Diesel Engines

[Carrera]

The old boat is fibre glass. I took my dad to have a look at it the other week and he turned pale. He kept mumbling repeatedly, "This is going to be a hell of a lot of work!"

Hold yer horses The rubbing stakes do need replacing - they're damp and beginning to decay.
The paint on the panel? Yes, this has been a major problem. The panel contains the ammeter, horn button, switches, ignition and various components. I figured that before rewiring it would be a good idea to paint the wood but that proved more difficult than you might imagine. For some reason, the board won't take gloss and then I began to suspect the solvent based paint was very reactive to even minute traces of white spirit on the brush.
Finally I used a flat black and washed the brush in water before drying totally. Now it has come out O.K.
Now it's time to rewire the panel back into place but with brand new wires. Next comes the battery I need to buy. Then I'll start the engine up.
Incidentally I joined a boating forum on the internet where you can talk shop with fellow boaters.[/QUOTEForget the instrument panel.Get the engine running.Get a can of ether spray and use it,in moderation,directly into the air intake.Bleed the injectors first...the books you have should show you how...a charged battery,clean injectors,clean fuel and a clean tank will do more to get you underway than painting the instrument panel.Painting the instrument panel is important,but can wait until other areas of the boat have been checked and rectified where necessary.OK?
Once the engine is fired up nd running with some degree of regularity,you can get round to the really fun parts of boat ownership,like painting (Sysiphus could sympathise with this,but when you have to paint the bastards,you won't give a rat's about some mouldy old Werris creek who never lifted a paint brush,even to pay for his daughter's weddings)
Get down and get dirty,if the bloody thing isn't running when you first try to start it,and it's not running when you get the shirts and decide to head for the pub,then you are still part of the way down the path to u,and then,and only then,should you attend to the rest of the innumerable challenges of boat ownership.
Is she glass,or glass over ply?

 

[stevebaby]

The old boat is fibre glass. I took my dad to have a look at it the other week and he turned pale. He kept mumbling repeatedly, "This is going to be a hell of a lot of work!"

LOL,who hasn't said that when they bought a bloody boat!
Having acquired the vessel and evaluated its condition and calculated the costs of restoration,you can be thankful that you have progressed quite some way up the learning curve of boat ownership.
On the one hand,you are too far up to go back..
Then again...you are too far up to go back...bvut there's no time.. limit

 

[stevebaby]

The old boat is fibre glass. I took my dad to have a look at it the other week and he turned pale. He kept mumbling repeatedly, "This is going to be a hell of a lot of work!"

LOL,who hasn't said that when they bought a bloody boat!
Having acquired the vessel and evaluated its condition and calculated the costs of restoration,you can be thankful that you have progressed quite some way up the learning curve of boat ownership.
On the one hand,you are too far up to go back..
Then again...you are too far up to go back...bvut there's no time.. limit

 

[EoinC]

I have a cruising boat,34' sloop rig,planked with huon and celery top with spotted gum frames,white beech deck...

Sounds good, SB. The cutter rig sloop we had in WA / NT was built in Pittwater by a shipwright as his retirement boat. He and his wife sailed around the Top End on their way to the America's Cup in Fremantle, before heading off around the World.
They got as far as Broome, when she heard that their daughter was dropping a sprog back in Sydney. End result - Mum gets homesick, Mum nags Dad, Dad gives up and swaps his life dream for a 4WD, Mum & Dad drive back to Sydney.
The young bloke who did the deal didn't know anything about boats, but figured that it's a yacht, therefore it's worth a lot of money. I don't think he realised that Broome is not known as the Mecca of yacht sales (or sails).
The boat (Samba) sat on the Customs mooring at Broome for around 2 years, gathering a veritable reef of barnacles along the way.
Young Cuzzy-bro never took it out sailing as he didn't know how. Finally he reached a stage where he needed some money, so Samba had to go. My mate and I found out about it and made a trip down to Broome. The timing was perfect. There was a cyclone passing offshore, making for a nasty chop. We took Cuzzy-bro out on the turps the night before we went out to inspect Samba. In the morning, heading out in the Zodiac, he was sick as a dog. Samba was bouncing away on the mooring and looked like a bag of shite. We opened the main hatch and many months worth of stale air and diesel fumes came wafting out. Cuzzy-bro assumed the fish-watching position and left us to scour for the good & bad.
Samba had been sitting there so long in the warm currents that there was a whole atoll's worth of ecosystem surrounding her. She had a little water in the bilges, but no more than is healthy. The work that had gone into her was astounding. She was carvel-planked with a dynal sheath. All the rigging was good. The fit-out inside was very nice - all teak, with a kero stove, quarter berths, V-berth and fold-down table for another berth. She had a BMW marine diesel single which ran on the smell of an oily rag. All the sails were in good nick, from a storm main & jib through to a drifter. She also had a roll-floor Zodiac with a little Mariner that was hardly used. When the shipwright had traded in his dream, he walked off her and left everything behind - charts for the whole Eastern, Northern and Western seaboard, books, sextant, autohelm, depthsounder, radio beacon finder, wet weather gear....
We ended up getting her for a song, paying Cuzzy-bro cash that day (while he was still in recovery mode) and sailed her back up North a week later. She got sailed between Broome to the West and Gove to the East, along with Scott Reef, Darwin and many jaunts around the Buccaneer Archipeligo.
At one stage we pulled the BMW out to do an overhaul, and didn't get it back in for many months. Samba sailed flawlessly without the aid of an engine. We made a set of lazy-jacks so that the main could be easily reefed while sailing single-handed during the cyclone season. The 2 of us ended up taking her out to sea during a cyclone as the mooring we had set was exposed to the North-East (where the cyclones come from) and there was no sheltered anchorage where we were based. She rode out the big seas confidently in deep water, with just a storm jib up, the hatches battened and us down below drinking rum - Felt like being in a cork. She would roll, but the full keel and the round bilges made the movement easy - No worries.
One of the best experiences was when we careened her to put on anti-foul at a little Bay called Paradise Beach on Koolan Island. We waited for the king tides (11 metre movement), sailed her into the Bay on high tide, ran the main's halyard out to a tree and just cranked her over as the tide went out. We had a big party going on, with plenty of bevvies flowing, and proceeded to strip and undercoat one side of the hull. When the tide came back in ad refloated her, we spun her around and did the same to the other side, then back again for more coats. Over the course of a couple of days, we had a freshly anti-fouled yacht, ready to go and pollute the oceans, and a bunch of sunburnt, alcohol-sodden seafarers.
I ended up leaving Samba behind when I went to ride my pushie around Indonesia, while my mate (along with his wife) carried on with her, around the Top End. Last I saw of Samba was when I paid a visit to her in Darwin Harbour on my way back to NZ from PNG. She was looking pretty forlorn as my mate hadn't been able to get down to her for a long time. He ended up selling her to someone when he left Darwin and I haven't heard anything since. I've had a look for her on the internet a few times, but SWMBO would definitely have something (bad) to say if I find Samba and try to sell the idea of reunification.
Holy Shite! I started out just saying "Sounds good, SB" and ended up typing the minutes of a Freudian Nautical Therapy session - sorry, fella's...

 

[Carrera]

The plan is to wait till the cold passes and then refit my panel and rewire all the ingnition. At the same time, I need to drain the oil from the sump and then change the oil filter and maybe drain the sedementer.
While the weather has been so bad I've been reading some books on diesels so there are things I need to find out by taking a good look at the engine. Probably I have a distributor-type injection pump and the solenoid should be located on that. I imagine the injection pump is driven from the cambelt directly.
To bleed the sytem of air or water I've found one or two options. There ought to be valves located on the filter but I have to take a good look at it all.
Fortunately, my boat is moored a long way off so each time I travel out to work on it, I ride my bike and can work a training routine around the trip. I have my tools on the boat so that makes the rides easier.

LOL,who hasn't said that when they bought a bloody boat!
Having acquired the vessel and evaluated its condition and calculated the costs of restoration,you can be thankful that you have progressed quite some way up the learning curve of boat ownership.
On the one hand,you are too far up to go back..
Then again...you are too far up to go back...bvut there's no time.. limit