I looked in my email inbox this morning and there were three emails from knowledgeable people saying that I shouldn’t do anything until talking to Rick at Mack Boring and Parts. After an adult lifetime in the boat business, I’ve learned that experts disagree and you can’t have too many opinions to weight and consider. So, I shook myself out of my funk and started doing what I should have been doing last week.
Rick is on the road and will get back to me. The person I spoke to was incredibly helpful though, there still is such a thing as customer service in a few remote corners of our great land. She suggested that the big yard here in Solomons is their top rated service outlet. So I decided to go up and see what they had to say.
First though, I decided to look into the shaft seal availability myself though. I’ve been waiting since last week for the fellow I picked to replace it to hear back from his parts supplier and for him to get back to me about the project. I went on the Internet and found a seal in 10 minutes that I could have here 10:00 tomorrow morning. The guy I’ve been talking to still hasn’t called back which has me a bit queasy about him.
I then went up to the big yard. They are a full service yard which means I can’t touch the boat after it comes out. If I need something from on board, they’ll send someone to get it for me and put the time on my bill at 100 per hour. Not my kind of place. The fellow did spend quite a bit of time going over the engine issue with me. He said that he has not seen an oil seal fail on one of these engines in 23 years without there being some underlying cause of crankcase overpressure. That was a pretty gloomy data point.
Rick just called. I can’t remember talking with anyone more patient and gracious with their time. Mack Boring and Parts is a great company. He has seen two spontaneous seal failures in the past couple of years due to the outer part drying out stiff and rolling under the other. That was encouraging. He also told me about a fix that has worked in cases where the crankshaft is scored which is an invaluable piece on information since it turns out that these shafts cannot be sleeved.
Rick told me that I could put oil in the engine and a hose over the dipstick with a pressure gauge on it to see if there is excess crankcase pressure. I’m not sure whether to do that because it means another oil clean up and the engine has to come out of the boat in any event. There are other things to be checked once it comes out that will determine whether it ever goes back in.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to decide whether to stick with the guy who hasn’t called me back about the part I’ve already found. A third yard I talked to can haul the boat and store it at the end of the week or early next week. Neither of the other yards can even think about doing anything with the engine for about a month. I don’t know when the first guy can get to it because he isn’t calling back.
Rick is on the road and will get back to me. The person I spoke to was incredibly helpful though, there still is such a thing as customer service in a few remote corners of our great land. She suggested that the big yard here in Solomons is their top rated service outlet. So I decided to go up and see what they had to say.
First though, I decided to look into the shaft seal availability myself though. I’ve been waiting since last week for the fellow I picked to replace it to hear back from his parts supplier and for him to get back to me about the project. I went on the Internet and found a seal in 10 minutes that I could have here 10:00 tomorrow morning. The guy I’ve been talking to still hasn’t called back which has me a bit queasy about him.
I then went up to the big yard. They are a full service yard which means I can’t touch the boat after it comes out. If I need something from on board, they’ll send someone to get it for me and put the time on my bill at 100 per hour. Not my kind of place. The fellow did spend quite a bit of time going over the engine issue with me. He said that he has not seen an oil seal fail on one of these engines in 23 years without there being some underlying cause of crankcase overpressure. That was a pretty gloomy data point.
Rick just called. I can’t remember talking with anyone more patient and gracious with their time. Mack Boring and Parts is a great company. He has seen two spontaneous seal failures in the past couple of years due to the outer part drying out stiff and rolling under the other. That was encouraging. He also told me about a fix that has worked in cases where the crankshaft is scored which is an invaluable piece on information since it turns out that these shafts cannot be sleeved.
Rick told me that I could put oil in the engine and a hose over the dipstick with a pressure gauge on it to see if there is excess crankcase pressure. I’m not sure whether to do that because it means another oil clean up and the engine has to come out of the boat in any event. There are other things to be checked once it comes out that will determine whether it ever goes back in.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to decide whether to stick with the guy who hasn’t called me back about the part I’ve already found. A third yard I talked to can haul the boat and store it at the end of the week or early next week. Neither of the other yards can even think about doing anything with the engine for about a month. I don’t know when the first guy can get to it because he isn’t calling back.
