43 33.27 N 073 24.13 W
Man oh man are we frustrated. We've been here 12 days now, and we had thought that today would be the day we could leave. Not so.
All the parts came in; the rebuilt injection pump and the new transmission. Kieth Longtin, the local master mechanic, came over to install them for us.
First job, the injection pump. It was not easy to do. With no decent drawings or pictures, it was hard to see how things fit together. Kieth had never worked on a Kuboda engine before. When mating the governor and throttle back together it kept going wrong. Finally, Keith figured it out simply by staring at the internal parts using a mirrow and visualizing how things moved in 3D. We got it together, purged the lines of air, and she started up. Hooray! But wait, there was a terrible vibration. We figure that must have been from the transmission we're about to replace.
Next, Kieth got the old transmission off while I prepared the new one to go on. But wait. Oh no! When the bell housing came off the back of the engine some mangled plastic pieces fell out. It was also full of dust, ground metal or plastic. It turns out that there is a damper plate which sits betwen the engine and the transmission. It was destroyed. :-( There goes any hope of leaving this weekend. I believe the damper plate was also a victim of the vibrations caused by the Max Prop.
That also caused great angst for a while. Keith said that he thought that the damper plate was my problem and that the new transmission wasn't needed. But after consideration of the symptoms, that made no sense. We had both a transmission and damper plate problems. Related but independent.
So, now we have to wait until Monday when we'll get another express shipment from Beta Marine with a new damper plate. Then we'll install that, and put in the new transmission. Pray that the vibrations we felt when starting the engine were caused by those parts. If not we'll have cause to scream.
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| Mangled plastic from the damper plate |
Posts
I feel your pain.
ReplyDeleteJust remember - as long as the sum total is "step forward" things are progressing.
R