2020: St Augustine Engine Work

 6 December 2020

No boat travel.

After a quick breakfast, Clark immediately started working on engine room cleanup from yesterday's engine overheat. At 10:00 he had cleared a pathway and requested my help. Upon entering the engine room, I saw pinkish red antifreeze droplets hanging from the ceiling. Besides that, we had antifreeze on the walls, the floor, the engine, a port-side shelf, and various boxes of hardware (screws and such). I went and found a bandana to protect my hair and then went to work cleaning.

I had a list of tasks to work on today - spending the day in the engine room was not on the list, but that is where we both spent the entire day with the exception of coming out for food. With spectacular boating weather outside, it was doubly disappointing to be in the engine room all day. 

After we scrubbed the antifreeze off the walls and all, Clark started on repairs. First, he removed the burned / damaged hose for the antifreeze overflow. He carries spare hoses and found one that could be used as a replacement for the damaged one. 

Damaged / burned hose by overflow tank

As he worked on the engine, I felt like a surgeon's assistant as he requested, and I passed him, various instruments, i.e. tools, to do his various surgeries. At one point, for example, he said he needed a "breaker bar". 

     "What's that?" I asked. 

     "It's in the red toolbox. It's rusty red and has a fork on the end." 

Sorting through the tool box, I found something rusty red with a somewhat forked tip. "Do you mean a crow bar?" 

     "Yes! Not sure why I couldn't remember that name!"

He used that for leverage to retighten the belts following the inspection of the fresh-water pump.

 

Before doing any diagnostics tests on the pump, he would need to top up the antifreeze to replace whatever we lost in steam or spray. Visual inspection showed no liquid in the heat exchanger tank - bone dry. Meanwhile the overflow tank was filled to the tippy top with antifreeze?! 

Very full overflow tank!

He emptied the overflow tank into the heat exchanger tank and then added over a gallon of new liquid to bring the engine coolant up to level. 

After that, he wanted to see if we had seawater coming through. He closed the valve / seacock, inspected the strainer and found no clogs. Then he opened the valve to verify water entered the strainer. It did. He closed the valve / seacock and reassembled the strainer.  That meant he would not need to dive under the boat to look for a blockage. 

Next test: does water flow through the whole engine? Clark disconnected the hose to the exhaust mixer elbow, then had me, with headphones on so I could hear instructions, start the engine. No sooner did I start it than he yelled for me to stop as we had no water flow. Good news - at least the engine started, i.e. it had not seized. Also, looking into the heat exchanger tank, Clark could see that the fluid level remained steady. 

For the next step, Clark disconnected the hose from the seawater pump output. Once again, I started the engine on his command and stopped abruptly when he saw no water coming through the pump. Then he remembered he had closed the valve because he planned to inspect the impellor but decided to run this test first. After he opened the valve, we tried again. Still no water through the pump. Okay, so what's the problem with the pump? 

Meanwhile, we had the smell of exhaust permeating the boat. Having hoses disconnected to observe water flow brought exhaust fumes from the mixer elbow port along for the ride. Two times we ran the engine albeit briefly. That apparently was quite enough. Choke choke cough cough! Open hatches! Open doors! Get some air through! Stay out of the engine room for a few minutes to let things clear then back at it! 

Clark decided we should check the flow of water from the strainer to the seawater pump inlet to check for an internally collapsed hose. Our first run of this test showed no water flowing to the pump. Then he decided we needed to have the hose lower to get below the waterline and water gushed out fast. I had control of the valve and he quickly yelled, "Stop! Stop!" as more water flowed in than his container could contain. Okay, so we have good water flow to the pump! I remarked to Clark that people do not generally consider water gushing into the boat as a good thing!

Next step - pull the cover off the water pump to inspect the impellor. The cover to the impellor came out with weeds on it.

Weeds!

The impellor inside, however, looked normal. 

Poor picture! Impellor is black thing with fins at bottom of picture.
All fins are intact, so good!

Next, he had me almost start the engine, i.e. push the button just long enough to turn over the engine but not start it. "Stop, stop - the impellor is not spinning! "Here is the "smoking gun", he exclaimed! After 7 hours of being in the engine room, we now knew that he needed to remove the water pump to see why the impellor was not spinning. That turned out to be far more difficult than one might expect. None of his tools allowed him proper access to the fourth and final bolt. 

Clark needed a 12mm box wrench / socket to remove the final bolt. The wrench he had available had an angular head - he needed something straight. The socket he had was not a deep enough socket to turn the bolt. He tried an open-end wrench and decided that instead of helping that was adding burrs to the bolt making the situation worse. Frustrating!

Meanwhile, my boating friend Cathy and I were exchanging text messages regarding our current situation. She told her husband, Franklin, who told our friend Don about our frustration. I often, like today, believe that I have a guardian angel watching out for me. Don contacted us and said he was, at that moment, in South Carolina driving south and if we needed anything, he could help us out. After a few texts and some talking, Don agreed that he would stop at Harbor Freight on his way through St. Augustine area tomorrow and pick up the tools we needed! In normal times we would have taken an Uber / Lyft, but these are not normal times!

With that plan in place, we decided to have dinner and call it a night. Without the tools, Clark could go no further.

We had leftovers in the fridge from the meatloaf I served last night. I normally skip a day or two before pulling out leftovers for a change of pace, but I had no energy for starting something new. When I mentioned to Clark that I was glad I had leftovers to serve for dinner, he said, "This is leftovers?" It just goes to confirm what I already knew. If it's edible and not spicy, I can serve him anything and he won't know the difference. 

7 December 2020

No boat travel.

Every Sunday night, almost without fail, Clark stays up until the wee hours of the morning watching reruns of "Castle" that start at midnight and end at 2:00 a.m. Even though he stayed up last night to watch his shows, he was up and on the phone at 8:00 to place an order at Harbor Freight for Don to pick up for him. Then he confirmed with Don that the order would be waiting for him when he got there. 

Don picked up the tools around 10:00 and handed them over to Clark around 10:30. Clark's new tools included a set of S-shaped box wrenches, a high-visibility metric socket set, and a flex head ratcheting wrench set. He used all three types of tools to get the bolt loosened and the pump out, but he got it done! Yay!

Meanwhile, Clark had called a service person he knew at Mastry to discuss the engine / pump repair. When he returned Clark's call, he did so fully expecting that the shaft on the pump was damaged in some way. Clark had expected the same. What Clark had found instead surprised them both. 

When Clark pulled the pump out, the shaft came out bare, i.e. no gear! 

Water pump. Where's the gear?

He reached into the space where the pump sits and pulled out the gear, a nut, a washer, and the key that locks everything in place. Both Clark and the Yanmar rep were super surprised!

Parts that were supposed to be on the shaft
- gear, washer, nut, and key!

Clark thought perhaps he could put it back together, so he started looking at the piece parts and inspecting them for damage. In the process of pulling out the missing parts, Clark came away with a couple of metal splinters in his finger. Ouch! He already had a long scratch on his arm from some other task he was working on yesterday. Even so, he decided to work on the key with a file to see if he could smooth it out. 

On reviewing the work required to get the engine back up and running, the Mastry rep recommended we change the oil. Since Clark found metal particles, they would be in the oil. Clark assigned me the task of figuring out how to get 3 gallons of oil from a store to the boat. I found that NAPA had what he needed and allowed order-on-line with in-store pickup. I just needed to figure out how to transport the purchase. 

The last time I used either Uber or Lyft was probably two years ago. I opened up Uber and fumbled my way through placing a ride request. As soon as I hit the last button, I knew I had not entered the request the way I wanted. It had me going from the boat to NAPA. I wanted the ride to go from NAPA to the boat. 

Immediately I contacted the driver and told him my request was in error and I needed to cancel the request but had not yet figured out how to do so. I explained my error, i.e. that I needed something picked up at the store and brought to me. By the time he finished telling me that he never heard of such  an Uber service, it's rides for people, and I finally got off the phone to cancel, I ended up paying a $5.75 cancellation fee. I should never have called him. I am sure that I could have figured out how to cancel within the two minute time limit if I had not talked to him.

Since he basically told me Uber does not provide a pickup service, I decided to use Lyft which I have mostly used in the past. This time I put the request in with the pickup at the store and the drop off at the boat. The driver called me and said I would have to "add a stop" in order for him to provide that service. "You mean I have to tell you to go from the marina to the store and back to the marina even if I don't want to get in the car with you?" "Yep! You got it!" "But that makes no sense. Why would you drive to the marina just to go to the store then back to the marina?" He said, "I'm not in the habit of offering free services" and hung up on me! 

By this time I was totally freaked out and distraught. I had 3 gallons of motor oil sitting in a NAPA store and no success dealing with two men who were far more rude and obnoxious than my description here portrays. I went to find Clark in tears and literally shaking from my last encounter with the Lyft guy.  As Clark tried to calm me down, my phone rang. 

Verizon tried to "help" by not allowing me to answer the phone - potential spam it decided. Verizon only let me open my phone after the call disconnected. As soon as I could get into my phone, I called the number and got a totally different Lyft driver. Apparently, when the first guy hung up on me, he declined the ride. Just as well because the woman who called me as the replacement was more than happy to go to NAPA to pick up my purchase and bring it to the marina at no surcharge. "No problem, I can do that for you!" When she delivered the goods, I made sure she got 5 *s and a good tip! I decided that the man I got from Lyft was actually looking to double his fee! 

Clark went with me to meet the Lyft driver and carry the oil. Three gallons of oil is heavy! We thanked the driver for her help and carried our prize purchase back to the boat. 

Ultimately, after inspecting and working on the piece parts of the pump, Clark decided that the only viable solution was to order a new pump. He found that the threads on the end of the shaft were too seriously burred to allow the nut to be screwed on. Without a metric tap-and-die set, we cannot fix the threads. 

We still need to cover a good distance to get to Vero Beach and then Marathon. We ended up with a failure in a not-too-bad location. There are many places along our route south where it could / would have been much harder to get this job done. 

For instance, the pump will be hand delivered to the marina tomorrow. A woman who works at the local Yanmar dealership is willing to drive it over to us after she leaves work. The part will, therefore, arrive around 1:00. Until then, we relax. The pump can't be replaced until it arrives, and the oil can't be changed until the pump is in place. 

Meanwhile, the dollars keep racking up. We spent $100 on tools, and at $150 per night at the marina, the cash register is going ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching! The pump itself will be around $500. Just imagine if we were adding labor costs to that!

Our saga will continue once we have the new pump to install!  To be continued . . .

Sunset in St. Augustine, FL