Saturday, November 28, 2009
Dante and Virgil were not modern sailors. Had they been, they would have discovered that there are not 9 levels of hell, but that there is a 10th level where the engineers and designers of the Yanmar diesel engine and the Jeanneau installation reside or will find their way to. After discovering the broken blade on the Fischer Panda impeller yesterday I decided to do preventative maintenance on the main diesel engine’s impeller today, thinking it would be a nice divertissement before I would attack the teak and dinghy in the outside heat. Needless to say, it was a lot more work than I expected, it took over 6 hours in total; luckily I wasn’t at sea rolling about but safely at a dock with the air conditioning running. The water pump is located where it cannot be seen, the pictures below were taken blindly from under the engine and most of the pictures were deleted because they focused on the wrong area. Even though there were only 4 screws to the cover plate it took a long time to located them by feel and try to unscrew them. There wasn’t enough room to get a screwdriver in place, but luckily the screws were also made for an 8mm hex head. Removing the cover plate, while arduous, was just the beginning of my woes. The impeller itself would not let itself be removed, I used two pairs of pliers to try to grab the rubber blades and pull the impeller out but my only success was a couple of lacerations (note to self, that 100 pack of bandages needs to be replenished soon). I won’t go into the gory details of the job, but will say that expletives, once learned, are never forgotten. I haven’t used those swear words in years yet today they all came back to me 😉 I am somewhat hoarse from my occasional outbursts of anger today – remember, 6 hours for a trivial task that took 30 minutes on my old engine! Perhaps there should be an exclusive, VIP 11th level of Hell, now that I think about it…
I actually could have been finished in only 5 hours, but after putting everything back together and firing up the engine it turns out that the O-ring was improperly sealed and leaked badly, so I had to take the whole thing apart and try to seat the rubber O-ring correctly prior to re-installation.
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