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Jeff McFadden wrote:Thanks, Annie. I figured the post wouldn't make any sense at all if readers were clueless as to diesel function.
Thanks, Gary, but it won't even start with a whiff of ether up the wind pipe, so it's not an injection pump. Yet.
The rest of the story:
As in almost all sailboats, the engine is stuffed back into a hole where it is quite difficult to reach. In fact, if this weren't the aft cabin version of the Nor'Sea 27 I don't know how I could begin to work on this engine. As it is, one lifts off the companionway stairs and takes off a hatch cover and the front pf the engine is there. Then one puts the companionway stairs back on, climbs out and down into the aft cabin, removes another hatch cover, and there as if by magic is the back of the engine.
Sooo.... one can remove a bolt or two through one hatch, clamber up, over, and down, remove another bolt or two... lather, rinse, repeat.
It is, of course, understood that the upper edge of these hatches is about even with mid-chest. All accesses begin with some contortion or other.
Now I'm not hugely fat, but I have more paunch than I wish I had. It's not all that bendable. Oh well.
The head is (surprise) bolted down to the top of the engine. And, the top of the engine is only a few inches below the underside of the cockpit deck. And (do you hear that eerie music?) there are a few parts bolted to the top pf the head. The little stand that pivots the gizmos that open the valves, called rocker arms. And the fuel injector is up there.
There are studs that come up from the block through the head. The head slips down over the studs, sits on the block (with, of course, the aforementioned gasket) and then nuts fasten the whole works together.
There are also a bunch of external things bolted to the head, some because that's where they perform their function and others simply because it's a handy hunk of iron to bolt stuff to. There's an air intake pipe. An exhaust pipe. Fuel lines to the injector. There is also an engine lifting point, and some pivot points for the throttle cable. You know... stuff. Stuff you can barely see reaching in one side or another of this cave with a tiny flashlight. Marine diesel mechanics is a job for the young and slim... I'm 0 for 2.
Anyway, I had it pretty much on the run. I had most all the external stuff unbolted or removed. Most. I had the nuts off the head studs. Needless to say, leaking or not the head was stuck down to the head gasket and block like it had been glued with 3M 5200. I took crowbars down into each cabin and tried to pry it up. No good. These crowbars were sort of chisel-ended on the long end, so I stuck one of them at the gasket edge, the junction point of head and block, and whacked it with a 3 pound sledge. Presto.
So, I went to the other cabin and whacked the other crowbar, and we were moving right along.
Except the two things I hadn't taken off the top of the head made it too tall to come up and off the studs. The left-on parts hit the bottom of the cockpit deck. And jammed. I couldn't get it to move up, and I couldn't get it to move back down.
I said a Bad Word.
Finally, after much muttering and contorting, I was able to get the head jiggled around to where I could get the taller of the two pieces off. Now my only remaining problem was that the push rods had cocked around fro below and wouldn't let me get the head squared away enough to pull it off.
Push rods are part of the mechanism that opens the valves. They are pushed up from below by a cam shaft, and in turn push on a rocker arm (think: little tiny teeter totter) which pushes the valve down and open.
So... I get to fiddling with the push rods. These are little steel rods a little smaller than a pencil. One of them jiggles back into its seat, down there hidden inside the engine block. Good, good. I continue working.
Then, without warning, the other one vanishes. Poof! Down into the bowels of the beast.
I said a Very Bad Word.
Next installment: extracting a push rod from the bowels of the beast.
Oh dear,
If Edmond Dantes was built like that, I would have given it a Viking funeral! I bought the hull and deck bonded together and had to fill in, bolt on all the items a sailing boat needs to be a sailing boat. I knew from previus experiences that anything installed will sooner or later need attention or exchange. When installing bits and bobs, (including an engine), I knew that the thing would need attention. To be frank: a lot of it. Edmond Dantes was presented to water in 1983. I have had the engine out two times changing the bellows on the saildrive. Changed all electrical cables 1 time, (piece of cake, they live in tubes), the holding tank once, all seacocks once, rerigged the animal once, changed rudder once and probably something I have forgotten, ah yes: took the keel off to exchange the bolts. All items I put into the boat, I had to consider: Can I get to the thing without dismanteling everything around? Can I remove it without using a saw. Will a new item go in without the need of an epoxy job? So far my engineering has been good. Only exception was the rudder, but that was a major reengineering job. Lucily, building my own boat left me with no respect for major operations, and I know I can do most jobs myself. I am not sure I would let anybody do a job for me. OK, I need to learn to sew.
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