This and that..

Lots of activities with the boat in the last weeks. Grinding and filling followed by another round of grinding and filling. The list in the bow that protects the hull from small impacts with rocks and stuff was a concern for me, I knew that I could not just let it stay there and paint over it so it has to come out.

This stainless list needs to go and then put back on. 

The only problem is that this list is through bolted, nothing wrong with that fact but it makes it a pain in the a** to get off from the boat. It has not leaked but there is a small area that has been bent somewhere down the line, so I need to get it straightened somewhere. After the hull has received all primer layers I will bolt that list back on with generous amounts of Sikaflex 291 and get a layer of antifouling on it, maybe even some primer. I already purchased new bolts, washers and nuts for it. A4 grade of course.

The washer, this side up... 

The washer you see above is the one that goes under the injectors in the injector bore. During the first visit to the dealer they said that these are not needed. The injector shop however had a different view and so after studying the manual the dealer ordered these for me. Expensive stuff I would say, these washers (12) and copper rings (12) and washers to the fuel lines (26) cost about 80€. Well, in honesty that price also covered numerous calls to their mechanics to determine which way these are to be set in the bores, finally we cleared it. For anyone who is doing the same stuff the picture is correct.

Hempel dealership in my livingroom? 

I have bought some of the paints that are needed soon. Four buckets of Light Primer (with hardeners) and paint for the new waterline, Brilliant gloss (black and white). The solvents and Epoxy Filler are not in this picture as they are stored in my car, which by the way looks like a storage for a boatyard at the moment.

Maybe we will see some warmer weather during the next weekend so I could get all the filling and fairing done and also do the repairs to the list at the bottom.

News from the injector shop

As suspected, the injectors on the port engine were fine and within specs, not so with the right engine. Out the six, three were leaking. This is what I had suspected since the symptoms fit perfectly. Well, maybe not the white smoke as much since it was barely noticeable and anyway masked by the cold temperatures we had at the end of the season.

Can't wait to get them back from the shop and put them back on, in the meantime I need to clean the injector bores and check if the old washers that are supposed to be under the injectors are in fact there and if so get them out and put new ones back. I will also get new copper washers for the fuel lines, so everything will be up to specs.. As it should be...

Injectors, out and about...

4 degrees, wet and miserably weather, so what to do? Naturally the joy of boating is that one never really has enough free time to just kick back and relax. Tons of stuff to do, today it was the injectors. During my recent trip to Volvo Penta dealer they told me that I wont be needing any special tools in order to remove the injectors From TAMD 40B engines. So ahead I went and tackled the removal process.

Port engine, all was nice and neat here.

The starboard engine was slightly harder to start than the port one last summer, and as the engines have 600+ hours (after rebuild) in them it was time to get them out. On the starboard side the injectors were pretty damn dirty and harder to get loose. I needed to use the 17mm wrench to wiggle them ever so slightly so that I could pull them away.

First one out  (lousy picture)

My phone is not the sharpest of the bunch and It was difficult to hold the injector and try get a picture of it while holding a piece of paper over some wounds that I managed to get while opening the bolts. 

I would call this dirty too

As you can see there was quite a bit of crud or soot on them. So off they go to the shop and once I get them back they will be nice and new. I am also pretty confident that these injectors are the main culprit to the uneven fuel burn between the engines. As stated, the starboard engine was slightly harder to start and I am hoping to get even this symptom fixed by fixing the injectors. We will see about that in the spring then.

Holes and lots of them..

Today I finally installed the anchorwinch, bolted in its place and hooked up all the electronics. Tested it briefly so that it works but as I could not remember the procedure needed to "zero out" the brains of the unit I decided to go back another day to reel in the new line to the drum. Well, at least the anchorwinch is not sitting in the livingroom anymore, wife will be happy. 

As the winch was talen care of I had a look at the bottom since it has now been several days without freezing temperatures. Surely enough I saw moisture weeping from one of those places where the previous owner had done repairs to the bottom lists. 

Do not drill a hole to your boat, drill 30 of them...

Thanks for the effort and kudos for doing the fix. If only they had done it properly. There is foam used to fill the list and then it has been laminated over with solid glass, unfortunately there has been some damage along the way and the repair has worked fine aftwards but not so in the other direction.

The foam is wet for about 90 centimeters from the fix towards the bow, so not much left to do but get the drill out and drill some 30 or so holes into the outer laminate, followed by intense picking of the foam with anything I can fit in there. I have already done same repair to two other areas but this is the biggest fix of them all.

Some passers by were looking at me in a strange way when they saw that I am drilling holes to my boat, well maybe some of them knew what I was doing.

Batteries and winter - self discharge..

Last time the batteries were charged to full was the 27th of January. Now that the power is back on in the yard I hooked the cables up and was anxious to know how much juice they will take.

In roughly two months time while having the temperatures varying from hell freezing over all the way to nice sunny spring days when the snow is starting to go my charger pumped 11,8 amp hours to the battery bank.

Nearly 2% of capasity, considering the boat has three times 220amp batteries. To me this tells that they are propably fine. There may be inaccuracies or that I did not get them totally full but still...