As has been the norm for most updates and perhaps life in general I guess, this will be a mix of good news and bad for all you faithful followers (thanks to you all!) In the good news column this week’s update will be mercifully short compared to some of the novel length ones I have been writing of late but the related not so good news is that this update will be disappoint all of you who have been anxiously awaiting to see and hear Mr. Gee roar back to his third new lease on life.
The finiteness of time is always the challenge it seems, and especially so on a boat it seems where there are so many things on the To Do list and so little time to get all of them done. I’m pretty sure most of you have your own version of this dilemma, which is actually a good thing in itself in that who would ever want to have NOTHING left on their To Do list?!?!? Not me at least.
So this past week has been filled with a litany of To Do list items which too precedent over those in Mr. Gee’s Engine Room (ER) though I certainly did not ignore him completely.
Getting Mr. Gee Ready for Life #3
If you have been following along, here is what things looked like in the ER when I left you in the last Update. Mr. Gee was back “in bed” with his four “feet” now resting firmly on the wide 25mm thick AL Engine Beds that run down each side of the Engine Bay. Now came all the “little things” that have to be reconnected, adjusted and tested before he is ready to start.
As many of you can relate to, the “little things” in life can often take most of the time and are of the highest importance and that is very much the case here.
To do this, I need to remove the eight hardened bolts which hold the two flanges together, keep the two flanges up against each other and then measure the gap all around where the flanges meet to make sure there is ideally no gap or at least no more than 0.05mm.
Note, this is a photo from last year before I had drilled the holes in the Engine Beds so this time I just needed to reinsert the bolts into the existing holes.
The Blue/Red is special silicone hose where the stainless Mixing Elbow bends downward and mixes the sea water with the exhaust. The smaller SS pipe you can see pointing up here, is where the hose bringing the sea water attaches.
Once in place I could also reattach the four SS supports which connect the exhaust system to the front and rear roll bars around Mr. Gee. This has worked out eXtremely well by keeping the exhaust system very tightly in place with no transfer of noise of vibration into the hull it never touches.
The sea water drains out of the bottom of the White separator and into the vertical Sea Chest where it exits out of the boat back into the ocean.
It has proven to be an eXcellent exhaust system; simple, efficient and quiet. I’ve used a Silencer/Separator combo unit rather than a more traditional “Lift Muffler” as this design has almost no power robbing back pressure and no “sploosh sploosh” as water from lift mufflers create when exhaust and water both exit out the side of the boat.
The list of connections is much longer of course and valve clearances need to be set, fuel pump and injectors primed, etc. but each one takes Mr. Gee one step closer to first start up.
Unfortunately I ran out of time this week at this point so I will need to leave you hanging here and pick up again next week.
Engine Control Box
I do my best to “discipline” myself when doing boat jobs to always try to improve on whatever system I’m working on such that it is better than before I started. Such was the case in completing this latest rebuild of Mr. Gee where I wanted to build and install a much better and safer Engine Control Box.
I’ve done my best to reserve the Engine Room to have ONLY the engine inside it; no other equipment, no batteries, no fuel tanks, etc. An ER is a great place for the engine but the hotter temperatures and vibration is not so kind to things like batteries, equipment, etc.
By mounting this control box outside the ER followed the same thinking and added a safety element in that I could quickly shut down the engine in the unlikely event of seeing a fire inside and not needing to open the ER door.
Off to the right I’ve mounted a new BlueSea junction box which provides me with 12 individually fused connections for each circuit.
I’ve had great success using these BS junction boxes on previous boats and they do a great job of making secure, neat easily accessed connections and fuses.
There were a LOT of other To Do list items commandeering my time this past week but I’ll spare you from all those gory details and leave off here to be continued next week for those of you brave enough to return for more!
My sincere thanks to those who made it to the end of yet another “brief” update from your cub reporter aboard the Good Ship Möbius. I value all the comments and questions you leave in the “Join the Discussion” box below eXtremely highly so thanks in advance for all those contributions and I hope you will join me here again for continuing adventures as Christine and I work at getting Möbius and ourselves fully sea worthy and ready to throw off the dock lines and head back out to eXplore the world by sea.
-Wayne
The suspense is killing me!
Can’t wait til you fire Mr. G up!
Hi Matt and Cindy. Greetings from a beautifully sunny Monday morning here in Finike Marina and a VERY happy Valentines day to you both.
You will have read the latest chapter in the ongoing murder mystery with Mr. Gee and hopefully you can come over when you get back here and listen to him purring away for yourself in person!
As usual, I REALLY enjoy your posts. (Especially everything about Mr. Gee.) You are such a pro !
Thanks for the kind words JZ and very glad you’re enjoying the posts. As you might imagine, I’m not going to be feeling too “Pro” until I can fully resolve this vexing oil pressure problem that Mr. Gee has. But stay tuned as I’m working on what I hope to be the final solution.
I never think I asked, how much does Mr. Gee weight in current trim, roughly?
My somewhat similar American cousin – also of course a straight six as it should be, originally a tractor engine but heavily marinised – Mr. L says hello at around 3300 lbs 🙂
Hi Andy, I think Mr. Gee is a bit more “svelte” than your engine as he weighs in at about 1100 kg so that would be about 2400 lbs. That is dry weight though, no oil, water, etc. and does not include the two Electrodyne monsters which are about 80lbs each nor the wet exhaust system. My rough guesstimate is that all those things would add about 400 lbs so Mr. Gee’s total weight when he is up and running would be about 2800 lbs.
Like you I’m sure, I will take this weight onboard gladly for the reliability it provides. It is all down very low as well and so helps to provide some helpful ballast and makes for a more comfortable ride.
-Wayne
Oh MY GOODNESS… I’m SO glad you understand all that… If I was a shipmate that puppy would be in DRY DOCK for ever. All the best my friend and I’m anxious to see her out to sea soon!!
Courses for horses right Bob?!!
I’m at least as anxious as you to be back out at sea, looking to be end of March or so by the time we get the weather windows to head out so stay tuned for that. And eventually hoping to get Möbius over close enough for you to let us host you and family aboard in the not too distant future so you can see it all in person and we can get in some loooooooooong overdue conversations that will quickly erase all the years since our last one.
-Wayne