a bit.  Maybe eBay will come up with a rebuild kit or something.  Never know.

The boots are on the ends of the box that say Perkins Prima.  These go over the HeatX and the fresh water coolant manifold.  They were completely shot and leaking sea water over the engine motor.
 So since the pump was out I decided to look at the heat exchanger (now called heatX).  There is a sleeve in the manifold that serves as a gasket.  This sleeve is $60 and needs to be replaced.  All new gaskets for everything also.  New boots for the manifold also. 
So Monday the pump should be here and then Thursday the sleeve for the heatX.  Maybe just maybe we can get this boat out on the water in time for the Chili-cook off at the SYC Port Madison in the middle of February!























The engine block is not a ground.  The only time it grounds itself is when the starter is engaged.  This makes chasing electrical gerlims a bit of a chore.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Decks


The joys of teak decks.  Well, I am done reefing, cleaning, and caulking these decks.  All that is left is rebunging about 200 holes and then sanding.  After that, cleaning that deck with this stuff.
I thought I had a macerator problem and bought a new Whale pump to do overboard discharge of the holding tank when in the appropriate areas but it turns out that I forgot to open the seacock instead.  Now I can either hold onto this pump or finally clean up that mess of a holding tank installation that the previous owner did.  Options, options.  The current setup has me unable to pump out the holding tank at the pump out stations that are scattered throughout the area unless I turn on the macerator.  There should be a standpipe into the holding tank then a Y-valve to select between macerator or the on-deck fitting.
We have a lot to do before Mexico.  The holding tank will be a priority.  Right after I get this deck done.  I figure another 10 hours of steady work and we'll have a big dent in it.

Our new house wine!

Making Lulu's spaghetti sauce!

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Water leaks



This is the offending leak.  The boat has copper water lines from the hot water heater and go under the galley sink.  The copper lines also go to the aft head sink and the forward head sink.  They are in good shape but, and there always is a but, they are metric.  Oddly enough the fittings used to connect to the hot water heater are standard fittings.  That hose attached to the copper line with 2 hose clamps is 1/2" and the copper tube is a little smaller.  Doesn't matter says the previous owner, clamp the shit out of it.  Well guess what?  It leaks.  The copper line runs under the floor boards and when it rears it's face under the galley sink, there is a connection there.  This connection is 3/8ths.  Go figure.  So I replaced that short run of copper with reinforced 1/2" tubing and clamped it.  No leaks.  Next job is to rerun all those lines under the sink and get some really storage out of that area.


So this is a view under the sink but not a good one.  Hard to get a sense of the clutter.  Anyway, Appa has 3 water tanks and the hoses run from the tanks to under the galley sink.  They go into this manifold so we can switch from where we are drawing the water from.  From the manifold, the three hoses become one hose that runs to the water pump and from there to the water filter.  Out of the water filter, the hose splits to the aft  cockpit shower then splits again to the watermaker flush system, then splits again to the forward head cold water and then splits again to the foot pump and then splits again to the galley sink.  All of this happens under the sink.  Crazy.  I am trying to figure out how to fix this.  I think I have a good plan.  We'll see.

 This is the foot pump for the fresh water system.  This is how stupid I can be when thinking about boat systems.  I thought that the pump was failing because when I pumped it the lever would not spring back after being pushed down.  Well turns out that these pumps are supposed to be BEFORE the electric water pump, or preferably on a waterline that has no other pump.  Basically the water couldn't get into the foot pump because the electric pump was stopping it.  If I was to turn on the electric pump and let it run, the foot pump would work.  Duh.  I also think that this foot pump might be the source of my gremlin in the electric water pump. I keep losing pressure and I'll bet that this is the cause.
I was about to pull this foot pump out and then rebuild it.  Then it hit me while I was drawing the fresh water pipe schematics.  I won't post that chicken scratch, as I am the only one who can read that shit.