Good Vibrations

Anyone that has been on our boat knows - We have Vibrations when the Engine runs.

The very experienced folks on the C34 Association site have been a huge help in the current projects that are underway on Eximius. Right now the Engine's Heat Exchanger is out, also the Starter is out and all of the raw water hoses are out and all of the electrical wiring from the Engine Control Panel to the Engine have also been removed for a complete upgrade.

So, if I were to replace the Engine Motor Mounts, now would be the time. Am I a glutton for boat projects? Seems like it.

Making progress

The new mounts arrived so I planned to go down to the boat today to see if I could make progress on their install.

Step 1: Take measurements

I used a dial caliper to measure the height of each of the engine corner plates that the existing motor mounts rest on. Plan was to use these as a starting point when realigning the Engine to the Prop Shaft.

Step 2: Disconnect the Prop Shaft from the back of the gearbox.

This was a bit awkward, but that's all. The four bolts were easy to get out once their grip was freed. My neighbor John came down to the boat with me, and having two people significantly reduced the time to get this done, maybe 15 minutes.

Step 3: Remove the nuts that hold the Engine down onto the existing motor mounts.

Again, no big deal, neither of us skinned any knuckles. Once the nuts (15/16") were released, it was easy to spin them off, of course, there was a bit of grot on the top end of the long motor mount bolt, but a quick wipe down cleaned up enough to allow the nuts to be spun off. Nuts and washers put aside, they won't be used on the new Mounts.

Step 4: Hoist the Engine off of the Motor Mounts.

I had purchased a 1/4 Ton lever chain hoist from Harbor Freight. Neat little hoist. A 4' piece of 4x4 across the top of the cabin entrance, a 1/2" 3 ply line tied with a clove hitch and then the end tied back around the loops to prevent a load from just rotating the 4x4.

Hoisting the Engine was a breeze! I can recommend that hoist for the job.

Step 5: Remove the old motor mounts.

Each is held in place with a fore and aft Lag Bolt that is screwed into the fiber glass covered wooden engine stringers.. The forward most two (port and stbd) were easy to get out, so too were the aft most on each side, but the 4 bolts that were nearest to the center of the engine were not so easy, at least until I just spun the old mounts by 180 degrees, then it was eazy peezee getting them out.

I cannot figure why some of the bolts are nearly 4" long and some only 2" long, they were not in any particular order.

Step 6: Clean up the stringers.

I have no clue how long it has been since the Engine was pulled prior our ownership, but if the grot on the top of the stringers is any clue, then it may be never! If I had removed the Engine entirely, then I would take the trouble to sand down the stringers and respray them so that they look good. As it is I used half a roll of paper towel, several soapy wipes and a spray of boat soap. It barely made a difference except that when I ran my hand along the stringers, they came out comparatively clean.

Step 7: Install the new mounts.

First snag! Bummer! The mounting holes of the new mounts do not match those on the old mounts! So I'll have to re-drill the holes! I needed to figure out which holes needed to be redrilled. Each new mount has two holes and they are about 1/8" closer together than the original mounts.

I installed the mounts using only the aft lag bolts and lowered the engine. Then adjusted the nuts on the mounts to match the height that I measured in step 1.

Lowering the Engine using the Hoist was as easy as raising it! A little bit of pull and shove and the Engine was sitting neatly on the 4 mounting bolts. A check of the prop shaft to gearbox connecting flanges showed that I needed to move the Engine aft about a a few thou. A shove with my foot on the large belt pulley on the front of the Engine and the movement was enough to get the alignment much closer.

Step 8: Re-drill the Mounting holes.

That's going to happen Friday (Tomorrow) Peggy & I will go to ACE Hardware and get 8 matching Lag Bolts all the same length. And some two part epoxy. Then I'll drill out the existing holes that need to be re-drilled, fill them with epoxy and let it cure. Then re-drill them (I marked their location this afternoon with a Red Sharpie) 

So, Friday should be productive and I should be able to get the Engine correctly mounted on the newly installed motor mounts. Then it's back to the Electrical Harness and Engine Exhaust Riser upgrades. 

Gotta love doing this stuff.

More later.

Don't Get Me Started Part V

Control Panel Housing Modification

While out on our good friend's boat Esprit Du Vent, I noticed a couple of things on their Control Panel & Housing.

The control panel had an extra switch - I asked Bob and he explained how it controlled the Cockpit Subdued lighting. Now, we don't have any 'subdued' cockpit lighting, they're nice, but we don't have them and not sure if we want them right now. However, I also realized that the Instrument lighting is controlled by the ignition switch. That explains how our instruments have burn marks on them! The lights are powered up any time the ignition switch is on! Even during the Daytime!

So this got me thinking. If I install an additional switch on the Engine Control Panel, it could be used to operate the Instrument lighting. 

The second thing I noticed was there is a wedge shaped built into the front of the Panel housing where the Engine Stop lever is located and there's not one on Eximius. That wedge angles the Stop lever away from the clear perspex spray cover that protects the Engine Instruments from the elements. That's another good idea. 

So, I sanded off the new paint from around the Engine Stop lever hole near the front of the Panel housing and then built up a wedge similar to the one on Esprit Du Vent using 2 part epoxy.

Here's the original housing before the modification:

Note the cuts around the Stop lever mounting hole where I had to use my Dremel to cut out the lever. 

Here's the result:

The wedge is barely visible in the lower left corner of the Control Panel Housing

Close up view of the new Stop Lever Mounting Wedge

Check off that improvement.

Still working on the panel wiring, some of the cables have not arrived yet, so a bit of a delay, looks like we won't get out on our boat this weekend as hoped :( But when we do, it'll be sweeeeeet!

See you out there.

Don't Get Me Started Part IV

Upgrading the Control Panel Lights

The control panel lights may be original, at least one has a broken filament. 

I searched the web and found these

That's an LED panel lamp. It's a snap in replacement for the old filament lamps but it's LED.

Ordered from Amazon for less than $9.00 for a set of 10 including the lamp holders.

I installed two of them in the panel and they worked great. I'll check out the 3rd and 4th tomorrow, in the meantime, it's the Admiral's Birthday so I'm taking a break this evening.

Today the Starter Solenoid wire and the LED lamps arrived. Should be able to get a bit more of the new harness done tomorrow, Friday.

Completion next Wednesday is looking possible. Taking a break on Saturday when we get to sail with good friends of ours on Esprit Du Vent, another 1987 Catalina 34. Small world.

I can smell the water!

See you there.

Don't get me started Part III

Electrical Baby Steps

Spent the last night and today cleaning up the Control Panel, Control Panel Housing, Alternator & Starter - So now I can pick them up and not get covered in old black grunge.

The Housing cleaned up pretty good, but needed repairs where the screws had split the fiberglass and where I had to cut out the Engine Stop Lever in order to remove the housing from the Port Combing.

Before and After pics:

Note the cutout where the stop handle is normally located, th broken screw holes, cracked corner and pretty grotty interior.

On the backside, the screw holes show their weakness, the original screws were probably put in pretty quickly and not cut into the fiberglass, and the normal consequence of that are hairline cracks radiating from the screw holes and chips out of the surface. The panel has all of those issues.

The repair included using my dremel to grind out the broken bits, chips and cracks, cleaning up the entire surface using Mr. Magic Erasers that got rid of all the grot on the outside and on the inside of the housing.

Then about an hour sanding down the finish and doing my best to eliminate any obvious repairs. A quick wipe down with Acetone then a few coats of Black Spray Paint for Plastics. I'll give it a couple more coats in the morning.

Of course, this doesn't all go without a few hiccups, and today it was a blocked Sewer pipe leading from our house to the street. Luckily our city has some great employees and they spent the entire day digging (vacuum digging) out the 40 year old piping to find the hole that was causing the ingress of earth and blocking the pipe. They started at 9am and were ready to drive away by 5pm. That is nasty work! especially here in South Florida where the temps climb into the high nineties almost daily down here.

Anyway, here's the finished restored Control Panel Housing (before it's final few coats of spray paint)

Tomorrow is my day off, our 31 month old grand-daughter will be here in the morning and somehow she gets my attention most of the day. 

Moving closer to getting back out on the water. See you there!

Exhausted Part III

Starting to put it back together

Working towards getting the Engine Exhaust Riser re-installed, materials have been arriving. We now have all of that we need to replace the riser.

While working on the other ongoing project - Engine Harness replacement, we removed the Muffler from it's base in order to shift the muffler 1.5" outboard from it's current location.

I removed the new Hump Hose and the Exhaust hose from the top of the Muffler, then we removed the 4 screws that secure the muffler to the plywood base.

Moving it outboard (to port) requires that it goes over the bilge pump hose (the hose with the black reinforcing wires). 

To achieve that, I made a new base for the Muffler and planned to screw it down onto the existing plywood base but with the offset to port.

Reinstalling the Muffler on the new plywood base turned out to be not so difficult. It was a challange to get to the screws in the corners of the Muffler, but a few grunts and groans and it all came together.

The reinstall of the hoses and the install of the new Riser will have to wait till later in the week, I want to get the electrical harness replacement complete before putting the exhaust system and the heat exchanger back into place.

We're getting there!

Hope to have the boat ready for the water by next weekend. 

Stay tuned.

Don't get me started Part II

Part II - Demolition

This reads a bit like one of those home shows on TV - It's Demo Day.

My neighbor volunteered to help out on the boat today if for no other reason than to get out of the house. We headed down to the boat with a Demo List.

• Remove the Engine Control Panel & take it home for repair
• Disconnect the existing harness that is behind the Control Panel
• Disconnect and remove the Alternator in order to gain access to the Starter & Solenoid
• Disconnect and remove the Solenoid & Starter
• Disconnect the existing electrical harness from the Engine
• Disconnect and remove the Defunct Electrical wires from the Starboard side Helm Instrument Pod & remove the Pod.
• Extract the defunct wiring from the Pedestal into the Aft Berth.
• Extract the wiring from the Control Panel all the way down to the engine.

We got all of that done, it took two trips to the boat and we had to do a couple of extra steps which included removing the Control Panel housing as we could not reach the tie points of the electrical cables where they passed from the housing into the Aft Berth. The other item was to extract the defunct cables that were left over from previous work when I removed the defective GPS at the helm.

Now some pics which pretty well show why I need to do all of this.

Back of the Engine Control Panel

The Port side Instruments (Speed & Wind - Defective Transducers)

Engine end of the Control harness

Alternator Bracket (Alternator removed)

Starboard Side Pod removed (nice place for a cup holder)

Engine Control Panel Housing removed

Need to repair the Engine Control Panel housing

Cracked screw points (top forward corner)

Engine Stop handle location

Had to use the Dremel to cut it out.

This looks like an original 'mod' as the control panel housing is a 3/4" too far aft, so the housing had been cut in the corner in order for the housing to fit.

That's steps 1 & 2 done and much of Step 3. Tomorrow I'll do some clean up and start on the panel repair and repair the housing.

Getting there.

Don't get me started!

We have to replace the Engine Harness

Time to get serious about being able to reliably start the engine.

We have had experience where not being able to start a boats engine could be close to disaster, and that is to be avoided.

So the new Engine Wiring Harness is our next job and I'll tackle it before completing the Exhaust system upgrade as it's easier to get to the engine wiring with the Exhaust system riser and the heat exchanger out of the boat.

Here are some pics...

This is our Engine Control Pane. It seems that Catalina had a variety of Control Panel Styles. If I explain our engine starting sequence and how we check the 'Heart Beat' it will make it easier to understand why and what we are doing to fix the starting issue.

The sequence is to turn the engine ignition on (remember, this is a Diesel Engine, it does not have spark plugs) Then we vent the engine bay by switching the Blower on for about 30 seconds, this is more important on gas engines, but a safety process on our boat. Then after turning the blower of, we depress the Glow Plugs button for 20 seconds, this preheats the engine cylinders raising the temperature and making it easier to get the engine to the condition where the diesel fuel will combust due to the pressure in the cylinders. After releasing the Glow Plug button we depress the starter button.

Normally the engine would fire into life without the slightest hesitation. However, the past two times it has been reluctant to start.

The issue appears to be due to excessive resistance in the wiring harness that is causing the starter to hesitate. 

Here's what the wiring behind the Control Panel looks like.

This is Ugly!

Several things jump out here.

The wires are really poorly crimped, not insulated nor labled.

Some o the instruments show signs of overheating.

The wires are not appropriately sized, and skinny wires can over heat, thus causing a variety of issues, not the least is FIRE.

The panel has been repaired and not very well. There are alarm buzzers that have probably failed and replaced by ones that are secured to the existing wires rather than mounting them securely on the panel. 

The list goes. on.

Down in the Engine Bay, it does not get any better.

Existing Euro style terminal block in the engine bay

Some of the cable are showing signs of overheating, corrosion and insecurity in the terminal block. Plus the block is not particularly appropriate in a boat with a diesel engine. Vibration is normal, and corrosion of the cable ends and terminals is hastened due to a lack of water tight connections.

So it's all coming out!

The new harness will be enclosed in an expansive sleeve to resist chaffing, all new wires and new terminals. No terminal block at either the Control Panel or at the Engine. The wires will go directly from the Control Panel to their respective engine service/sensor.

All of that training that the Royal Navy gave me in maintaining helicopter electronics is paying off (again)

The materials for the new harness have started to come in, many of them ordered from Ken of Weekendr . I have the Sleeve and heat shrink tubing, my wiring labeling process is top notch thanks to the advice given by Mainesail on his website.

The Heart Beat

While under motor, there's plenty to keep our attention and it's easy to forget the engine that is working hard at moving us along on the water. As Peggy was a Nurse for 40 years, I suggested that we think about the Engine's Heart Beat and check it about every 10 minutes. If I'm up on the front of the boat or down below, I'll prompt Peggy to check the heart beat by giving her the Two fingers on my wrist signal.

When we check the heart beat, we simply look over the stern and make sure the engine is coughing out water with the exhaust gasses, then a quick glance at the Instruments, Left to Right: RPM, Temperature, Fuel and Voltage. If it's ok, then we just acknowledge with the thumbs up signal. If not, we'll spring into action and consider shutting the engine down really quickly. That may mean that we'll have to drop anchor if the location allows, or tie up along side or just drift. Of course, there's always the option to pull the sails out.

The Harness Upgrade.

Step 1. Research! find wiring diagrams that are a close match to our boat and from that make a detailed diagram that reflects the actual wiring on Eximius.

Step 2. Figure out what we need, what wires, terminals, blocks, heat shrink tubing, sleeving, labeling and tie wraps to secure the new harness in place in order to minimize chafing an strain on the connections.

Step 3. Remove the Control panel and figure out what bits need replacement, repair and how to rewire it.

Step 4. Make up the new harness and connect it to the Control Panel

Step 5. Install the new harness and make up all of the terminal connections to the engine services and sensors.

Step 6. Cut out the old harness - being careful to not cut out anything that has nothing to do with the engine controls (such as Auto Pilot, Navigation electronics etc.)

Step 7. Test it.

Now to get started. I'll go down to the boat and remove the Engine Control Panel and bring it home so that I can get Step 3. done in the comfort of my garage.

Stay tuned.