Thread: Bloody boats

Not jealous at all. My welders are somewhat low budget compared to those.

I was / am doing a bit of hardware refurb. Things like shower heads that need new o-rings and hardware that has developed iron contamination (304 stainless springs become less stainless when they meet a bit of iron). The cure for those is a dip in 1-10N sodium hydroxide for an hour or so to de-grease, then rinse and into 70% Nitric acid to remove the iron contamination and re-passivate the stainless.

Have had a good afternoon cleaning up bits until I took the shower head apart. A lot of calcium build-up on the screw that holds it all together. No rust and I know there's no grease, so straight into the acid it goes. The acid starts fuming furiously and turns green. Bugger. That screw wasn't stainless, but nickel plated cheese. Oh well, I'll measure the threads and find a 316 replacement at some point.

All the good stuff is finished anyway. Now just awaiting the arrival of some more o-rings. I have 4 different O-ring sets here, but all 4 of these O-rings are "different". My favourite source is RS-Components. Can get pretty much anything and their filtering system is pretty good. Even at $25 for a couple of hundred O-rings it's still cheaper than new shower heads, and I have enough spare O-rings to last about the next 30 generations.

Originally Posted by BradC

Not jealous at all. My welders are somewhat low budget compared to those.

.

Jealous? No. Envious? YES!

Originally Posted by BradC

Turns out the bracket was dodgied into place previously and there was no way known to man the pump pulley was going to line up with the crank pulley, so spent an hour playing with spacers and washers to get it to line up, hoses back on and fire it up.

.....

Bloody mechanics working on stuff they don't really have the data or understanding to work on.

I got a proper copy of the service manual last night and I was right. There was no way that pump pulley was going to line up because the bracket is supposed to have a 25mm diameter and 8.5mm thick spacer/washer between it and the block. Missing, presumed lost by some previous ham fisted hack that worked on the thing previously. Much more elegant than the stack of washers I have in there and a lot more stable. Just ordered some 316 round bar so I can make one up.

Put a parts order in for a service yesterday. Expecting 80L of coolant, 40L of oil, 10 filters and a few seals to "sting a bit". Boats...

Had a mate drop around a foot of 1" 316 round bar. Sawed off a bit and chucked it up in the lathe. It didn't turn or part like 316, but ok.

I put it through my usual "let's re-passivate stainless after working with it" process of a dunk in sodium hydroxide followed by a bath in 35% Nitric acid. Usually when I drop stainless in the nitric I get a few bubbles as bits of random iron get dissolved and it just sits there looking shiny. This went off like a bottle of champagne at the end of an F1 race. I left it there for a while and ended up with a speedi-sleeve of chrome and a grey slush of what was left of the iron.

Turns out it was chromed 4140. Oh well, I'll try again.

Parts/Consumables bill came in at 4 grand. A quarter of that is coolant. Land Rovers are starting to look cheap.

Originally Posted by BradC

First off, the argon reg had **** the bed, so when I turned it on it put 2000 PSI into the welder (which it actually put up with without exploding). I have pneumatic quick connects in my argon lines, so I could blow that off relatively quickly.

Mid(ish) last year, my Oxygen reg did the same thing. I put >2000 psi into my oxy torch. Thankfully I could shut it off and blow off the pressure before something let go. I bought myself a new Oxy reg for Christmas. I have 2 torches. A Tesuco oxy (small) and an original Tescom jewelers torch (bought out by Smith and renamed the "Smith Little" much later). I have both of these on a set of quick-connects because the Tescom uses Imperial and the Tesuco Metric. I made a set of adapters up for each.

Anyway, I needed to heat up a bit of brass with a bit more precision than my Bernzomatic 8000 flame thrower was capable of, so I got the Oxy reg out and hooked it up. Neither torch worked. Going back to my welder woes :

Originally Posted by BradC

A small wasp had built a nest in the torch socket, so a small drill bit by hand and blast with compressed air got that working.

The same insect had built nests inside all 4 of the oxy and gas lines on my torches. Because of the built in filters and non return valves I had to dismantle both of them and blow them out backwards. Of course not paying enough attention I sprayed the mechanism of one of the non return valves across the garage floor.

Managed to find all the bits eventually and got the job done. Now I need to find some rubber caps I can put over these connectors when I'm not using them. I should have learned my lesson because the same thing happened to a set of refrigerant gauges I had hanging up a few years ago, prompting me to buy 1/4" SAE flare plugs to seal them up when I'm not using them.

What does this have to do with boats? I needed to heat up a 1/8" NPT tee piece to undo some red loctite to repair a trim tab hydraulic pump.

Boats, it's always bloody boats.