Gunk In Racor Bowl

Cleaned Racor Bowl, 8/14/2007

The racor bowl was full of gunk again. While we were in Crisfield during our vacation, I disassembled it and cleaned it out. Michele provided extra hands, which helped tremendously in avoiding the mess I created last time I did this in June. Fortunately, I was able to reassemble everything this time without replacing the cartridge. The o-ring and the gasket were a bit stretched, but everything went back together ok. Next time I may try draining the gunk through the bottom instead, but I'm not sure the gunk will come out that way. Hopefully, that won't be soon!

Oil Change

Changed Engine Oil,
Changed Air Filter,
Topped Off Battery Water
8/9/2007

Used roughly 11 quarts of Chevron Delo multigrade 15w-40.

Stuff It

Repacked Stuffing Box
Replaced Racor Fuel Filter
6/30/2007

After the recent repair work, I'd been having trouble getting the stuffing box adjusted properly. I had just repacked it over the winter while the boat was on the hard, but I was concerned that the packing may have been compromised by the repairs. It's a cheap fix, so I repacked it again. This time, however, I changed the packing while the boat was in the water. Since the packing is what keeps the water out, that seems like a scary task, but it really wasn't bad. Having done the job before, I was confident that I'd be able to complete the job quickly and easily, with a little preparation. I laid out everything I needed near my workspace:

• Gore GFO packing material, cut into rings in advance
• Stuffing box wrenches
  
• A rag and Simple Green for cleaning the shaft
  
• A pick, a long screw, and a screwdriver (for removing the old packing)
• An allen wrench for pushing the new packing into the box

I unscrewed the packing nut and slid it up the shaft. Water starting flowing in immediately, but not at an alarming rate. Working quickly, I cleaned the residue from the old packing material off of the shaft, and then tied the rag around the shaft to slow the water. The pick was not very helpful in removing the old packing, so I used the long screw instead. I screwed it into the old material until it gripped, and then used it to pull out the ring, repeating this step for each of the four rings of old packing material. Once all of it was removed, I wrapped each new ring around the shaft and slid it into the packing nut, using the allen wrench to push it all the way in. Once all four new rings were pushed in, I removed the rag and screwed the packing nut back down. I tightened it by hand until it no longer dripped, and then used the stuffing box wrenches to set the stop nut tightly against the packing nut. The whole thing went very smoothly, and the bilge pump easily kept up with the inflow of water (it only turned on twice).

Now, about the Racor filter... I just changed the filter in April when recommissioning for spring. The bowl, however, had collected a fair amount of debris or sludge since then, so I drained the filter and cleaned the bowl. I wouldn't have changed the filter, but the o-ring between the filter and the bowl was shot. Next time I'll see if I can buy a spare o-ring at the hardware store, since the filters are expensive, and it probably didn't really need to be replaced. I reassembled the bowl and filter, filled them with filtered diesel, and put them back on. The engine fired right up, with no need to purge air from the lines.

Bad Vibrations?

The repair took care of almost all of the shaft wobble. There is still a bit of movement (more like vibration), particularly in the 1200-1400 RPM range, but the problem is much improved. I'd like to get rid of the vibration too, but at least the situation is tolerable for now. If you look closely at this video, you can see what I mean. There is some vibration, but it's far better than what you see in the video in my last post. For now, I'll probably just monitor the problem and consider taking care of it in the off-season. If it worsens, maybe I'll reconsider.



I'm probably going to repack the stuffing box (again) this weekend, just to bring that back to baseline. The packing material is cheap, and the job is easy. It will help me eliminate possible causes if any problems continue.

Shafted

I was hoping I wouldn't have any maintenance or repairs to write about for a while. Our Rock Hall trip over Memorial Day, however, made it clear that I needed to address the shaft wobble immediately. Here's a video of the wobbling shaft at cruising speed.



I scheduled haul out and repair at Hartge Yacht Yard for June 11. My expectation was that the wobble was some combination of bad alignment, bent shaft, or worn cutless bearing. Luke Frey (the yard manager at Hartge) added bad engine mounts and prop damage to the possibilities.

You might be wondering why I scheduled the repair at Hartge instead of Bristol Marine, at my home marina. I've mentioned before that Bristol staff are slow to respond and rarely communicate. I asked them during the off season to do the prop work and inspect/replace the cutless bearing as needed. After considerable hounding, they finally did the prop in April, but not the cutless, which I stupidly took as indicating that the cutless bearing was ok. It looked real nice, too bad it wasn't done right. I actually called and emailed them about the shaft wobble, but didn't hear anything back for a full week, when I received a work order for a short haul to inspect the cutless bearing. Well, this wasn't what I asked for, and Hartge was already scheduled to do the work, so I cancelled the work order. The manager only acted annoyed, when he should have been concerned about a unsatisfied customer in his own marina.

Anyway, while anchored in the Rhode River prior to dropping the boat off at Hartge, I swam underneath to check out the running gear. I discovered the prop nut and new zinc were gone, strongly suggesting that the nut was not fastened correctly with a wire or cotter pin to keep it from spinning off. I was very fortunate that the prop itself wasn't lost. That was the last straw. In addition to the extra haulout expense and lost summer time, I'm now out $80 for a new prop nut. I am done with Bristol. If I get around to having a frank conversation with the yard manager at Bristol, maybe he can convince me to give them another try.

Stay tuned, I'll post an update soon on the outcome of the repair.

Blowing My Own Horn

Flybridge Horn Switch, 5/19/2007

Our horn was connected only to the switch at the lower helm. We do most of our piloting from the flybridge, so I really needed to get a second switch wired in. There was a momentary (i.e., push-button) switch already in place on the panel, but it wasn't connected to anything.

To connect the switch, I ran another 16 AWG positive lead from the fuse panel in the wheelhouse up to the flybridge switch, and from the switch to the horn. At the horn, I used a 3-way butt connector to connect both switch wires to the horn's positive lead.

New Old Posts

I'd like to turn this blog into a complete maintenance record, so soon I'm going to start adding new posts for the various restoration and repair work that I've done over the past year. I'm planning to backdate them to the actual completion dates, so if you're interested, come back and check the blog archive on the left for posts between 5/2006 and 4/2007.

HOT HOT HOT

Water Heater, 4/29/2007

This tank and mess of hoses is our new water heater installation. We've never before had hot water on a boat, so we're thrilled!

The old tank was badly rusted and leaked when we tried to fill it. While we would have loved to have repaired that immediately, we had bigger fish to fry last season, so we just bypassed it and lived with cold water.

On our Cape Dory 28, the tank is installed under the aft part of the port side bench in the saloon. It's pretty tough to get down in there, particularly to the back side of the tank where the rear mounting screws are. So, Michele did the hard work, crawling into the deep recesses of the engine room where I couldn't fit, to remove the old mounting screws and fasten down the new tank. Fortunately, we were able to lift the tank up through the storage opening in the bench, and lower the new one through exactly the same way.

One cause of rusted water tank is that whenever water spills on the mounting surface, the metal casing sits in it, rusting away. We tried to combat that situation by getting a stainless steel tank, and by mounting it on rubber washers, eight total, to lift the tank slightly off the surface. If water spills or drips onto the surface, at least it won't be sitting directly in it.

The mess of hoses you see in the picture make for a complicated installation -- somewhat more complicated than necessary, as a matter of fact. Generally, there are four connections: water in, water out, engine coolant in, and engine coolant out. (The water heater is electric, but also has engine coolant connections that let coolant pump through a heat exchanger, heating the water whenever the engine is running.) We complicated the matter by including a permanent winter by-pass connection (the white hose). When winterizing the boat, we can just flip a valve on the bypass hose and drain the tank instead of filling it with non-toxic antifreeze.

This was definitely one of the more frustrating projects for me. First, some hoses needed re-routing, since the connections on new tank were in different position than those on the old tank. Some of the fittings were stripped or crossthreaded, so I needed to get new connectors. Then, I couldn't seem to get them all to stop leaking. Every time we tested the system, something leaked, requiring one of us to climb down there, disassemble it, and start again. Finally, we got advice from Michele's father, who suggested that we simply weren't using enough teflon tape on the connectors. He was right on, too. On our final attempt, we really layered it on thick, and that did the job.

Overall, it was a tough chore, but the reward has been well well worth it. We love having hot water on the boat!

Key Requirement

Wheelhouse Key, 4/30/2007

You'd think that having keys duplicated would be the easiest task on the list. But when you're dealing with a 20-year-old skeleton key for a boat whose builder no longer exists, it gets a little more complicated.

The wheelhouse on our Cape Dory takes just such a key, and unfortunately, the prior owner had only one. The folks at the local hardware store looked at me kind of funny when I presented it and asked for a copy. The nice man at the key cutting machine kindly suggested consulting a locksmith. I did, and he looked at me kind of funny too.

I spoke with some other Cape Dory owners, and one identified the blank for me as an "Ilco 53B". I was able to buy a few (well, four) of these on Ebay, and returned to the locksmith. He was skeptical, and offered 2 things: 1) to try to cut it for me, and 2) no guarantee. It didn't work. The main problem was the key is thicker than the original, and won't fit in the lock.

Here's the original:


Other than that, it's not really a complicated looking key. I since found a drawer full of miscellaneous blanks at the hardware store as well, and one of them looked pretty close. I decided to have at it with a dremel tool, and see what I could do on my own. After a reasonable looking attempt, I took a grinding stone to one of the Ilco blanks, and worked that one down a bit as well.

The results:


The top one is the Ilco, and the bottom one is what I found at the hardware store (also shown above on the keyring). It only took a year. Let's hope they work!

Spring Is In The Air

Recommission, 4/20/2007

Recommissioning for spring was a pretty smooth process. The bulk of the engine work was done in the fall, so spring only brought a few more chores.

The process began with shrinkwrap removal, a couple weeks before spring launch. It was just a matter of cutting the wrap down the center line with a carpet knife, and then cutting tie-down strings to release it. Michele and I cut the huge pieces of wrap into somewhat more manageable-sized pieces, rolled it up, and used the tie-down strings to tie the rolls. Carrying it to the recycle pile at the marina completed the job. Once unwrapped, we reattached a few things like the bimini frame and antennas, checked all the seacocks, hoses, etc, so the boat was ready to drop in the water. Shipwright finally launched the boat in mid-April, and we attended to the rest of the work almost immediately.

I started by draining the pink antifreeze from the potable water tank, adding a quart of bleach, and refilling with water. I ran some of the bleach/water solution through each of the taps to fill the pump and the lines with the solution, and then left it sitting until the next day.

The engine required the most work. The first task was making sure the engine would start. It fired right up and seemed to run smoothly, bringing a heavy sigh of relief! With that anxiety passed, it was time to change the fuel and air filters. Changing the filters was relatively quick, if a little messy. But diesel engines don't like air in the fuel lines, so whenever fuel filters are changed, the air must be purged. Having never done that, I was concerned that it would be a struggle, and it certainly was. To get the air out, one is supposed to loosen a vent screw on the fuel filter, and then operate a little mechanical "lift pump" until the air bubbles subside and fuel starts escaping from the vent. Well, I pumped. And pumped. And pumped. And pumped some more. This went on forever. I finally tried starting the engine, and although it fired up, it quickly died. My guess is that there is something wrong with the lift pump, because I never did succeed in purging the air. Ultimately, I ended up pouring filtered diesel into the filter itself and then reinstalling it. After that, a few cranks of the engine had it running again.

A quick test run of the air conditioner showed it working fine. Nothing else to do there.

The next day, Michele and I got an early start, cleaning and prepping, rehanging curtains, flushing the potable water system, etc. A few hours of this had us more than ready to set out on our first cruise of the year.