After a week of spectacularly sunny weather with highs around 15C / 60F it is now a notably colder 10C/50F and drizzly Sunday so I’m taking the day off from boat work and enjoying being snuggled into Möbius’ toasty warm SuperSalon taking in the world outside the 360 degrees of windows.
We’ve got a bowl of buttery fresh popcorn and the two pups beside us so makes for a very comfy spot to be in. A time like this has us reflecting on the crazy and challenging times we all find ourselves living in the past few years and the past week in particular. Difficult to take it all in and make any sense of it, yet most of all we are feeling especially grateful and thankful to be so fortunate.
Methinks not!
The above perspective is also very helpful in powering our patience and persistence with the challenges that we, like everyone else, do face from time to time. As many of you following our adventures here know all too well, of late one of those has been the ongoing hunt for the elusive cause of Mr. Gee’s lack of proper oil pressure. Thanks to all the comments, texts and Emails we receive from all of you I know that you are almost as anxious as we are to get to the bottom of this and put this recalcitrant problem in our wake. So, without any further delay …..
Mr. Gee Update
Picking up from there, here’s how all those pieces fit together this past week.
Focus on the Red circuit that goes from the oil pump inside the sump in the bottom Right corner which pumps the oil to the horizontal Red pipes and fittings you see on the bottom of the Main Bearings on the crankshaft.
Take particular note (click to expand any photo) to the cast iron fittings # 40, 41, 42 and their rubber O-rings #30 7 47.
As I’ve been chasing down every possible lead on where the oil pressure could be leaking out, I kept coming back to these rubber O-rings that seal the pressurized oil flowing through each cast iron fitting bolted to the Main Bearing caps.
At least that is the best scenario I could come up with. However, in the many hours of discussions I’ve had over the past few months with true experts on Gardner engines and diesel engines in general this just did not make any sense. GMD and other Gardner shops have rebuilt literally hundreds, likely thousands of 6LXB engines overall and using these exact same parts and O-rings and none of these have experienced any such problems with decreasing oil pressure, so there was no consensus on the conclusion I had come to.
eXtremely looooooooong story short, the low oil pressure continued and the root cause of this remained more elusive than ever.
The damage to the O-rings continued to baffle us all and none of us could explain how or why this was happening and seeming to only happen on Mr. Gee and not on all the other 6LXB’s restored with all the same parts. Yet, I had conclusive proof that they were being damaged immediately upon installation and whether it was the cause of the low oil pressure or not, I had no choice but to resolve this and be able to know for sure that the next time I installed a new set of O-rings they would NOT be damaged.
By now I had quite the collection of O-rings from the various rebuilds and all my tests and all the evidence and data I had from all of this caused me to conclude, even though it made no sense, that there was simply more volume of rubber than there was volume of space in the groove they fit into that was machined in each cast iron fitting.
Here is one of my “test reports” I wrote up and sent to Michael and James at GMD and my good friend and diesel expert Greg.
Can you spot the pattern that is the clue to this riddle? Read on to see if you’ve got it.
The ONE data point we did not have was what the factory depth and tolerance was for those grooves. GMD had sets of the original drawings from the Gardner factory but this dimension was not shown. I measured the depth on the fittings out of Mr. Gee and the ever helpful James at GMD measured some he had on hand and they seemed to be about the same but I decided the best if not only thing left to do was for me to fly up to GMD and pick up a set of all these cast iron fittings they had on hand out of other Gardner engines they had dismantled.
James very kindly spent several hours with me as we went through all my photos and data as well as looking over my growing collection of badly damaged O-rings from the previous rebuilds and my many bench tests. It also helped that we had had a stripped down 6LXB that James was just starting to rebuild to refer to.
I kept hoping for some Aha! moment to happen, to find something I had not checked or replaced or some mistake I was making but I left GMD and flew back to Möbius without any such revelation or resolution. BUT, I did come back with a set of new fittings in my backpack which fortunately did not get red flagged by airport security!
Gardner Grooviness!
OK, a long and winding road to get to this point but here is what I did upon my return.
Aha! Check out the difference in tolerances of the groove depth between the original fittings out of Mr. Gee and the new/old ones I brought back from GMD. Then check out the tolerance difference of the sectional diameter of the O-rings. I think we may finally be onto something here Watson!
Note that there is a HUGE 0.028” difference between the best and worst scenarios of how much the rubber O-rings are being compressed.!
In terms of space available for the O-ring rubber, the worst scenario would be when one of the largest or “fattest” 0.192” sectional diameter O-rings is put into the smallest “shallowest” depth groove of 0.109” as this combination would compress the rubber O-ring 0.083”. Best scenario would be if the smallest or “skinniest” O-ring of 0.178’ diameter is put into the deepest 0.123’ grooves and only compress 0.055”
Perfect Storm of Tolerances
Let me put it this way; can you be too tolerant? Let’s run one more test to find out.
ALL the O-rings in the new and deeper groove fittings came out like new. No pinch out, no cutting, no marks of any kind!
Whereas, all the O-rings in the test using the original fittings came out damaged which matches the results of all my previous tests on the original fittings where most of the O-rings came out with cuts and slices on them.
From my perspective I think this shows that all the evidence and test results match what I kept coming back to which was the proverbial dilemma of “trying to stuff ten pounds into a five pound bag” so to speak. In this case, more volume of rubber than could fit in the space available in the grooves.
Why Me? asks Mr. Gee & Me
This is the question that has bedeviled me and everyone at Gardner and I’m not sure if we will ever know the answer for sure. Based on all my testing, my best guess is that Mr. Gee and I simply ended up with the “perfect storm” situation where we ended up having fittings with “shallow” grooves that were below the minimum tolerance and these got matched up with “fat” O-rings at or above the upper end of their tolerance. Whatever the opposite of just right Goldilocks is, fat O-rings in shallow grooves are it! Not knowing what the factory specs are for the groove depth we can’t know if the original fittings on Mr. Gee were for some reason below the minimum and I would have certainly exacerbated the problem when I flat filed them to remove their equally difficult to explain bowed out condition and make these surfaces flat.
As is the norm, “perfect storms” come about when a unique combination of factors or events takes place which makes them very rare. In the case of the Gardner LXB, it would indeed be unlikely that such a situation of overly shallow grooves would happen to be fitted with overly large O-rings and thus be extremely rare. What I have shared with GMD and any other Gardner rebuilders, is that it is well worth the few minutes it takes to use a digital Vernier caliper to confirm that the depth of the grooves is never less than 0.120 and that the sectional diameter of the O-rings is never more than about 0.185”. I would imagine that this range is the norm and so even left unchecked there would rarely ever be the kind of loss of oil pressure that has plagued Mr. Gee and me.
In any case, at last I had a path forward where I could be confident that by using all ‘skinny’ 0.178-0.180 sectional diameter O-rings and putting these in fittings with the deeper grooves, there would be the Goldilocks amount of space for the volume of rubber so there would be no squeeze out and pinching. At the very least I have now removed the O-rings from the Most Wanted list of suspects.
Mystery Solved??
I think so. I hope so! But alas, I won’t know for sure if I have finally found and fixed the root problem causing the oil pressure to drop until I have got Mr. Gee up and running with full oil pressure for a few hours and then head out on some more sea trials to ensure that the oil pressure holds up under load.
At the very least I’m delighted to have at least finally resolved the mystery of how and why the O-rings were being damaged which has been the conundrum wrapped in an enigma that has been vexing and eluding me for months now.
As is my habit every time I start Mr. Gee, I will use the hand crank first to spin him up for a few minutes and check that there is oil pressure registering on the gauge. This ensures that all the oil galleries and bearings are full of oil prior to starting and reduces the chances of premature wear in the first few seconds after start up.
If all goes well this week I will at least be able to bring you news and video in next week’s Möbius World update that Mr. Gee is back up and running AND with full 35 PSI oil pressure.
Stay Tuned for the Season Finale!
Whew! if you’re still reading, you’re to be commended for your patience and persistence. This has been an eXtremely long and winding journey for all of us and I do thank you all for joining me along the way. I will do my best to wrap up this ‘murder mystery’ series and bring you the final episode in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for that and in the interim please put your comments and questions in the ‘join the Discussion” box below.
-Wayne
I hope you got it now Wayne. You have the patience of Job.
As you and Diane would know better than most, patience and persistence is a requirement of most any liveaboard boat owner right? Those not up for it are not likely going to enjoy the experience.
Hope all is well for you guys in Alanya. Everything going well with your work on sv Joana?
What ever you don’t have to worry about, be sure to check first!!! That’s from scar number 9,999 of my list of scars from learning by experience.
Whenever someone tells me I don’t have to worry about something or I realize I’m assuming that I don’t think I have to worry about that, it goes on my double check list. Especially if someone says. nothing could possibly go wrong there!
That’s the nesting place of Black Swans!!
Nothing like the voice of experience. Yours matches with mine.
Thanks John!
Hallelujah! Can’t wait for the final successful installments of “As the Engine Turns!”
Amen to that sister! Hope to soon be bringing you the video of As Mr. Gee Turns very soon.
Thanks for being such a longstanding champion of ours and being there throughout our many adventures.
-Wayne
You give OZONE a whole new meaning! You got this!
Hi there Sue & Bob, appreciate you continuing to join us and glad that we can continue to provide some entertainment for you both!
Thought of you the other day when we watched a documentary on YouTube of the resurrection of the de Havilland Beaver “Olivia”. Great story and I think this all happened pretty much in your backyard so I’m guessing that you and Bob know all about it.
One of the sailing YouTube channels we follow also had lots of memories of times with you in a recent episode where they anchored just outside of Brentwood Bay and took their dingy over to Buchards Gardens. Which Christine continues to remind me that SHE has never been there yet so we will definately need to fix that when we anchor Möbius in Brentwood Bay.
Hugs to Bob and the boys and the grandbaby please.
Wayne
One thing I an early boss told me … when you run out of checking things that make sense, start check things that don’t make sense ! so many times I would hear someone say to me “that does not make sense” … now I respond with “well I have checked everything that does make sense” 🙂
Hi Wayne, if you have not already read a book called Exactly by Simon winchester, then I would highly suggest it, its topics and chapters would be sure to give some credence to your current predicament.
Always great when someone gifts you with a good book recommendation so thanks Sean. I am not familiar with “Exactly” but a quick review online made it easy to add to my reading list and I look forward to getting time to read it once we get back to being at sea and on the move. I am fortunate to have grown up with a love of reading and learning in general and they both remain one of my great joys in life. For the past few years my reading lists have been filled to overflowing with technical topics as I threw myself into this whole adventure of designing and building a boat and that will likely continue for awhile longer but is starting to taper off and I will have Exactly ready to go on my Kindle as that happens.
Thanks again, much appreciated,
Wayne
Quite right. I learned long ago to be quite comfortable with both not having an answer to a question for some time and avoiding the temptation to fabricate an answer just to have one. Related to that, I’ve also learned that “does not make sense” is often a temporary state until you learn more. As you have seen I tend to do a lot of ‘fact gathering’ by taking lots of pictures, doing lots of testing, recording data and being as observant as possible. Then I start to looking for clues and in particular patterns that begin to emerge from all the ‘facts’ that I’ve gathered. I also do a lot of sketching and diagrams to show the flow of things or how bits of evidence might fit together. It can be frustratingly slow when things just don’t make sense and yet you still have not found the root of the problem. But time is usually your friend as eventually patterns do emerge or you stumble upon some new bit of evidence you had not noticed or you take a new line of thinking about the problem. Nothing magical about it, mostly just a matter of perseverance and patience until things do start to make sense.
Thanks for your confirmation that this approach has worked well for you too.
-Wayne
Amazing detective work, Wayne! Hope you’ve got it solved and there will be smooth sailing ahead!
Thanks Stephen, great to have you join us on this adventure. Hope things are going well with the latest adventure you and Susan are on and please keep Christine and I posted as you do.
Hello Wayne and Christine,
I really admire your patience and tenacity. It is so inspiring at this time, for I am going to rebuild my car’s engine and have only one other rebuild under my belt, done in 1972! Sending you both good thoughts and I really have enjoyed following your story.
Hi James, thanks so much for the kind comments and I’m delighted that you find some inspiration and support in our chronicling of our adventures. I’m sure that once you get going on your engine rebuild the dust and cobwebs of your last rebuild in 1972 will quickly disappear and be replaced by the energy and smiles you’ll have as you work through the process and the joy when it fires up. Keep me posted as you progress and let me know if there is ever anything I can do to help along the way.
Your adventure with Mr Gee reminds me of a time in nursing school when we observed from balcony open heart surgery of valve replacement of some sort and the surgeon upsettingly spoke out loudly “ I ordered and wanted a number9 not number 8 valve and was admonishing the staff who replied sorry but Number 9 valve is in litigation over paten rights and not legally Available… damn those lawyers was a reply.Ironically the patient was an attorney. (Reference of surgical inumbers sizes are not correct it’s been many years ago and that was not my work area)
Thanks Camille. You’d be amused to know that we recently watched an episode of a Netflix show called Chicago Med that had this exact same scene in it. Perhaps a not too uncommon scenario unfortunately.