Heads off but first, the water pump

We had a great Christmas and spent some time together cooking and laughing. Time well spent, as far as we're concerned.

This weekend we went back to the boat. We'll be lugging down all the new parts, each of which seems to weight at least 50 lbs. The new heads and the exhaust manifold are in boxes, which makes handling them a little easier. The intake manifold doesn't have box so getting it up on the boat will take some careful effort.

As we cleaned up the mating surfaces and got ready to mount the outboard head, we took a look at the raw water pump for that engine. We've never changed an impeller on it in the six seasons we have had the boat and it pumps seawater just fine. However, when we bought the boat it had two replacement pumps on board and, since the pump is (relatively) easy to get to with the upper end of the engine disassembled, we decided to install one of the new pumps. The old pump was a Sherwood and the new one a Jabsco, but they appeared identical.

Its worth noting that these pumps are expensive - $380 each - and it isn't possible to simply change the impeller as you would with most seawater pumps. You can buy a rebuild kit but to use it, you must remove the pump and the pulley, which is pressed onto the shaft. All the more reason to replace it now, which we did. If we have time, we'll do the port engine as well.

Of course, we got to learn all about how Chrysler went about mounting the pump. It has a bracket that  bolts to the circulating pump with two 9/16" brass bolts. The pump mounts on the top bolt and the bottom one slides along a slotted arm so that the drive belt can be adjusted. Sounds good but it wasn't easy. We laid across the top of the engine (mating position, kinda) and reached down under the front to extract and then reinstall those two bolts.

We got it mounted okay but couldn't push the inlet hose back on. Then we removed the new pump completely, coated the inside of the inlet hose with dish washing liquid and forced it in place. Eventually, that worked. Elapsed time about two hours. Doesn't look like we're going to do this for a living.

Before we left on Sunday afternoon, we spent some time cleaning up the mating surfaces on the inboard exhaust manifold that we've decided to keep. It really doesn't look bad at all and since we're  basically cheap New Englanders, we'd really like to re-use it. But, now we wonder.

We're going to give this some thought. It's one of the last things we have to replace so we have some time. $350 for a new one is a half a tank of marine gas. Doesn't sound so bad when you think of it that way.

We've added some video. We've started narrating and while Bill looks like an old vagrant, it does add a dimension that old videos didn't have. Now all we need to get him better lighting, cleaner clothes and more hair.