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.

Originally Posted by BradC

Boats, it's always bloody boats.

I find that the first two days on a 20 minute job are always the worst

Fitted the spacer to the gen today and dropped a bolt. Made up a tool to get in under the gubbins and scrape out the bottom of the case. First item out was the original spacer. Heavily oxidised and pitted. It has clearly been floating around under there for years, which means at some point some gronk mechanic has taken the pump off, dropped the spacer and put it back on completely mis-aligned. Bastards. A few other bolts, nuts and washers also. So plenty of evidence people were there before me.

We were having chronic starting issues which turned out to be a 25cm 25mm2 earth cable. I made a new one, replaced it and the problem went away. The thing I don't understand is I stripped all insulation from the dud cable. The cable looks good, the lugs look ok, the crimps are physically strong. The only thing I can think of is an issue with one of the crimps. I'll probably whack it in series with a 12V battery and hit it with my carbon pile to see if I can identify what is getting hot. It's dropping 3V at 100A, so it should be lighting up like a christmas tree. I hate it when I know theres a fault but I can't find it.

This is awkward. We've owned this boat for 30+ years now. Dad has been gone approaching 2 years (Star-Wars day 2024) and I really only took over maintenance in November last year. I feel like I've let him down, because like my Landrover, almost all of the **** that is wrong with this boat is entirely due to bastards that have worked on it previously.

I spent a lot of my youth working on boats with Dad. That was our Saturday morning. While my brother was off with his mates, I was down the boat with dad eating pies, drinking Masters Iced Coffee and listening to the Goons at Midday. He taught me a considerable amount of what I know, and the rest I learned because he taught me how to teach myself, or seek out a teacher.

We worked on the boat together until he left for Dubai in 2002. I followed him in 2003. He returned in 2006 and I in 2009. When I got back I had a partner and a life. We then had kids and a lot of **** happened. In the mean time, he employed other people to work on the boat because maybe he thought I was too busy to help, and it cost him a small crapton (metric, not imperial). Mum has recently give me the receipts to go through.

In 2019 my life turned to ****, and in 2021 his life turned to **** and we never got to resolve these "unsaid" issues. He did what he did, and I'm now cleaning up the mess. I don't blame him. He was holding us together while my life fell to bits. Then his life fell to bits and I was still dealing with both my and his issues. He just paid the bills and these ham-fisted meat-heads continued to do half-arsed work while dad continued to pay for it.

Doing what I've done for the last couple of months, and getting an insight into what he's had done, paid for and still suffered, I feel deflated. These bastards have taken him for a ride and done **** work and he's just kept on paying them because he didn't think he had a choice.

Mum is ok with paying for the parts and I'm ok doing the work, but I miss him and regret that our lives got so complex we missed out on Saturday arvos with the Goons. As for the bastards that did the damage? I believe in Karma.