Wednesday, November 29, 2017
0 miles 0.1 Engine Hours

Work day:
Clean the heat exchanger.
Change the Injector Pump Oil.
Top off the batteries.
Re-crimp the hot water heater wiring with double crimp connectors.
Mount the fresh water pump.
Tighten the rocker cover screws.
Tighten the alternator belt.
Clean the Engine raw water strainer
Clean the Heat Pump raw water strainer
Wipe down the engine down.

But before any of that, we have crows landing and squawking on our boat this morning while we are trying to have breakfast. One is so brave he lands on our deck right next to our port side door. I finally decide to scare them away and open the door to find the crow had found our goody bag left by the dockgaster this morning. Inside a newspaper and two blueberry muffins!. The crow pecked right though the paper bag and ate right much of Susan’s. He didn’t touch mine. And, he didn’t read the newspaper either.

Back to maintenance. Liquid Therapy needs constant attention. I check the engine just like in the movie CAPTAIN RON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOPl21EVhaU I learned a lot about docking watching that movie too. Anyone with a boat should watch the instructional movie Captain Ron.

Clean the heat exchanger. Primer-the heat exchanger is kind of like the radiator in your car. Only instead of air blowing across the radiator, a heat exchanger uses sea water. So, I like to take the end caps off and spray it out with fresh water every now and again.

Change the Injector Pump Oil - The injector pump is a precision pump that squirts fuel into each cylinder under 2500 PSI extreme pressure. When that pressure is reached it forces the actual injector to pop open until the precise amount of fuel sprays into the cylinder and ignites creating power. Our old Lehman engine has a separate oil reservoir for the injector pump that is scheduled for every 50 hours to be changed. That comes very fast while cruising. I had about 80 hours on this oil and it always comes out clear. So, running over 50 hours is not that big a deal. I met a looper cruiser ( http://greatloop.org ) that had done the entire great loop ( about 1 year to complete ) that didn’t know about changing the injector pump oil and his motor was running fine. Anyhow, scratch that off the list.

Top off the batteries. L.T. has four 6 volt golf cart batteries for powering the boat. These are conventional batteries and need water added every once in a while. These batteries have been getting quite a work out powering all of our 12 volt and 120VAC needs with our inverter. It’s a balancing act of how much you take out of the batteries and how much you put in to replenish them. WE don’t have a wind generator or solar panels. As we travel with our motor we have a 90 amp alternator that keeps up with our battery loads.

A few blogs back you may have read about me replacing the 120VAC hot water heater. I didn’t have the kind of crimp connectors I wanted in my spares. So, today I re-crimped the electrical connections with my preferred connectors.

Hummm. Same time I put in the hot water heater I had to undo the fresh water pump. I’m beginning to think the water pump really doesn’t need to be mounted. But I positioned it and refastened to the bilge deck.

Tighten the rocker cover screws - One thing our motor does is leak oil around the rocker cover gasket. It is a judgement call of how tight the screws should be. I’ve replaced the gasket once and did not use any gasket sealant. The motor guy says don’t do that. I think I need to do that. If you tighten the screws too tightly you distort the rocker cover and it will leak oil in between the screws. So, it’s not much oil that is lost and I have oil pads to absorb any drips.

Tighten the alternator belt - I put a new belt on prior to starting our trip and it has loosened up. That happens.

Clean the Engine raw water strainer - There was only a little bit of debris in the strainer. I worry about the strainer getting clogged by some of the floating weed we travel through. The through hull fitting is about 1 1/2’ below the water and most weeds are on the top are pushed away by the bow wake. Also if we are aground the water pickup is about 2’ from the bottom so the engine will not get starved for cooling water and overheat. I still check the strainer after a lot of use or short periods of lots of weeds.

Clean the Heat Pump raw water strainer - You have to have a good flow of water through the two heat pumps for the transfer of heat to occur from the water to the air in the air handler. If the flow is reduced by debris in the strainer the heat pumps will freeze the water trying to flow through the system. Take too much heat out of water and IT FREEZES. So, you don’t want restrictions on water flow.

Start the engine up to check for any leaks. Check!

Wipe down the engine down. - Makes it look pretty. I actually look for oil leaks, water leaks, any signs of overheating. I just try to stay ahead of any potential problems.

Today’s picture is taken inside the bag that the crow pecked though and ate some of Susan’s muffin. Mine is intact. HA

Going to check outside first thing tomorrow morning for our goody bag before the crow shows up.