It seemed that the stars were aligning to finally drop our new Beta Marine engine into Andromeda. I hit Astoria at eight in the morning this past Sunday and found our mechanic, Shawn Thur,  tenderly beating the crap out of our propeller while tightening the bolts on his prop puller. Earlier, I had attempted to remove the prop with a large gear puller but succeeded only in bending the bolts on the puller. The prop is in fine condition and will be sent to Sheffield’s for cleaning and conditioning.

Now that’s a prop puller. Shawn is somewhere behind the rudder.

Finally, with the application of some heat, the prop came off the shaft and we proceeded to remove the shaft. Since we had a clear shot in the engine room, it was easy enough to pull the shaft out from inside. The shaft is about seven feet long and was clearly poorly aligned with the transmission. There was a noticeable bow to the shaft.

Warning! Graphic Images of Boat Carnage Follow!

With the prop out of the way, we could now examine the cutless bearing. I wasn’t too surprised that it was worn and that some of the rubber was actually coming away from the bronze tube. Getting the cutless bearing out of what appeared to be a continuous, six foot stern tube proved to be impossible. Our first indication of trouble was when we put a pipe wrench to the tube and the metal crumpled with very slight pressure.

That pink area is the where the zinc has been removed by galvanic corrosion over the decades. The chunks came off with just a light application of torque. This is a classic example of dezincification. That area was where the stainless steel set screw was placed.

Here is a close up of the tube taken with Melissa’s fancy camera. A great example of dezincification for future reference.

With any boat nearing 40 years of age, you have to learn how the boat was built by deduction of the facts before you. At this point, it looked like the stern tube ran continuously from the carrier bearing but, oddly, we could turn the tube exposed outside the boat without seeing the tube turn inside the boat! That meant that a coupling does exist somewhere and we could not see it. Not only that, we could turn the external piece only so far and then it would bind up. Two guys hanging off of a four foot pipe wrench would not budge it. Clearly, we were running out of options. the cutless bearing had to come out. The dezinced stern tube had to come off.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Shawn thought that cutting off part off the stern tube would allow us to grab and remove the cutlass bearing.

With the end of the stern tube cut off, the cutless bearing still would not budge. Now we were getting into a scary place: cutting into the fiberglass so that we could expose the tube and see what the heck was going on in there. The following photos may not be suitable for young children or owners of old boats.

Shawn makes the first cut into the fiberglass. What mysteries will be revealed?

The first cut into the fiberglass finds that it is indeed all glass. no structural members to worry about. Look at the now exposed cutlass bearing. It seems a little pinkish to me which may mean it has never been replaced.

Now it becomes clear. The cutlass bearing was installed in a bronze nipple that threads onto the sterntube. The whole assembly was then glassed in.

While I am not thrilled with the extra effort and destruction required to remove the bearing and nipple, I am not terribly surprised either. The work to repair this damage will be a few hours and we will fair it as pretty as ever. The glassed area is about 4 inches by 6 inches.

The offending nipple and cutless bearing. Shawn thinks this is a fairly standard piece and should be easy to replace.

From the photo above, it might be hard to detect but this piece has a small taper to it. When we attempted to un-thread this from the stern tube, the thicker part hit the glass hull and then it would bind up.

So, armed with the old shaft, cutlass bearing and bronze nipple, shawn will head to Sheffields Marine Propeller to get parts. Of course, this forestalled the actual installation of the engine. But let us cast a last, longing glance upon this thing of beauty.

It was hard to see this drive away without dropping it into the boat. Note that we opted for the hi-rise exhaust elbow.

I like the easy control panel connector you see below the air filter housing. All engine connections are on the starboard side of the engine.

It is going to be a little awkward to get to the oil and fuel filters on the starboard side. There will be plenty of room around the engine though.

Sheffields fabricated these beautiful new rails for the engine. Sorry for the blinding whiteness of our engine room.

Shawn did drop off the engine rails and since we did not install the engine, I had the opportunity to prime and paint them.

I also received the new control panel and cable. That prompted me to remove the old Control panel and cable. I will have to enlarge the current opening to fit in the new panel so another trip with all of my implements of destruction will be in order.

The new panel above with the old panel below.

I anticipate another go this weekend. Shawn isn’t too keen on lugging around the engine in the back of his truck and I would like to have the engine in place so that I can start to place the raw water strainers, fuel filters and control cables. We still haven’t figured out exactly how best to approach dropping the engine into the room but you can be sure I will have photos.

Diesel Socks. An excellent name for a rock band? Agreed, but stay with me.

I tootled on down to Astoria this past Friday, full of turkey and ambitions to knock out about twenty projects that realistically will take a month to complete. I’m okay with failing utterly on most of my goals and I did get some good work done. But life kept happening, distracting me from my noble intentions. Stupid life.

First on the agenda was to completely remove the last of the hardware from our increasingly blank equipment panel in the engine room. All that was left were  the fuel filters and the raw water strainer. Once those were off, I applied BligeKote to those last areas and let that dry over night.

Tabula Rasa

While the BilgeKote fumes worked their magic on my little grey cells, I disassembled the Racor 120 fuel filters and cleaned them up as best I could. These filters are perfectly serviceable and with new A1 fuel line would protect our new engine well. But I really like the drop in cartridge style filters like the Racor 500s. They are much easier to replace and visually inspect. It has also been pointed out that the cartridges are much cheaper.

My first world problem. Keep these perfectly fine filters or replace them with even better ones.

Now doubt is creeping in. Should I reinstall these now and make do or buy the new ones and be done with it? Of course, until I can make that decision, I can’t put the existing units back on my pretty white wall.

Okay, let’s forget the fuel filters. I’ll just put the raw water strainer back on after the paint dries. At least one thing will be reinstalled before I leave. But… What if the raw water inlet is further forward than the strainer outlet? Then the hose will make a tortuous bend and my life will be ruined! I can’t possibly make so momentous a decision as the location of the raw water strainer without investigating the Beta Marine drawings and researching optimal height above/below the waterline,  plus leering over current engine installations. Before you know it, it’s one in the morning and all I’ve done is paint about two square feet of a wall.

Diesel Socks? Oh, right. One of the things Melissa and I have really enjoyed on Andromeda is the Sig Marine Diesel Heater. It is mounted on the forward bulkhead in the saloon and just makes the whole boat a warm, dry oasis in the midst of a howling, rainy Astoria winter.

So, while pouring over filters, strainers and engine data, the little diesel heater kept me company. When I went to bed, I turned down the heat and drifted off to sleep knowing that a storm was blowing in from the Pacific and already feeling, and hearing the wind singing in our rigging. I have installed a brand new CO detector right by the heater so that danger is mitigated but I did not anticipate what would happen next.

As the wind increased through the night (a max speed of 44 knots at 3:00 AM), a down draft blew out the fire in the heater. That isn’t too big of a deal except that in the morning it was rather cold and the burner had half a cup of unburned fuel standing in it. Now my to-do list suddenly includes clearing the fuel from the system and trying to re-light the heater. And making coffee.

For the uninitiated, diesel heaters are pretty safe and simple, but they can be messy. When you try to drain half a cup of oil from the heater, four ounces go into the container, four ounces go under the container and the rest goes onto your hands, hair, underpants and the tip of your nose. After changing underpants, I tried to restart the fire with a now relatively empty burner. Alas, the continued high winds kept blowing the feeble flame out before it could heat the chamber sufficiently for proper combustion.

The culprit.

Looking inside, I could see that there was a lot of carbon build up in there. Since a warm fire seemed to be off the table, I elected to remove the burner and take it home for a good cleaning. That will surely fix this problem in the future and I will once again be productively working on the boat.

After removing a few screws and then re-installing those screws so that I could remove the right screws, the burner came away from the heater. Immediately the remaining four ounces of fuel left inside began to leak on to me, my fresh underpants and the sole of the boat. I quickly placed a plastic trash bag under the burner to gain time and figure out how to get this mess out of my boat. Hopping up into the cockpit, I grabbed a five gallon bucket and put the burner inside and placed it back in the cockpit.

Now turning my attention to the carnage I had wrought, I noticed little shiny dabs of oily spots all over the sole of the salon and galley. I had managed to step in a nice puddle of fuel and then track it through the middle third of the boat thereby distributing the last four ounces of fuel from the burner. That was my last pair of socks.

I will say that diesel does impart a lustrous shine on old teak and holly soles. But it just doesn’t feel safe to have a slippery, combustible oil on our sole. So I cleaned that mess up and tried to salvage my day by installing a new ABYC compliant 30 amp shore power breaker.

I shall end this post by showing you that I did clean the burner and it was way over due. I now suspect that the extraordinary carbon buildup inside the burner was largely responsible for its inability to efficiently burn. I am looking forward to re-installing everything and once again enjoying our cozy little fireplace.

The black pile of rock is most of the carbon build up that I chipped and ground from inside the now clean burner.

Next weekend I will start anew. Fresh socks? Check. Fresh underpants? Check. 2 projects down, 18 to go.