I've mentioned this modification several times in recent posts, putting off the long-winded description until I could describe an actual fix. That's finally come to pass, but those of you who fade when mechanical discussions surface may be well served by skipping this entry. It's up to you, but you're hereby officially warned.

This topic was introduced in my May 3rd entry, Of cranks and other things in which I embarked upon a rant about how I'd finally abandoned cranky old Larry Stewart after suffering too much of his abuse and was waiting for a quote from MER Equipment for designing and machining parts. That was for the high-tech solution of replacing the standard v-belt with a fancy serpentine system like they put in most modern automobiles. It didn't take long for MER to come back with two options, either: six weeks and two thousand dollars or; two weeks and three thousand dollars. It took me even less time, though, to decide that THAT was SO not hap'nin'!

Just for grins, here's a repeat picture of the old system for comparison:

So off I went to my old buddy, Jens Hjorth, who I've mentioned in conjunction with several other Mabroukan modifications. He and I came up with what seemed like a simple approach to modifying the system, though still tending toward the Serpentine Solution. I bought a new alternator with the proper serpentine-type pulley on it (I need a spare alternator for cruising anyway) that would give us the dimensions for making new crank and water pump pulleys.

It took about a week for Jens and Quin to decide it'd be prohibitively expensive to machine the relatively complicated serpentine pulleys from scratch and they couldn't find parts that were close enough to what was needed to just suffer a little remanufacturing to fit. The Serpentine Solution turned out to be just a pretty, slithery idea up in a tree that had tempted me to eat the apple. Good sense seems to have won out.

With a little more discussion, Jens and I decided that if I could get duplicates of the pulleys already on my engine, we could adapt the system to add a second v-belt for the alternator. Even though Perkins has stopped supporting my 4-154 engine (I'm sure that'll provide a source for future tales of woe), I had already tracked down the company that bought the rights to remanufacture parts and ordered a new fresh water pump from them. Going back to their order desk, it turned out that they had some pulleys that closely resembled the ones on my engine. I ordered new water pump and crank pulleys and we were off to the races. It doesn't sound nearly so sexy as adding a serpentine belt, but there's something to be said for the neanderthal approach.

It took about a week to get those delivered to Jens and only a few days for him to machine them. I picked the "new" parts up on Saturday afternoon, spent Sunday and Monday assembling some additional parts and supplies and painting up the various components, then got the system all installed and operating yesterday.

Amazement abounds! Things went very quickly and smoothly once I abandoned the fancy solution. I am so, SO happy and can now move on to more exotic projects and places.

I've been working on odd clean-up jobs in between doing Mabrouka's various improvements. One that had been ignored too long was this year's spring cleaning of the house top, deck, and hull topsides. The Pacific Northwest climate is very conducive to growing green things on boats. Most of them start out as some version of slime whose spores have emigrated from the area's multitudinous plants and trees. Drifting in on rain and on wind, they establish refugee camps in the grain of unvarnished teak and in the microscopic pores of oxidized fiberglass and flaking paint, soon oozing out in subtle shades of brown and green. Left long enough to its own devices, the ooze will blanket an entire boat.

Though Mabrouka's crop had mostly developed only into a general haze that might make you squint to see her as if through a Chinese urban smog, it was beginning to hang in discrete waterfalls in a few chronically moist spots. Mabrouka, having been in need of a paint job for many years, has pores that are MACROscopic, so Mother Nature has a field day recruiting her to join Puget Sound's rain forest. Believe me, it's possible. I've actually seen boats that have been neglected long enough to have mushrooms growing from their teak. It's truly heartbreaking to see!

Even though I've taken one of those green, scrubby-paddy-kinda-thingies to the house top now and then, the one really effective cleaning method is a power washer. Without one of my own, I am subject to the generosity of more well-endowed neighbors for access to one of these wonderful devices. While waiting for my dock mate to borrow one from a friend of his, then complicitely looking the other way while I absconded with it, a stray turned up at the dumpster the other day. Heck! It looked intact, lacking only one leg and missing a patch of fur here and there, so I walked it down to Mabrouka and hooked it up for a test run. Ta da! It worked.

Over a period of about a week I spent three or four blasting sessions getting Mabrouka all prettied up! That is, until one day when my spraying zen was disturbed by that metallic smell of an electrical fire wafting by. I stood up and surveyed the marina around me. No flames. No smoke. I stuck my nose down into Mabrouka's salon. No flames. No smoke. The aroma drifted away on the breeze. Back to spraying, the smell reappeared in a few minutes. This time I happened to look over at the power washer and saw curls of smoke drifting out of the case.

Dang it! If it could have only lasted two or three more hours I would have been done. So, the machine was sent back up to the dumpster, only inside it this time rather than next to it. Its untimely (though not necessarily early) demise left about ten feet of deck and the whole port side of the boat looking scruffy. At least it was on the side away from the dock.

A couple of days later I borrowed Len Hodges' machine and knocked off the rest of the job. This required turning Mabrouka around in the slip so I wouldn't have to walk on water to blast the season's slime off the port side. That was an adventure in itself with the engine out of commission, but was accomplished with the help of a couple of neighbors. Now Mabrouka's all beautiful again, lacking only (!?!) paint and varnish. The earliest THAT might happen is next year in Mexico.

The bow pulpit has vexed me for years. Mabrouka has a club-footed staysail (i.e. one with a boom) that I've hardly ever used because the side bars on the pulpit kept the boom from swinging out far enough for the sail to be useful outside of a very narrow range of headings. Since I do need to have that smaller sail available for heavy weather, I've recently replaced it. Heaven knows how the old one got sooooo worn out with sooooo little use. That meant I was finally forced to do something about the interference.

I'd been trying for weeks to get a stainless steel guy down to the boat to discuss modifications, but he never returned my calls. Eventually I got a referral from the Coho Ho Ho organizer for someone who moonlighted in stainless steel, so I called him up. Chris was pretty easy to get down to the boat but, as I later determined, was not really equipped to do the job. All I wanted to do was to tweak the existing configuration, supposedly just bending the upper, aft corners out a bit so they wouldn't inhibit the swing of the staysail boom.








Keeping in mind that one of Chris' first questions was, "Do you care very much how it looks?", the project did not come to a good conclusion through his craftsmanship. We tried, but he only had brute force methods in his tool bag that resulted in something that looked more like a head-on collision than an intentional modification. I cut the project unceremoniously short and sent Chris on his way with a little cash for his trouble.











In the end, I cut the aft-most section of pulpit completely off the boat and extended the lifeline forward to meet the remaining stub ends. It actually looks pretty good and gives the added benefit of easing the passage up onto the bow sprit platform.

This post is all about cranks. No, I know you can think of several different ways to take that word, but try to resist. I'm not talking about male parts, nor about illicit substances. This is about an aspect of personality and about parts related to the crank shaft on my engine.

Many years ago I replaced my standard engine alternator with a high output unit. The old had failed and I guess I just thought, "If I have to replace it anyway, why not? More power! That's a good thing, right?" Basically yes, but as an engineer I should have known that I wouldn't be getting anything for free. The message has been driven home over the years by many worn out alternator belts that had to be replaced at what, more often than not, came with supremely inconvenient timing.

The thing is, more amperage out of the alternator requires more engine power to the alternator. More power to the alternator puts more load on the alternator belt and more torque on the alternator belt pulley which demands more friction from the belt. The original configuration with only one belt wouldn't take that much friction, so I have worn out a lot of alternator belts over the years. My solution has just been to tighten the belt as much as I could. It's probably only luck and inadvertent over-design that's kept me from burning out alternator and water pump bearings as well.

Last spring's haul-out gave me a couple of extra weeks in the yard, part of which was spent with engine repair. The best local source of knowledge for my old Perkins 4-154 diesel engine is found inside the head of one Larry Stewart aka Stewart Marine Engine and Machine Works. Larry had been recommended by Roland, the project manager for my work at Seaview Boat Yard, although that recommendation had been dosed with a large helping of salt. Roland had obvious respect for Larry's knowledge, but he refused to work with him himself except in the direst of circumstances. Forewarned is fore-armed, so I went to Stewart Marine in a cautious frame of mind.

Stepping inside the front door, you are immediately smeared in essence of diesel. Herds of greasy iron parts stampede over the counters while old receipts and parts tags dodge about to avoid being trampled, though largely failing in the attempt. Along the walls are shelves full of pulleys, pumps, exhaust manifolds and who-knows-what that corral several more head of shelves displaying a scrawny inventory of miscellaneous parts for sale, ...filter elements, strainers, odds and ends. Bits of wall that aren't festooned with gaskets and engine belts display the type of poster art that engineers and mechanics can't express any other way than with the awkward humor of clumsy bullet points, poems and cartoons. You are like as not to hear some sort of banging or grinding from behind the heavy double doors that separate the "store" from the shop in back.

I've been in the back a couple of times and even downstairs. If the helter-skelter of the store was notable, the back forty and the lower pasture were worse, made downright intimidating with pallets of parts and even whole engines and transmissions running rampant between walls and among pillars that were sooty with years of exhaust and general neglect.

Larry's wife, Kathy, maintains a relatively tidy corner near the front door. She has never failed to greet me pleasantly, though it's hard for me to recall anything other than a sardonic smile on her face. Not even considering Larry's knowledge, Kathy's makes the shop a considerable gold mine of information on engine parts and availability alone. As a diesel-tinged version of Edith Bunker, I imagine her devolving from a pretty youth that has been wrung into a resilient older woman by Larry's sour impression of Archie, though she's less naive and has a more obvious strength than her fictional counterpart. If Larry is the knowledge behind Stewart Marine, Kathy is the index of that knowledge. She keeps the books, does the billing, orders the parts, manages their collection of service manuals, ...in short, does everything that keeps the business in business. I'd wager that the strain of fighting to maintain a civil balance between Larry's caustic personality with their long-suffering clientele has added more than a few of the lines on Kathy's 70-plus year old face.

I've dealt with more than a few old codgers in my time, suffering through the bullshit by interpreting their sour wit and opinionated egotism as if watching a version of Grumpy Old Men. With Larry, I would have to say that that quaintly funny movie had been re-edited by Francis Ford Coppola in the style of Apocalypse Now. I can just hear Larry standing behind his shop counter muttering to himself, "I love the smell of diesel in the morning."

So, every opinion and morsel of knowledge I ever heard from Larry came out in a growl. I certainly would never claim even a small percentage of Larry's experience with diesel engines, but I'm not an idiot. Even so, if I expressed an idea or opinion of my own, he would typically dismiss it with a grunt or toss it completely out the window. Still, he had apparently earned a great deal of respect in his guise of diesel expert, so I was able to stifle my reactions to his abuse to hang upon his next words, waiting for solutions to my engine problems.

Last spring's engine work came to a generally positive, if expensive conclusion. Kathy got me a new exhaust manifold and engine oil cooler and I got them installed with a minimum of difficulty, the worst of which involved just the usual skinned knuckles, scratched forearms, and greasy cuticles. I was only able to broach the alternator belt issue with Larry at that time. He had an idea or two for a solution, but they were vague and involved large sums of money and time, so I decided I would have to suffer through another belt or two and get on with my summer cruising.

This winter I went back to Stewart Marine to restart the conversation, only to find that Larry had had some sort of health issue, having been hospitalized for surgery on something-or-other. I will refrain from theorizing a malady appropriate to his personality, but whatever it was kept him out of commission for a couple of months. Along with Larry's diesel engine guru-in-training, Bryce, Kathy managed to keep things going and, though I enjoyed the brief upbeat feel to the place, I decided to hold off on belt system modifications until the return of the master. I stopped in every few weeks, but by the end of April I decided I'd waited as long as I could. I went ahead and separated the relevant parts from the front of my engine and toted them in to the shop to use as props for a conversation with Bryce. Lo and behold, I learned that Larry had rolled the stone back from his crypt and would be in shortly, so I cooled my heels and enjoyed friendly conversation with Kathy.

Well, I can only say that it wasn't Larry's bile duct that was removed, since that side of his personality was still well in evidence. I'd arrayed my various pumps and pulleys atop the counter for him to use to educate me in the mysterious ways of v-belts, but Larry hardly noticed them. Wonder of wonders, instead I actually heard him considering a new-fangled approach to the problem. Of course, he started his suggestion with a dismissive comment that he'd always rejected serpentine belt technology before, but he had a kit being delivered the next day that he invited me to look at.

Ever hopeful, I left to take care of the other business of the day. Larry's miraculous divergence from the tried-and-true encouraged me to check in on other possibilities, so I stopped for a visit with my old friend, Jens Hjorth, who'd helped with quite a few other projects on Mabrouka. That conversation led me to drop by an auto parts store to check for tensioner pulleys that might serve to reroute my v-belt for more wrap around, and thus more friction on the alternator pulley. That led in turn to a Google investigation of serpentine belt adaptor kits. Wow. Such things were actually available, but apparently not for my particular engine.

Back at Stewart Marine the next day, I found Kathy mulling over some unopened packages parked outside her little paper-bound territory, ...the serpentine belt adaptor kit that she'd ordered for one of their customers. We opened it up and saw what I'd basically learned about on-line. Basically, the kit just provided new pulleys for a wider, multi-grooved serpentine belt typical to what you see on modern day automobiles.

It went down hill very quickly when Larry came in from an errand. Kathy let on that we'd just finished looking through the new kit and I mentioned what I'd learned about them from the internet. Oh man, was THAT the wrong thing to admit, especially that the one kit manufacturer didn't make a kit for the 4-154.

Larry responded with, "That means it won't be happening HERE, doesn't it?"

"What do you mean," I asked.

"Well, now that you've talked to all my suppliers...," he said, implying that I'd crapped in his mess kit and he could never salvage a serpentine belt solution now. His tone was one of complete contempt.

"Do you want me to leave," I said in retort, not only to his present attitude, but to the one he'd displayed since my first association with him and his business.

"Yeah," he said, and I walked out the front door with a glance over my shoulder at Kathy's raised eyebrows, vowing never to set foot in the shop again no matter what.

This whole scenario depressed me. Not only do I hate to cut off a possible avenue to solving my engine problem, I hate to end a relationship on such a negative note. At the same time, however, I hate to validate Larry's negative personality by giving weight to his expertise over the way he treats people. In particular, I pity what Kathy has been going through for the many years of their marriage and can only hope that she derives some satisfaction if not actual pleasure from it. Bryce will, if he has any sense, absorb as much technical knowledge as he can without being tainted by Larry's sour disposition.

Sharing my depression later with my daughter, Lisa, she suggested I write a Yelp review on Stewart Marine Engine and Machine Works. I checked in on that this morning (look here) and found he'd already had one, ONLY one review and it was a glowing five star report. Giving credit where it's due, I can certainly imagine that. If dealing strictly with inanimate objects such as tracking down a broken wiring connection on a diesel generator, Larry's ability to fix an engine would seem well nigh to miraculous. My own experience was quite different, so I do want to share it. Yelp, though, doesn't seem like the place. I just can't imagine many people using that avenue to seek out the obscure practitioners of the diesel arts. The result is this blog entry. It also gives me a more open forum for venting my angst among friends. Thanks for indulging me.

The saga does continue. After cooling down a bit, I stopped by a shop I happened across yesterday afternoon, ...MER Equipment right down Nickerson from my marina. They don't deal in Perkins engines, but are equipped to design, machine, and install a serpentine belt system. I'll let you know what I hear from them next week. It will involve a couple of weeks cruising delay and, I fear, another boat buck or so (the smallest denomination of which is on the order of $1000), but it should be worth it if I can put this problem to bed once and for all. Please stand by.

Marlin: Tell me Dory, do you see anything?
Dory: Yeah, I see a light ... it's so pretty!














I was at one time a technical-person-in-training but, after a brief period of supposed professional status as an actual engineer, over a few decades devolved into a project manager, then into a retired person. This has been my own way of seeking a lower level of entropy. The search for a career that actually paid a salary led me to Webb Institute where they force fed me enough temporary knowledge to propel me to the more energetic state of naval architect. In the intervening years, varying degrees of gorging and starvation now find me striving to be the artist that I really always wanted to be.

So, for those technically minded of you out there who might hope to be stunned by this description of my power system upgrade, please try to restrain your disappointment. Here goes:

Last summer's cruising emphasized a deficiency that I'd known of for years, the crux of which was that my battery bank, even with the help of two 130 watt solar panels, couldn't sustain my 110 volt power demands. It was the refrigeration system that I saw as the major culprit. I could pare down my use of the TV and the 110 volt outlets, but refrigeration seems kind of necessary. The system had been on the boat since before I'd owned it, so was well over 15 years old. I'd always thought about replacing the compressor with a more efficient 12 volt unit, but skin flint that I am, I couldn't bring myself to force it to walk the plank and settled on the coward's strategy of letting it suffer a natural death.

Then the doity bastitch went and died without telling me. Actually, I suspected, indeed secretly hoped the compressor was on it's last legs, so had gone ahead and purchased a Cool Blue unit at the Seattle Boat Show. If it hadn't been for the long, cold, blizzard-plagued Seattle winter, I'm sure I would have smelled the decaying corpse (sour milk, moldy cheese) some time ago. Fact is, it was a mild winter, but one cold enough that the food didn't turn into biology experiments at a fast enough rate for me to suspect that my refrigeration had, indeed, already deep-sixed itself. I conned a refrigeration technician to come to the boat to see if he wanted to pay me big bucks to harvest my old freon, but was embarrassed to hear that I didn't have any to harvest. None. Nada. Zilch. Oops. Oh well, I was able to cut the old refrigeration tubing away with a free conscience, if only I can get over the guilt of having maintained the system so poorly in the first place. I must own up to my share of responsibility for the hole in the ozone layer. If you're a glutton for punishment you can see my earlier post of April 11th for more.

But I've digressed and elaborated on a story that has already been told. To get back on track, ...oh, wait. One more digression, this one not so lengthy. I also bought a single-side band (SSB) radio at the boat show. I won't explain that here other than to say that it sucks up a lot of power when transmitting my wisdom and pleas for help across great expanses of ocean. The package of shiny new components included a not-so-shiny manual that attempted to instruct me in the finer points of SSB installation. One pearl of wisdom it shared was that the radio should be connected directly to the battery by a single cable with no joints and not more than about 8 to 10 feet long. With the locations available to me for the radio, THAT was SO not hap'nin', so I hit on the idea of adding a separate battery. While I was at it, I'd switch all my instruments over to be powered by that battery.

So, now back to the main saga. I'd decreased my 110 volt load by switching to 12 volt refrigeration (a more efficient one at that) and now only have my outlets and my microwave that require AC power. I also doubled my main battery bank power by adding a second 260 amp-hour battery. The new battery for the SSB, dubbed the Comm(unication)s battery since it also powers my navigation instruments and the VHF radio, provides an additional 140 amp-hours of power.














This was all well and good, but the new kids on the team had to learn to play well together, so I called in Coach Ed. Coach Ed (Ed Foster) has been helping me electronically on Mabrouka for a couple of years. I've bought solar panels, solar panel controllers, batteries, and LED light bulbs from him, but now solicited a higher level of his expertise. Ed listened to my layman's description of what I had and what I wanted, then tried to explain to me how to get there. That explanation included the cool wiring block diagram shown here, although it went through several iterations. Note a couple of boxes with red lettering (all the new stuff has red lettering) labelled Pro Split R and ProConnect. These are the ringers that Coach Ed called in as co-captains for the team of batteries. They decide who needs power when and how much. That way my various sources of electricity, the solar panels, the engine alternator, and shore power, will keep all the batteries charged at the right levels without burning anything out. There's even a solenoid (the one labelled CH 24401) that cuts out the solar panels when the engine is running.

So, as with the SSB installation, I received a big pile of brightly colored stuff and had to figure out what to do with it. Well, the new batteries weren't so brightly colored, but they were heavy enough that my face made up for that when I put them in the boat. I got to cut wood up and put it back together again to make the batteries fit. I got to pull out and throw away all sorts of grungy old wires that had outlived their usefulness. I got to take all my cabinetry apart (again!) and run nice, thick red cables all over tarnation. I got to crimp lugs and electrical connectors onto a zillion wire ends using my fancy new wire strippers and crimpers. Oh joy, I even got to solder some wires!








The system has now been commissioned and seems to be working fine. I only hope I have not added undue complexity, although my mission of providing a separate battery bank to support critical communications systems seems to be a worthy goal. I can look over at the cheery face of the new Comms breaker panel any time I want and I am inordinately fascinated by the flashing yellow, green, and blue lights on the Pro Split R and the ProConnect, so that makes it all worth while.

...to myself as much as to anyone else, here are the varnish projects I've just done:

The transom and all the trim work on the Grandy skiff:



The butterfly hatch over the main salon:



And that's all I have to say today. Hmph!