A very busy week filled with several major milestones just flew by that included some fun birthday celebrations, an eXciting birthday gift and some eXcitement in the Engine Room with Mr. Gee 3.0.
I’ll cover them in that order so let’s jump right in and bring you up to date on the week that was the 14th through 20th of March, 2022.
Christine’s Birthday Breakfast
Captain Christine completed her latest circumnavigation of the sun and started her next one on Tuesday the 15th. We awoke to a beautiful sunny morning with no wind so her first gift was for us to walk over to our favorite little spot on the beach here in Finike which is about a kilometer around the waterfront from the marina.
As you can see they serve quite the traditional Turkish breakfast and the only problem is finding enough room on the table for all the plates!
NOTE: If you look up at the top of the photo above Christine’s head you can see the masts of all the sailboats in the Finike Marina where Möbius is docked.
Just a few of the reasons we love living here for the past 8 months.
Birthday eBike!
Made with all aluminium construction which we obviously prefer and keeps the weight down to just 19.5kg / 43lbs which is very good for a folding eBike.
She has since been out to the market twice and now has about 20 km on it and she says the battery still says full so she is very pleased that all her research paid off. Happy Birthday my Captain!
Guess what? As Mr. Gee Turns is a Trilogy!
Meanwhile, I was making good progress with Mr. Gee as I come to find out that the mystery series I’ve been writing here on the ever elusive oil pressure is a actually a trilogy! Who knew? All along I had thought there was just one dastardly plot to foil me but it turns out that there were three different stories to be told here. I now believe that I am finally ready to write the final episode in this three part series so read on to see how this all ends.
In what I now realize was the second book in this trilogy, I had found and fixed the problem with the rubber O-rings so I was very sure that these were now sealing well and if there was a leak it had to be somewhere else internally. With Mr. Gee still up in the air with his oil pan/sump still off it wasn’t possible to run the oil pump so I decided to build a little tank that I could fill with oil and pressurize to simulate the output of the oil pump. Last weekend, in one of our many calls my dear friend Greg and I came up with a series of tests and this was one of them.
Turns out that great minds do think alike as Gary, one of our fabulous followers, left a comment here on the blog with the same suggestion a few days later. Thanks Gary!
Both of these are brand new gauges and the one on the bottom is the one that has been on Mr. Gee since the very first rebuild and had been working reliably. Once again, great minds thinking alike as two days later two other helpful followers, Gary and “Sail Free Spirit” added their comments here asking if it might be possible that the oil pressure gauge wasn’t working? Thanks guys.
Didn’t seem likely as it had been working fine and reading properly for all the times Mr. Gee has been running, about 20 hours in total, but still worth checking right?
I filled him up with oil and connected the starter motor so I could use that to crank him over for a few seconds and check to see if there was any movement on the oil pressure gauges. Both needles moved so it was looking promising and I continued connecting water and exhaust hoses and everything needed to start.
But hang on a minute!
What’s up with the second gauge behind it? It IS reading 35 PSI, a difference of almost 20 PSI! WTF!?!?
As you can see here, now things got eXtremely curious! Here I have THREE different gauges attached and THREE DIFFERENT readings; 45, 34 and 30 PSI.
Holy jumpin’ gauge needles Batman! We have proper oil pressure!!!!
I have since permanently mounted these two gauges to Mr. Gee just in case one should decide to go MIA in the future and I got busy getting Mr. Gee fully installed and ready to head out to sea.
Such as checking and adjusting all the intake and exhaust valve clearances to be 0.004 and 0.008’” respectively.
Connect all the AC power cables to the two Electrodyne alternators.
And with all that done Mr. Gee is now running like his famous self and oil pressure is holding steady at 35 PSI!
So here at last is the video that so many of us have been waiting so long for:
I am putting together a longer video tour of Mr. Gee that so many of you have been asking for and hope to get that posted later this week. We are experiencing excruciatingly slow upload speed right now for some reason but hope to have those fixed soon.
In putting all the evidence together now, here is what seems to have played out. Rather than a single problem causing the oil pressure to drop, it seems that there were three completely separate problems that shared the common thread of low oil pressure.
Series #1 Massive Overloading. In the first episode an inept captain who had been hired to do the first sea trials, had pushed both throttle and pitch levers to their maximum position and left them there causing massive overloading on a brand new engine. This lead to rapid wear on the main bearings and caused the oil pressure to drop.
Series #2 Too Tolerant O-Rings. After the second rebuild to fix the damage caused by the massive overloading all seemed to be well and the engine ran with full oil pressure for the first 7 hours of sea trials. Then it started to drop off slowly again. After tearing down the engine once again, I discovered that the O-rings sealing the crankshaft main bearing oil pipework had been damaged on installation because O-rings with maximum sectional diameter happened to be installed in grooves with minimum depth such that there was more rubber than space and the O-rings were pinched and sliced open when they were installed. After about 7 hours of run time these damaged O-rings began to leak which caused the oil pressure to drop once again.
Series #3 Faulty Oil Pressure Gauge In this week’s final episode of the trilogy, for reasons that remain unclear at this time, the oil pressure gauge that had been working fine, continued to show pressure but as was in fact showing 20 PSI less than the actual oil pressure. Over adjusting the PRV had been successful at raising the oil pressure so that this faulty gauge would show 35 PSI but what I went on to discover with a second gauges was that in fact the actual oil pressure was about 55 PSI! The oil pressure had been correct 35 PSI with the PRV adjusted as it should be with about 5 threads showing, but because the gauge was just off by about 20 PSI it was only reading 15. Truth is always stranger than fiction right??
This latest situation with the new Gardner oil pressure gauge working fine for many months and then suddenly giving a false reading that was 20 PSI lower than the actual pressure present remains a mystery to me. I guess this is another example of how assumptions can always bite you in the #$ss and that I probably should have tried swapping out the gauge sooner. Having had the gauge be reading correctly right up until it didn’t took me by surprise as normally these mechanical oil pressure gauges either work or they don’t. I’ve not previously experienced this sudden change in the pressure reported by the gauge itself when the actual oil pressure stays the same, but I am now!
Hardy Orzikowski on the Wika blog has a very thorough and well written article called “8 Common Reasons For Pressure Gauge Failure” and that offers some insights into what might have happened with the gauge on Mr. Gee.
As you can see these mechanical gauges are very simple and not too much to go wrong with them but obviously its possible. I may open up the one that failed to see what I can find inside but so far nothing appears to be amiss, all clean and it does work, just all of a sudden not giving the correct reading. For those of you with some thoughts on this please put them in the ‘Join the Discussion’ box at the bottom.
While I won’t feel like this final episode is completely finished until I put 20-50 hours of sea trials on Mr. Gee 3.0 but right now both Christine and I are feeling the best we have in many months as this mystery series seemed to be unending.
There are a LOT of lessons to be learned here and I will be processing all this for some time. And while it has been an eXtremely long and winding road, it has not only lead to what appears to be a very happy ending, it has also reminded me just how fortunate I am to have such a supportive Captain and such awemazing friends, family and followers who have been there throughout this entire trilogy. Thanks and I am eXtremely grateful to ALL of you!
Hope you will all stick around for the fun part of enjoying the flip side of when you make it through a big storm at sea with how much better you appreciate the sunsets that follow. My sincere thanks to ALL of you who have been on the adventure with me and I’ll continue to do my best to bring you more interesting and entertaining content on topics other than oil pressure!!!
-Wayne
Outstanding Wayne and Christine. I’m happy for you. You can finally put this arduous problem behind you, and start working on the next issue. Well done.
Thanks Wade, it does feel great to finally have a working engine and be able to get back out on the water. Still some jobs we are working on as we prepare to head out for the new season and finally getting back to traveling. Send us an update when you have time on how things are going with you two and sv Joana and what your plans are looking like as the weather gets better.
YAY!
Pucker factor gone!
Well, we won’t feel fully confident until we get out and put on some hours under load but does feel great to seemingly have finally resolved all the problems with Mr. Gee and have him working well again. Hope to see you here before we take off.