Much to my surprise I have had an incredibly pleasant day, right up there with many I’ve spent underway. I love engines, it’s always nice to watch someone else work, and I learned an incredible amount that will stand me in good stead if I ever have to tackle something like this head gasket replacement myself.
The engine is back together and running and we’ve put it through a couple of oil changes with the oil looking progressively cleaner and no sign of additional water intrusion. We won’t know for sure until running it hard tomorrow for a couple of hours and doing a couple more oil changes.
The bad news is that the cost is going to be significantly higher than the estimate. However, having worked as tool passer, cleaner, and having made a few headlong dives into the engine compartment myself, I have not seen one bit of wasted effort. The mechanic is very fast and efficient but the clearances around this engine make a project like this very slow going on this boat.
When it came time to torque the head bolts we discovered that there was no way to fit the torque wrench into the space above the engine. We went on a shopping expedition and determined that no standard torque wrench will work in this installation without removing the engine from the boat due to the high shaft angle, low overhead clearance, and other obstructions. We were standing there stumped and depressed when I spotted this nifty little gadget for just $30.
The mechanic is definitely not a digital kind of guy so he was skeptical but we bought it. It turns any wrench into a torque wrench with the handle length being irrelevant as long as you can exert enough force. It beeps faster and faster and turns to a steady tone at the proper torque while LED flash. We checked it against the standard mechanical torque wrench and it was spot on. It was compact enough to get on the head bolts which are now torqued to the proper spec.
This engine is supposed to have the head bolts re-torqued after the first 250 hours of operation. This was clearly never done because it couldn’t have been without removing the engine from the boat which there is no evidence of. The RTV repair of the gasket boundary between cooling water and low pressure oil return shows that there was a problem. The Band-Aid repair held up for a few years and here I am. I am going to be very surprised tomorrow if I find out there is some other problem.
It suddenly struck me today that, even at this much higher bill, people spend comparable amounts to travel to places to have less fun than I did today. The mechanic is a pleasure to work with and talk to, it’s fun watching a machine that is such an important part of your life going back together and getting to know it so intimately. Cruising is expensive but I’m going to put the cost of all this on the pleasure side of the ledger instead of the aggravation side.
Of course, if oil shows up in the water again tomorrow, I’ll probably feel rather differently but, for the moment, life is good.
The engine is back together and running and we’ve put it through a couple of oil changes with the oil looking progressively cleaner and no sign of additional water intrusion. We won’t know for sure until running it hard tomorrow for a couple of hours and doing a couple more oil changes.
The bad news is that the cost is going to be significantly higher than the estimate. However, having worked as tool passer, cleaner, and having made a few headlong dives into the engine compartment myself, I have not seen one bit of wasted effort. The mechanic is very fast and efficient but the clearances around this engine make a project like this very slow going on this boat.
When it came time to torque the head bolts we discovered that there was no way to fit the torque wrench into the space above the engine. We went on a shopping expedition and determined that no standard torque wrench will work in this installation without removing the engine from the boat due to the high shaft angle, low overhead clearance, and other obstructions. We were standing there stumped and depressed when I spotted this nifty little gadget for just $30.
The mechanic is definitely not a digital kind of guy so he was skeptical but we bought it. It turns any wrench into a torque wrench with the handle length being irrelevant as long as you can exert enough force. It beeps faster and faster and turns to a steady tone at the proper torque while LED flash. We checked it against the standard mechanical torque wrench and it was spot on. It was compact enough to get on the head bolts which are now torqued to the proper spec.
This engine is supposed to have the head bolts re-torqued after the first 250 hours of operation. This was clearly never done because it couldn’t have been without removing the engine from the boat which there is no evidence of. The RTV repair of the gasket boundary between cooling water and low pressure oil return shows that there was a problem. The Band-Aid repair held up for a few years and here I am. I am going to be very surprised tomorrow if I find out there is some other problem.
It suddenly struck me today that, even at this much higher bill, people spend comparable amounts to travel to places to have less fun than I did today. The mechanic is a pleasure to work with and talk to, it’s fun watching a machine that is such an important part of your life going back together and getting to know it so intimately. Cruising is expensive but I’m going to put the cost of all this on the pleasure side of the ledger instead of the aggravation side.
Of course, if oil shows up in the water again tomorrow, I’ll probably feel rather differently but, for the moment, life is good.
