We have done a fair bit of work on the engine over the last year and one of the last of the jobs we had identified was replacing all of the cooling hoses on the engine with new ones.  The old ones had been heat and age damaged and we thought we would take the pre-emptive step of replacing them all so that we didn’t have one go at a bad time and potentially cause damage to the engine.  At the same time, we wanted to resolve the slight oil leak at the front of the engine which we believe to be from the bolts on the engine.  We had reviewed the service manual, identified which variant of the Yanmar engine we have and then the replacement pipes had been ordered for us and we had these on the boat for quite some time before we could get the work scheduled.  Step one was to review what we had against the engine list.  We found that some of the ones we had were right but most of them were not!  Back to the drawing board on the ordering of the pipes.  We also agreed that we would get the key pipes sorted and then look at what was left after that.

Lindsay at Seapower has been great with us on this.  He knows our plans and knows we will have to be self-sufficient and so encourages us to get heavily involved in the work, for instance the last full service of the engine was done by me, assisted by Seapower (to make sure I didn’t mess it up!).

The pipe replacement process is quite simple but time consuming since you need to clean up where the old pipe was before you can put the new pipe in place.  Some of them do not have great access so someone with small hands is best.  Firstly Houghton It is very important to completely empty the coolant before you start!  We don’t want a messy bilge…. Each removed pipe is labelled so that we know what we have replaced and jubilee clips are replaced as required.  As part of this work, various engine parts were cleaned up or replaced including the thermostat.  By the end of this process we will have a pretty new engine 🙂 it takes quite a bit of time to do all of this work.

the other advantage of getting this upfront and personal with your engine is you start to see other things that need to be addressed. A missing injector clip. No pipe running an overflow to the bilge rather than letting it spray all over the top of the engine if there was a problem. Poor running of the fuel pipe too close to the gear change lever which could result in wear on the pipe.  A nice new vetus water strainer opener attached to the water strainer so that we can take the lid off without using a red rope! All of these have been addressed and i think we are now in a position where we can have a little confidence in the engine, at least until the next time we have to do something!

Sorting the engine – Part 3

Sorting the engine – step 2

Sorting the engine – step 1

Yanmar engine – why maintenance is so important

We recognise as we go round the world that every six months or so that we will be servicing the winches.  This regime hasn’t started yet and at the beginning of the week I was still very much a wench winch virgin.

We are fortunate to count as one of our friends Mat Jerram, who is a very experienced marine engineer, and as a friend Mat has imparted knowledge normally in exchange for copious food which has been a small price to pay. So on Sunday, as Maria was making roast dinner for all of us, he raises the fact that I have been talking about servicing the winches for a couple of years….and haven’t done it yet. Maria is twenty minutes from serving so it is enough time to break apart a winch and explain what to do! Mat explains the process really well and takes a look at the winches which have clearly not been properly serviced for some time (i.e long before we had the boat). There is a mass of grease on the entire winch mechanism and I now understand the process.

So the start of a new week and new jobs.  I get the lewmar oil, grease and spare pawl springs, as recommended by Mat, and now will service all of the winches. I start with the one that Mat had broken up on Sunday on the coach roof.  It all seems to be going fine as I clean up the winch using white spirit to remove the previous grease and grime.  I am able to keep hold of the pawl springs and even they get a good clean.  The whole winch was in a pretty bad state but not disastrous or close to failure. Having cleaned everything up, I apply oil to the pawls and move them around to spread it, they are moving really freely. I then apply the grease to the rest of the mechanism, a very thin layer so that it feels greasy to the touch but you cant really see the grease on it. Everything goes back together and I test the winch – all good. The second coach roof winch is in similar condition and the process is pretty much the same apart from the ping as one of the pawl springs goes flying from my hand across the boat and into the drink! Thank you Mat for suggesting that I get some spare springs.  This winch is somewhat quicker since I know what I am doing.  Quicker but ultimately flawed since it doesn’t work when I test it!  I know exactly what I have done, one of the units with pawls could go either way and I haven’t put it back in the right way.  Of course you don’t have to take the winch half apart to change this, the whole thing has to come apart to the base plate so that you can swap the part round the other way!  Retest and success, two down….SIX to go!

I’m on a roll, so onto the big sheet winches, knock these out in a day (amongst the other things I have on) and then the four small winches should be easy.  Unscrew the cap, take off the self tail mechanism and lift the casing off the mechanism. It moves a quarter of an inch.  Stop being a wimp and lift it! Quarter of an inch again. Last try, all my strength, quarter of an inch! At this stage, you look around for something to beat the winch with in true Basil Fawlty style.  Unfortunately there are no trees in the Marina, so I will have to come up with something else.  I find a couple of blocks that I can rig as a block and tackle. and attach set this up to the boom which I have swung out and tied off above the winch.  My trusty “red rope” (previously used for lifting outboards, freeing water filter caps and pulling pipes off through hull fittings) is at the fore as the attachment to the winch.  I tie it off using a pipe hitch and a round turn and to half hitches to the block, the tail of the line is then used to provide a second lifting point on the other side of the winch so that the pull is straight up.  I am ready to go and …..success….it moves half an inch! Success is measured in degrees when you have successfully lifted the whole winch by a quarter inch on three previous attempts.  I was happy to get it to a half inch on the first attempt.  Push it back down and pull again and it goes a bit further. I continue this making more and more progress until the casing comes clear 🙂  I now get to see what I have to deal with… The entire mechanism is glued together with calcium, salt and lots of old grease which has hardened.  The whole thing was solid and it is difficult to see how the thing moved in the first place.  The bearings are equally bad with no movement.  At this point I have to admit that the act of cleaning these things up and getting them back together is incredibly therapeutic and does give a great feeling of satisfaction when it is all back together again so thoroughly recommended.  When I was young I used to try and fix broken alarm clocks.  In common with a number of people I would take them apart and put them back together again, they never worked again and there were always a few spare parts lying around at the end of the process.  It is important that this isn’t the case when rebuilding a winch! A nice way to try and stop this happening is to be very organised as the winch is taken apart.  I laid out paper towel on the deck and had each group of parts on a single piece.  I found this really helped to make sure that I put it back together in the same order as it came apart.  As you can see, there was a lot of work required to clean these up and the whole process, with a few interruptions, takes a number of hours.  There is no way I am getting the second one done on the same day.

The next day, I set about the other sheet winch.  I have left the block and tackle rigged, I’m clearly going to need that.  This is going smoothly and faster than the first.  I get most of it apart quite quickly and I now have to remove five bolts, with alun key holes, that hold the tower casing onto the base.  On the first winch these were tough cookies but my rachet set up is equal to the task.  I get four off with quite a bit of effort and notice that some of them are a little rounded but they are off.  The last one looks particularly tight and the hole looks even more rounded than some of the others.  Even spraying with WD40 and PlusGas does not help this one to budge and as I try to shift it the wrench twists round and the alun key shaped hole is no longer alun key shaped but round 😦  For the moment I have to clean up everything that I can and reassemble the winch but I will need to drill out the bolt to finish this winch off.

The “half” clean up goes well and the winch works again so at least I can put it back together. I receive quite a bit of advice on how to get the remaining bolt out.  Cut a slot in the top of it and use a flat head setup to get it off, the idea being there is more metal to push against.  Another is to use a “screw extraction” set, which works by burying itself in the bolt and then as you tighten (it has a reverse thread), it loosens itself.  This probably works best when the bolt is not stuck fast into the hole. I cant get the screw extraction tool to bight into the stainless steel bolt.  Time for some help.

Lindsay is on board doing some changes in the engine room, more of that later, an offers to help me drill out the bolt.  Drilling out stainless is not lightly taken on and the trick is to have the drill on a very slow setting and take your time.  We drill out quite a wide hole so that we can get a large screw extractor in there.  I had previously been using the ones that you screw into the bolt but Lindsay’s set is driven in hard.  The large one works well and the head starts to move.  Unfortunately the screw is stuck so tight that the head separates from the rest of the bolt but at least I am now in a position to get the winch apart.  We use a smaller drill to get into the screw but this is still stuck hard so we have covered it with Plusgas which should help the bolt to loosen over twenty four hours.  That said, the whole area had been lightly bathed in WD40 and plusgas for most of the previous 72 hours so it may not be enough. That still doesn’t work so we will be leaving the thread in their for a few weeks soaked in plusgas and have a go at a later date.

Having temporarily resolved the seized bolt issue, I can now continue with the servicing of this winch.  This is as bad as the first with lots of cleaning required again to get it to a standard where you would be happy to reassemble.

Anyway, at least the other winches which should be uneventful since I have done the hardest ones first…. Or maybe not.  we have eight winches dotted around the cockpit and another at the mast.  Each pair in the cockpit are completely different and the mast is a two speed winch without a self tailor.

To be fair the servicing is not bad, except two of the winches are pretty much jammed due to lack of use and poor previous maintenance.

Before

After

That is easily resolved and it actually makes it more interesting when you have to work out how the winch is put together each time.  Reassembly is also interesting and I was flummoxed for a few minutes when I put a winch back together and couldn’t drop the bolts into the cogs.  On inspection, the whole was out by 2mm.  Now that just isn’t possible, these things are precision engineered and when not covered in gunk go back together beautifully   I worked out that I had put one of the mechanisms in upside down and the two “same-sized” cogs were actually slightly different sizes.

So I am done on the cockpit winches, lets start on the mast one!  this is interesting and again completely different from any other winch I have done.  For the first time, I take the winch casing off and something drops out – that shouldn’t be possible.  It is a pawl, the part of the mechanism that gives the winch is familiar clicking sound.  That’s not good.  I get the winch assembly off the mast and onto the deck so I can see what needs to be done.

This winch is a two speed winch and it is the slower setting that has both Pawls broken.  I have bought some spares and so can set about cleaning up the winch and getting it back to perfect working order.  Now on my ninth winch, ten if you count one on a friends boat that I helped with, I am confident when putting it back together and it all works first time.

My top tips for winch servicing:

1. Don’t be scared, things are not going to ping all over the place as soon as you take the case off.
2. Remove everything slowly and make sure you hold the underneath, sometimes some of the components have others within them.  You don’t want them falling out
3. Read the service guide, the lewmar one has pictures
4. I put my finger at the end as I lift the pawl out of place, this means that the spring hits your finger rather than pinging off into the water
5. A very thin layer of grease but nowhere near the pawls and oil around the pawls.  I had it so that they felt greasy but you couldn’t really see grease on them
6. Take your time and clean everything really well, it will cost an extra five minutes but if you don’t do it you will know it every time you look at the winch

We had an eventful weekend in the Stour and the broken list was extensive.

• Initially the large domestic alternator had broken down and I had disconnected this to try and prevent any further damage.
• The davits had stopped working and this seemed to be electrical in nature too.
• We still had a problem with water flow to the engine
• We had a sheered bolt in the impeller

To this list I added a couple of long outstanding jobs:

• Replace the hydraulic rams for the swim platform and get this working again
• Fix the mount for the navigation on the rib and make sure it now charges

Firstly the cooling problem.  We knew that this was related to the through hull and so the first technique we tried was to attach the filling end of the rib’s foot pump to the pipe from the through hull.  This would create air pressure that should shoot out whatever was in it like a torpedo.  Or not.  Lots of pressure and difficult (read almost impossible) to increase the pressure further with the foot pump.  So that didn’t work but we know there is something blocking it.  The next theory was to insert the dockside hose down the pipe and blast it out with water.  I do not like the idea of filling up the boat with a hose (water tanks excepted) but I wont be blasting for long.  With Maria holding the hose in place and a cloth over it to avoid any “blow-back”, we test slowly. I imagine Maria wouldn’t be too pleased if she and the engine room wee soaked by an icy blast of water.  One second burst, five second burst, five minute burst while I discuss with Peter, our neighbour, the problem I am trying to solve.  Oh sorry dear, forgot about the hose. Fortunately no drama or screams from the engine room.  Put everything back together and a quick check of the engine – we have full flow! 🙂  Subsequently, I heard of another technique that I also think would work which was to use a plunger from outside the boat, but Maria wasn’t keen for me to go swimming in the locked Marina water.

For the swim platform and impeller bolt, I will need to go to a chandlery to get spares (hydraulic fluid and bolts).  I go to Fox’s chandlery locally but they don’t have the right bolts and they are asking detailed questions about the rams and the pump before agreeing which hydraulic fluid I need.  I phone the UK distributor for the Bennetts rams who explains that any automatic transmission fluid will do so that saved me some money since it doesn’t have to have marine in the labelling.  On my return to the Ipswich marina, I see Lindsay from Seapower and explain my difficulty obtaining the right bolts for the impeller plate and he has a couple of spares “in the van”.  So I am sorted!

The sheered bolt is remarkably loose and I am able to spin this round with my nail to retrieve it.  Spin may be exaggerating a little, I can move it without drawing blood. I had tried to use a tool to help but the lack of visibility meant it was easier to feel your way with your nail. I replace all of the bolts with longer bolts having checked that they will fit correctly and that is another job ticked off.

Onto the hydraulics replacement, carefully lower the tank to a level where it wont try and fill the system when I take the old ones off.  Place a container under the rams to catch any fluid that leaks out.  The swapping over is easy and it is now time to try and bleed the system.  Back in the lazzarette, to find the reservoir lying nicely on its side and the hydraulic fluid coming out of a rip in the lid, thanks, and after I had tried to be so careful.  Refill the system with the new fluid. It is quite a small system and there appear to be no bleed valves so it’s a case of opening and closing the bypass while activating the pump.  It is all good and I am finishing the bleed when the platform starts to come up. And I am holding the down switch!  Our friend Mat, marine engineer on Song of the Whale, is coming for dinner, maybe I can pick his brains.  Mat and I take a look at this and the Davits.  It seems that whichever button you push it comes up, and if you swap the electrical connections over you can get it to open, no matter which button you push.  So a problem with the switching that needs to be solved when Ollie from Seapower comes back to the boat. To be fair this switch was wired when the platform didn’t work so easy not to get it right.

The davits are interesting and we spend time looking in the control box.  There is what appears to be a slow burn fuse that is located on the edge of the box and pokes through the box at the top.  This has the same pins as a car fuse and we swap this for one to test it.  The davits start to work.  Taking apart the black slow burn fuse reveals water is inside it (from all of the rain the previous weekend!).  We clean this all out and replace it.  The davits are now working perfectly. But who puts this outside of the box when there is likely to be water, we cover the top of this in tape to hopefully overcome this problem in the future.

As our final job for the moment, we take a look at the alternator.  We had found that a bolt had sheered which held the casing of the alternator together.  This had come out and had significantly damaged the vanes of the fan, which also explained the noise Maria heard.  So we get the alternator off and I will take it to the local specialist to see what can be done.  On investigation the alternator is fried and badly damaged which makes it uneconomical to repair.  A replacement is available and should be with us within 24 hours.

It is interesting though that since removing the alternator, some electrical devices are no longer working, and the engine circuit will not power up.  I had taped off all of the wires for the alternator. We put the negative from the alternator onto an engine bolt and everything starts working again but we are both at a loss to explain why the engine earth is going through the domestic alternator.

The next day I have refitted the alternator and tightened everything up. Just as discretion is the better part of valour, cowardice is the better part of discretion so I want Mat to check my work before I restart the engine.  We are all fine and so decide to test the new setup.  The engine starts well, we have water flow and the charge is also looking good although the batteries are pretty full at this stage anyway. We are working our way through the list well.

The new mount for the rib navigation has arrived which is a straight swap with a little help from Maria to hold the screw driver on one side while I tighten the bolt.  Definitely not a one man job unless you are stretch Armstrong.  When perusing the instructions I discover the original problem.  Apparently the mount comes with an all weather cover for the electrical connections.  That will stop water pooling around them causing corrosion and the mount to fail! RTFM.

Another job ticked off and I’m feeling good – maybe just lift those davits….nothing!  Maybe they are on the engine circuit so I need to power that up.  Nothing! In fact no light on the engine circuit at all. So this appears to be the same problem that I had when I took off the old alternator….but the new alternator is fitted and the negative is connected again.  I speak to Mat quickly to get an opinion and we agree that I need to look into why the domestic and engine circuits are connected.  I have already checked the “parallel” switch, for anyone starting if the engine battery is dead, and this is set correctly.  So it is under the bed in the aft cabin to check out the wiring there.  There is a problem, it appears the bolt holding the engine earth to the negative bar is loose (right hand side of picture).  This has caused arcing between the cabling and therefore heat build up with some scorching.  In fact one of the negatives has corroded and melted the insulation so much that it has melted through another wires insulation and these are welded together.  That will be what caused our problems and it could even have been what damaged our alternator.  In some respects we were probably lucky the alternator went rather than continuing to build the heat up and potentially start a fire under the bed.  This doesn’t explain why the old alternator used to provide the earth to the engine and the new alternator doesn’t, despite being identical.  The current view is that this was as a result of the damage to the alternator which provided that earthing thereby by-passing the corroded engine earth.  But I will update with more information as it is available.

In the interim we have put a bypass in place for the earth but the engine and alternators will not be used until the above is fixed.

All in all, not a bad week, since we fixed a lot of issues and uncovered a pretty major new one. At least we found them in Ipswich rather than in the middle of nowhere and know how to deal with them in the future – all part of the education!