Warren and guys,
Last year, a day before we left on our trip, I decided to retighten the new alternator -shouldn't take too long! Hah! It almost resulted in having to pull the engine.
I needed to loosen the tension arm for the alternator, which is only accessible in a combination of work by two people. I stayed in the engine compartment and Jan attacked the problem fromt he port lazarette. She took the socket wrench to undo the nut for the tension arms adjustment along with 4 12inch socket extensions..4!!, and fed the socketed end to me from the lazarette. I used the one hand I had available to guide the socket over the bolt head and hold it there while she then cranked down oon it to loosen it. This worked great, and I successfully tightened the alternator belt this way. AS she withdrew the socket, it shook loose or was knocked loose, and fell into the flywheel on the back of the engine. We could not see it as it fell behind the flywheels webbing that is part of the casting, and lodged against something in there so that I could not hand turn the engine over to dislodge it. Nothing worked. We were leaving int he morning, and I was getting that awful feeling like..this could be bad news for tomorrow!!
Well, after anhours monkeying around, I figured I had one chance left, as the socket kept going down further into the area between the engine and the flywheel. I tried a magnetized wand, which picked the part up weakly (it was stainless steel) and dropped it soon as the full weight of the socket wa applied.
So I went next door, and borrowed the neighbors 9 year old son, who climbed down int o our 'basement' and head first decended to the engine/flywheel area. He could see the part, but could not touch it no matter what he did. I decided to rotate the engine as far as it would go and see if that helped..it did, and he finally picked the part out with two fingers. He worked like 30 minutes under there, and was a bit reluctant at first to do this.
I tell you there is no substitute for a small person aboard ones ship. Maybe we could sort of make them honorary crew, with some small duty during the week, but their *real* job would be to go in the basement to fix or replace things gone south.
As a result of this kids help, we did complete our trip....which is another post, already published.
Cheers,
Larry DeMers
s/v DeLaMer
Cape Dory 30
Warren Kaplan wrote: Ken Coit wrote: Matt,
I had to laugh at your description of getting to that port locker seacock. You must weigh more like my dad did than I do. At 6 ft. and 150# max, maybe he could have managed to get his torso behind the steering quadrant, but I'm not going to try unless there is a life threatening situation at sea. I wholeheartedly recommend a helper, a cell phone, and the number of the local rescue squad before heading into those spaces, especially at my 220#.
Enjoy the crawl and keep on sailing,
Ken
Ken,
Your comments remind me of last year when I had the stuffing box of my CD27 removed and a PSS installed. I had the yard mechanics do it. I wouldn't dare. I'd still be in traction if I tried! They had to take a look at the "job" first before deciding on doing it. The head mechanic came over to Sine Qua Non with me and we took a look down into "the bowels" of the boat where the stuffing box was. The mechanic was a hefty guy and I commented to him, "How are you gonna' get in there?" He smiled and said, "I'm not gonna' go down there. We have a guy named Carlos who we keep around for just such a purpose. He's about 110 pounds soaking wet and he can squeeze into anything." Well, they yanked out the old stuffing box and scored prop shaft and replaced it with a PSS and new shaft. It was all done inside of a week. They told me that Carlos did the whole thing under their supervision. I felt sort of bad for Carlos, shoe horned into that hole for hours at a time in the hot weather. I found him a few days later and gave him a nice tip!
Warren Kaplan
Sine Qua Non
CD27 #166
demers@sgi.com