I’m not sure how it happened but another week and almost another month has somehow zipped by and it feels like Spring is finally in the air as the weather begins to warm here in Southern Turkey. Still a bit of a chill at nights but they are trending upwards and the forecast is calling for that to continue.
With Mr. Gee now back on his feet we are now ramping up our efforts to make Möbius fully ship shape and ready to head out to sea as the weather improves. It is now mostly all the little things that need to be done but they do take time and at the end of many days when I look around I don’t seem to see much visual progress but I does feel good to be checking items off of the To do list.
So let’s jump right in and get you updated on all that happened this week that I could photograph. Oh, and stick around for the Bonus video at the end!
Monitoring Matters
Since getting Mr. Gee back up and running I’ve been spending a lot of my time doing all the “little” things on him such as getting all the various sensors wired up that measure things like oil pressure, engine oil, gearbox oil and coolant temperature.
If you look closely at this labelled photo (click any photo to enlarge) of the pressure and temperature senders on Mr. Gee you will notice that in addition to the analog gauges there is a second electric sensor that measures these same things.
It was finicky work running all the wires for these electric sensors and finding the best route to as I like to keep them well hidden and safe from chaffing so took the better part of a day to get these installed.
We have done this dual analog/digital combination for most of the things we monitor on Möbius such as tank levels, water pressure, DHW temperature and many more. It is time consuming and costly but being able to monitor and log all this data is critical to being able to run Möbius safely and efficiently and to get early warning signals of equipment or systems as soon as they start to malfunction or fail. A big part of this is to be able to see this information from any screen anywhere on, as well as off, the boat so we find this to be well worth the effort and cost.
Having the backup analog gauges provides redundancy should any of the digital senders fail and also enables us confirm that the N2K data is accurate. As the recent mysterious missing oil pressure adventure proved, this double checking can prove to be eXtremely important!
My ER is Back!
At least in this case the results of all my time were very easy to see and it does feel particularly great to have the Engine Room back again since I first removed it back in June of last year.
Mr. Gee Video Tour Bonus
As promised, here is the bonus video so many of you have been requesting for so long. I don’t have the time to do any editing so this is going to be a very “uncut” and amateurish video I’m afraid but for all you Mr. .Gee fan boys and girls out there, hopefully this will hold you over until I can do a better version.
And for those who may have missed it, here is the video that was in last week’s update of the first starting of Mr. Gee version 3.0 after fixing the recalcitrant O-rings and finding the faulty oil pressure gauge that finally solved the mystery of the disappearing oil pressure.
Hope you enjoy these “rough and ready” videos from your trusty reporter and please type your questions and comments to let me know in the “Join the Discussion” box below.
Thanks!
Wayne
Wayne – really happy for you both that mobility has returned to Mobius! Sebrina and i will be out at the yard 9th through 16th April if either of you are around. Its my first visit of the build, Whatsapp only goes so far. Chris
Hi Chris & Sebrina, glad to hear that you will be able to get up close and personal to Vanguard at last. I’ll catch up with you on WA and see if we can set this up. Hope to see you soon.
A nice sunny Sunday morning was made even nicer by reading about Mr Gee ready to take on the world!
Hi Andrew. Yes, our days are much sunnier over here too. We’re looking ahead to finding some sunny days here to get out for more sea trials and exploring the coastline here and I’ll do my best to bring some of that sunny news to you here in the coming weeks.
Nice to see and hear. It looked like one temp gauge was °C and another was °F?
We’re pretty much all metric on Möbius and of course all our electronic gauges can be set to either. The analog Sika temperature gauges on Mr. Gee though are all metric and all the same so no issues there. For pressure gauges I do still stay with PSI as Bar is just not something I’ve been familiar with and can relate much better to PSI so that is one of the few non metric units we use.
I see two wires on your senders. Doe this mean they are insulated and therefore the whole boat is wired”above ground”? As it should be in my opinion. How did you solve the starter earthing?
Good eyes Gary and quite correct all the senders I use and pretty much all DC devices I use on the boat are insulated ground so there is no use of the hull for any grounding. Gardner engines were also all isolated ground so the 24V starter is also “two wire” with its own ground cable so just like the AL hull the engine is not used for any grounding and is isolated from the hull as well. I did the same with the two big Electrodyne alternators, they are also isolated ground units. Actually the Electrodyne’s have remote remote rectifiers and regulators so there is only AC flowing through the 6 cables going to each one and no grounding per se.
As per your question, it is usually quite a chore to get starters and alternators on engines to not be grounded to the engine so this is the way I’ve been able to look after this.
Sounds like you are working on your own boat in this regard so let me know how you are doing this and if you have any other questions I can answer as you do.
Wayne
Yes on my 45 ft vintage converted fishboat during the conversion I wired her above ground..motor Isuzu 6BD1 changed to insulated VDO senders and put a relay on the starter. W.hich I only had on for starting then isolated again. The new alternator was above ground..
ER might be renamed “emergency Room”!!
Hi there Sue & Bob. I’m going to stick with ER being the Engine Room for now in the hopes that we don’t have any emergencies taking place in there. Wish me luck!