The marina manager "T" Caldwell and his mechanic son Alan arrived at our doorstep around 8:30 local time this morning ready to install my new battery. Remember that I had one installed when at Dog River Marina by "TJ" ...no relation to "T". My batteries are located in the engine compartment and are jammed between the engine and fuel tank in a box with walls that hardly leaves enough room to lift the batteries up and over the ledge... the engine compartment is only about two feet deep. Oh, and these are not your average car batteries, these are about three times as large and weigh around 150 pounds. After removing from the box the battery has to be lowered to the hull and snaked around the engine to a place with a large enough clearance to lift it up to the salon floor. The engine compartment is located beneath the salon and accessed via floor panels that are pulled up. Anyway, these two guys laid on their bellies working with that thing while mashing fingers and wedging themselves into very tight spaces. While going at it they discovered the other new battery, the one installed at Dog River, had loose terminal connections. "T" was not happy about their sloppy work and promised to call and tell them about it. This was definitely a two man job which I'll gladly pay someone to do.
Next they worked on the fuel line. In these older diesel engines, and maybe the newer ones too for all I know, fuel is supplied to the injectors through a supply line and any excess fuel is returned to the fuel tank via a return line. My metal tube supply line had been chafing against the oil pan for so long that it had worn a small hole. In addition, the fittings on either end are so corroded the mechanics were afraid to put a wrench to them. So, they made a parallel supply line from top grade very expensive federally approved fuel hose, disconnected the bad supply line and hooked up the new... works like a champ. They left the old line in case I ever want to replicate it, however we tagged each end so it would be obvious as to what we had done. We didn't want to confuse some mechanic down the road.
Next we attacked the control panel problem. Prior to Bobby's Fish Camp all my gauges worked, but as you may remember from an earlier post they were not working when I left Bobby's. The next day they all worked except the tachometer. In addition, when I pulled into this marina the engine would not stop when I turned the key off... even pulling it from the ignition. Finally did get it stopped by making several attempts and banging around on the switch.
For all our looking and crawling under the helm and head scratching we could not find an obvious problem. We poked and prodded until I pushed a button that's simply supposed to control the gauge lights. Guess what, all the gauges started working, including the buzzer which had also quit working.
However that didn't do anything to help the ignition problem so we just worked the hell outta the switch, even put a little W40 down the key hole. Eventually it we got it to where it would turn the engine off.... at least most of the time. "T" showed me a lever on the engine that would kill it if all else fails. It sounds like there's a lot of things breaking on this boat but they are all small things ...well the batteries and bottom job were expensive but those were known maintenance issues.
After T and Alan left Kim broke out the Murphy's Oil Soap again and started cleaning wood paneling, louver slats and drawers. She dug so deep into the grunge that she found some 1980 recipes cut from magazines.
Anyway, all work was completed by lunchtime but Kim and I decided to wait and shove off in the morning. We should be on Pickwick Lake by Wednesday evening then another 5 or 6 days to home. Kim has to be back at work Monday so I'm taking applications for a replacement.
I guess $8/hour was about right.
ReplyDelete