Sunday, May 08, 2005

The Sound of Diesel

Major progress. It's always nice to hear the diesel start up after sitting idle for an entire winter. Yesterday we changed the oil and filters as usual and started her up. Vroooooooommmmm! Instantly! That always amazes me but the nature off diesel engines is that if they have fuel being delivered and the cylinders have been warmed up....they HAVE to start!

I also finaly replaced the little oil pressure sender switch. This switch is normally closed the thereby completing a circuit to the warning buzzer if there is a big drop in oil pressure. That being the case, when you first turn the key on you should hear this beeping and now we do once again. One funny thing that we now have, and I think it is unrelated, is that when the engine is shut down the beeping should return. It does but not without about a 10 second delay! Can't figure that one out yet. I thought it might be the relay for the cylinder pre-heaters but it's not. It could be that the oil pressure doesn't drop instantly or at least the switch doesn't kick back to open right away. I don't think anything bad is happening while the engine is running. I'll study the circuit diagrams some more and see what I come up with.

We also made progress on insulating the frig better. Sue made styrofoam pads for the underside of the lid and glued them in place. We are working on making a better seal around the edge of the lids as well and this will probably always be a work in progress.

We put new hose from the new thru-hull for the head into the head itself. No problem there. One more problem remains regarding the thru-hull for the engine. The new thru-hull is 3/4" but the old pipe is 5/8". So I need to switch to 3/4" pipe but can' find a fitting to move the fitting at the other end of the pipe which is the water strainer from 1/2" up to 3/4". Of course. The exact fitting I need doesn't seem to exist! I want a bronze barb withe 1/2" thread on one end and a 3/4" barb on the other. Why is the plumbing on my boat so weird?

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