Greg arrived early and had my freshly cleaned oil cooler with it's shiny new threaded screw holes complete with new end-cap bolts installed in a jiffy. I added oil to replace what had been in the oil cooler and oil filter prior to removal then we fired that 90 hp beast up and let it run for a few minutes then shut her down. Greg wanted to check the oil level again seeings how the oil I added had now been pumped throughout the lubrication system. However, we heard a dripping noise coming from the front part of the engine up near the belts and thought it was oil, but then Greg said he'd found a pinhole leak on the oil cooler further back, it was still spraying water. Turned out to be a rather simple solution, he removed the end cap, took it to the shop and plugged the hole with solder then reinstalled. We fired that baby up and took her for a test run. I started out slow and as the temp came up I'd raise the rpms, eventually I was running at my normal 2300 and the temp was holding at 175 degrees... YaHoo!!!
We are expecting some big storms this evening so rather than remain at the end of a dock with no cover Chris has allowed me to pull into a covered slip, so as I'm approaching the assigned slip I here some guy hollering at somebody, but he couldn't be hollering at me because I'm doing a beautiful job with my approach. The closer I get to having the nose in the slip the louder he gets and then he starts blowing his horn and I'm thinking what the heck man I'm trying to concentrate on this fantastic approach I've got going here. Finally I realize he's trying to tell me I'm too tall... my mast is about to crash into the dock roof. Holy-cow, I never thought about looking up... I put her in reverse and eased back out into the fairway and thanked him profusely. We located another slip on a dock with a higher roof and I got her in there, although it wasn't near as pretty as the other approach.
Ok, we are now tied up in a covered slip and Greg want's to look for the oil drip... what? I thought you said it was the oil cooler end-cap which you just fixed. Nope, that was not the cause of the dripping, that was spraying. Jeez, so now he's looking but instead of finding an oil leak he discovered that a copper pipe coming from the raw-water pump and going to the oil cooler has a pinhole leak and is spraying water to the underside of the engine which then drips into the bilge. That's the drip we had heard. This pipe is in a bad location as far as accessibility goes... there ain't none. Plus he and Chris are worried that a couple of bolts will break off as happened on the oil cooler. So, now we start talking about options... one of which called for pulling the engine. We are sitting in about 15 feet of water and that's just about how far my heart sank. I started getting that gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach much like I'd had back in Melbourne when things were not going so good. I think Chris could see how pale I was and this must have caused the MacGyver part of his brain to kick into gear (I've been bragging about all the MacGyver type fixes he's been coming up with). Anyway, he popped out with another approach which did not involve pulling the engine and should be fairly simple to implement. Greg threw in his two cents worth and made it even simpler. Tomorrow they will do basically what "T" and Alan had done with my fuel supply line back in Columbus, they are going to by-pass about 90 percent of the copper pipe with a high quality flexible hose. They both knew that this sounds like a great solution to me because I started getting some color back in my face.
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