The Repowering Project Day 11

Fort Pierce

We made it a short day today. A lazy Sunday. We didn’t leave for the boat yard before 0900 and we left at 1530. Here are our accomplishments.

• I ground smooth the cured Marine Tex around the shaft log. Then I tightened down the nuts on the log from the outside, and made fast the stuffing box to the inside of the shaft log. That completes the mechanical installation.
  

• Libby and I completed the installation of the new copper foil grounding plane for the SSB radio. The penultimate step was to attach the foil to the grounding post on the automatic antenna tuner box. To do that required working on one’s back on the floor of the starboard lazarette compartment. That space is extremely tight. I couldn’t do it because it required focusing my eyes on the post from less than two inches away. I can’t focus on anything that close. At least that was my excuse to ask Libby to do it for me. As always, she said sure. It was a tough job and it took most of an hour.
  

• The new Beta engine panel with gauges, alarms and the ignition key is taller and narrower than the old Perkins panel we removed. I used the grinder to cut the hole in the cockpit bulkhead taller. I’ll have to find a piece of black plastic or plexiglass to extend the width of the panel to make it cover the hole.
  

• Electrical connection of the Beta Engine amounted to plugging in the panel. Except for the hot and ground leads to the starter motor, all the 25 or so wires are preconnected to a single plug and socket. Cool. Except for the problem of battery voltage (more on that tomorrow) the electrical installation is complete.
  

• There were some sharp screw ends on the cabin bulkead that have been cutting our forearms every time we reached into the engine compartment from the cabin for the past two years. I used the grinder to cut them off and grind the ends smooth.
  

• Next job was to hook up the exhaust system. In a marine water box muffler system, the heated salt water exiting from the heat exchanger is injected into the exhaust gasses. Our old muffler was mounted higher than the exhaust manifold of the engine. To prevent the water from running downhill back to the engine, there was a big vertical U section of pipe between the engine and the muffler. Bud recommended remounting the muffler below the level of the exhaust so that no U pipe would be needed.
  

• The pieces of exhaust hose that I have would be six inches too short with the muffler in the new position. I set out to scavange a suitable piece of pipe from the junk heaps in the boat yard. I searched the whole yard, and found lots of interesting junk but no pipe of the right size. However I did find a length of 1.5 inch exhaust hose that could be used an an inside splice to the two sections of 2.0 inch pipe that I needed to join. That will do the job. I cut the hose to the right length with the grinder.
  

• I dismounted the muffler. It’s hold down brackets were severly rusted. Therefore I used the grinder to grind them down to bare metal and sprayed them with Corrosion Block. (Isn’t it interesting that when one holds a grinder in one’s hand that everything in sight seems to need grinding.) Yesterday, the man at the next boat opened a tube of 3M 5200 Marine Adhesive. He used only a dab and asked if we could use any of the rest. It hardens in 48 hours after first opening. I took the man’s 5200 and bonded the muffler brackets to the side of the hull way down low by the propeller shaft. When that cures, I’ll finish the exhaust system.
  

• Now we are on a mission to Home Depot to buy a 2.5 inch hole saw. That will be our last task for today. Tsk tsk, how lazy we were.
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The picture shows Tarwathie’s stern where a lot of the action happened. From left to right you can see:

1. The butt end of the propeller shaft.
2. The bronze hub of the Max Prop
3. The shaft (It is about 2 inches too short to put on a zinc collar like I used to have. The zinc on the end of the prop will have to be my only zinc.)
   
4. The bronze cutlass bearing surrounding the shaft
5. The shaft log flange surrounding the cutlass bearing
6. The Marine Tex putty cementing in the shaft log.

Below is what it looked like when we first hauled it out of the water.


Repowering day 12