Week Four

Last week I spent a lot of time cleaning out bilges. I also got to spend a couple hours in the fabrication shop replicating a kelp cutter for a stabilizer. I removed the transmission from the engine I pulled out of the gill netter a couple weeks ago. One of my favorite jobs this week was doing some small systems installs. It consisted of installing a bilge pump and engine room blower fan, plumbing and wiring the two systems, and installing through hulls. The bilge pump was in a challenging position to mount due to the engine oil pan interference as seen in the picture below. The last thing I did for the week was flushing out the keel cooler on the gill netter with some barnacle buster to maintain optimal heat transfer. I am quite amateur when it comes to basic wiring so this week I learned more about 12 volt systems and how they work.  I logged 32.31 hours last week for a grand total of 109.2 hours.

Fabrication of the kelp cutter alongside the original.

Finished product

Engine room blower motor install.

Bilge pump install

Keel cooler flushing

Week three

Last week I continued to wrap up the cooling diagnostics project. I learned how to use a Venturi vacuum bleeder as shown in the picture. We still had higher temps then desired on the starboard engine. After taking apart multiple cooling components, we concluded the exhaust manifolds were bad. The rest of the week finished our with some non mechanical work such as bottom painting, waxing, and sea trials. I documented a total of 38.16 hours.

Cooling diagnostics

Last week I worked on a few different projects. First off, I finished the final details of the engine pull I completed the week before last consisting of removing hydraulic and wash down pumps, draining of the hydraulic system, removal of main shaft, main shaft packing box and cutlass bearing, and rudder cutlas bearing and hanging hoses for ease cleaning and gel-coating  I couldn't remove the main shaft coupling due to corrosion so I ended up cutting it off. Another project I started at the end of the week was diagnosing a coolant circulatory issue on the engine pictured below. The starboard exhaust manifold was overheating due to a lack of coolant flow on that side. After disassembly, we concluded the circ. pump wasn't getting completely bled of air. The solution I came up with was to drill and tap the top of the circ. pump for a 1/8" peacock. I tested it today and the problem was fixed. One thing I learned last week was these Chris Craft engines are installed "backwards" in comparison to most marine applications. By "backwards" I mean the flywheel is facing the bow end of the boat and the number one cylinder is facing aft. Therefore the marine gear (transmission) is attached on the "front" (number one cylinder end) of the engine not behind the flywheel. Weird.....  I logged a total of 38.73 hours last week.

Engine with circulatory problem.

Picture of circ. pump before tapping.

Circ. pump tapped with 1/8" pipe threads.

As stated above, I ended up using a peacock for ease of bleeding rather then a 1/8" plug as shown in the picture.

Corroded shaft coupling with the shaft partially cut.

Volvo engine pull out of a Gillnetter

I am interning at LaConner Maritime Service out of LaConner Washington. The post covers a task completed in the last week of December.  Here are some pictures of before, during, and after the engine pull. The job included disconnecting of exhaust, propeller shaft, hydraulic and wash down pumps, fuel lines, wiring, and coolant lines. I also removed the exhaust shroud and muffler. We had to use the torch to get a couple of the motor mount bots off. The project was very straight forward and not my first pull but if I had to say what I learned, don't be afraid to get trigger happy with the sawzall. No hours were documented since the start of the quarter.

Picture one is the project before I started. Picture two is my setup for the first pull attempt which moved the engine about half way out before clearance became an issue. I blocked the engine in place and cut the deck out more as depicted in picture three. Picture five shows some of the corrosion I was dealing with.

First Test Post

The beginning