It's still colder than hell in the boat shed but we were back this weekend slowly putting the pieces back together. We still have two exhaust manifold bolts to install but we're going to need an Allen socket for that, which we'll get this week.
We also mounted the water fittings on the manifold and some other miscellaneous hardware like the lifting rings and the bracket for the two throttle cables.
Just to make sure that the gaskets fit correctly, we remounted the inboard valve cover. It mounted OK after a lot of shifting. We have no idea of how tight this valve cover should be. It isn't mentioned in the engine manual except a caution to be careful not to tighten it down too much. We can see why. It's just stamped steel with only five mounting points. If we loose one these little washers, we're screwed.
However it's back on and is one more thing that we can take from the parts that are all laided out on our guest bunk. As that pile gets smaller, we get happier.
We certainly hope that we never have to change that outboard, starboard side manifold again. Its clearance to the water tank is an absolute nightmare and the dorks at Silverton who designed this boat should be forced to come down here and replace it for me.
The weather has warmed up and it certainly shows in the river. Ten days ago, there was 14 inches of ice. Now the river is reasonably clear and calmly flowing out with the tide. A thaw at this time of year is good for us. It means that a lot of that snow is melting now and not in late April and early May when we'd like to get out of here.
We shot some video of the river. It looks somewhat grim but to see it as liquid, rather than ice is wonderful. Bill got a haircut so now he looks less like a deranged amateur mechanic.
Looks like spring is coming and with a little break in the cold weather, we headed back down to the boat to continue our saga of changing the cylinder heads and exhaust manifolds on our boat.
When we left the boat six weeks ago, the intake manifold was back on. First order of business on Saturday was to torque it down, which we did: first 20 lbs (in a particular order according to the engine manual) and then 40 lbs. Done. While we were there on Saturday, we scoped out just what we'd have to do to slip the new outboard exhaust manifold in between the engine and the water tank and then lift it up and bolt it to the head.
We made a number of measurements and it was clear that we weren't going to be able to screw in a couple of studs at the back and front of the head and simply slide the 52 lb. manifold on them. That's the way we have done it in the past on GM engines with more room to work. But now the water tank was too close to engine so we only had 3 inches or so to work with.
It was still pretty cold on Saturday, so we took notes and went home to think.
On Sunday morning, our car read 47 degrees outside temperature so we headed back to Portland and climbed up onto the boat. We had a new strategy for getting the exhaust manifold in place: rig a pulley and haul the manifold up to where it could be bolted in place. Good idea for something, but not for what we were trying to do.
Our next option was to simply get down on our knees next to the engine and then reach over and lift one end of the manifold up to a point where we could slip one bolt in. The manifold was resting on the edge of the water tank shelf and every time we tried to move it, the aft end slipped. No go. Time to take a break and think about what we were doing.
We found a piece of 2 X 4 that was about 6 inches long. We wedged that under the aft end of the manifold and went back to leaning over the engine and pulling up on the forward end of the manifold.
That worked. We were able to thread one end bolt into the block. With that done, we tried lifting the manifold so we could seat the other end bolt. That went quickly (about 25 minutes) but at least the damned thing was were it was supposed to be. We slipped in the exhaust manifold gasket and put the remaining four bolts in. Done. See ya in hell, manifold! Your twin on the inside should take about 30 minutes.
Overall, a good weekend. Our long underwear got a workout and we'll sleep well tonight although with a heating pad.
We don't have any pictures of the actual installation but we did some before and after video. We know, Bill needs a haircut. We'll do that this week.
Why these two? Because they have tried to borrow membership money from us, supposing that we are careless at best, or stupid at worst.
It works like this. We get urgent renewal notices from AARP monthly, even though our membership has 9-10 months left to run. Those notices get more and more frequent and to make things worse, our membership card doesn't show a renewal date. If we paid for our last membership on line, we'd have to go through months of credit card statements to see when we last renewed and they are counting on the fact that most people won't bother to do that.
But why not try to trick all those dumb seniors into lending them membership dues way in advance? It's such an easy trick. We'd guess, although we can't prove, that many members of AARP are paid up many years in advance because they pay these bills when they seem to be due.
Then there's the NRA (National Rifle Association). We're permit holders and we carry a firearm on a regular basis. We love the NRA's magazine, "The American Rifleman" and we support many, but not all, of the NRA's political initiatives.
The NRA is really the leader in elaborate direct mail. We get dozens of "renewal notices" that link our membership money to avoiding the collapse of the American democracy or worse. That's fine, but the NRA begins asking for a membership renewal immediately after we've renewed and keeps on doing so every month. Their membership card does not contain a renewal date and every direct mail piece we receive suggests that we have to renew now, even though we are paid up and current and will be for many months to come.
This tendency to take customers as dumb or inattentive really offends us. We really aren't interested in loaning these organizations interest-free money. Sure, to lots of us, it's small change but there is a principle here. Offer a useful membership and ask for renewal when it is due. Pretty simple, right?
Too bad these two organizations and probably many others don't respect that simple way of doing business.
Sorry for the rant. Sometimes just opening our mails sets us off.
We know that many of our readers live here in the northeast so having us complaint about the snow is fairly boring. But, we're getting by. The Snow Blower still starts but it's getting difficult to find a place to blow the snow. We've taken pictures, of course, but they'll only be fun to look at while we're enjoying a cocktail on the deck in July.
We have nothing new to report on the starboard engine head replacement project. We haven't visited the boat in six weeks and that's a first for us. Normally by now, we'd be finished the last "fun" boat project, charging the batteries and counting the weeks before we go back in the water. The spring freshet on the Connecticut River should be something this year!
In the middle of all this snow, Bill's ancient Mercury decided to stop providing heat while overheating the engine. After checking with the locals who couldn't (or didn't want to) find a solution, we took the car to two of the best mechanics we know, Gary and Al at Hicks Garage in Cromwell, Connecticut. (Gary and Al are also big time boaters, which is where we met them many years ago.) It didn't take them long to find the problem and it isn't pretty. Air in the cooling system that, they think, is coming from a failed head gasket or a cracked head. They're digging into the engine and we'll know what they come up with in a few days.
Last Sunday, as it started snowing once again, Frances decided to make a pizza, something she hasn't tried before. We thought this might make a funny video so we set up the cameras in the kitchen and off she went. The resultant video was really long and we attempted to cut it down to something that could be consumed at one sitting.
The pizza? Absolutely delicious, although Frances feels she can make one even better. That's fine. Bill will eat pizza like that any day!
As predicted, it snowed again a couple of times last week and it's snowing again now as we write this on Saturday, February 14. No big deal, but its also been cold. It hasn't been above about 25 degrees in days and we've managed to go through 20 lbs of seed in our bird feeder.
As we were writing this, we received an automated call from the City of Hartford announcing another parking ban for tonight and tomorrow. That's a real issue here in Hartford where the neighborhood streets are barely wider than a single lane because people leave their cars in the street during a storm and just take a chance that they won't be towed.
We have a four-car garage so our cars are never on the street and are usually clear of snow when we want to use them. Many of our neighbors have garages as well but often those garages are unusable because they are filled with stuff.
However, there were signs of spring this week. We received the registration renewals from the Department of Motor Vehicles for Act Three and our inflatable. That's one we never mind paying even though it will be several months before we can put on those stickers and drop the boat in the water.
We also received the summer slip contract from our marina, Marina at American Wharf and a membership renewal from Sea Tow. At this point, anything that looks like spring is very welcome.
After all, we live in southern New England and that's what happens in the winter but we are getting a little tired of it about now. As we write this on February 7, the forecast is for more snow and very low temperatures. That means another weekend when we can't complete the replacement of the heads on our starboard engine. We're almost there, though. Maybe next weekend will be a little better.
Unlike other parts of New England, here in Hartford snow isn't handled very well. Our Mayor closes the streets to parking so the plows can get through but many people don't bother to move their cars so the streets are never really clear.
This is the street in front of our house. We know, our sidewalk needs to be cleared (again) but it's snowing now so we'll wait at least until it stops.
Our ancient Ariens SnowBlower fired right up and has chewed through this stuff three times so far and we have a feeling that we'll be coaxing it back to life once again tomorrow morning.
However, we haven't been wasting our time. Our company has a couple of new clients and it's always difficult to learn more about what they need so we've been spending our leisure time on that.
We've also finally come to grips with the conversion of our office computer network from Windows XP to a newer operating system. Not very exciting compared to installing rebuilt cylinder heads but it has to be done even though it really doesn't do much except enrich Microsoft Corporation.
We rebuilt two of the four computers on our LAN and upgraded them to Windows 7 and we're now working on the last two. We've found that changing technology means that we can only get about five years, max, out of a workstation. Since we're cheap New Englanders, we do all the computer work ourselves. Last spring, we replaced a home-brewed Windows Server with a new Linux "appliance" that is about the size of a shoebox. We bought that unit instead of building one but the next time, we're going to tackle that ourselves, too.
Now, while we wished we were on our boat wrenching, we're spending our snowy weekends gutting the former file server and making it into a new machine. No sense in buying a new computer cabinet or optical drive when we can salvage at least those parts. We told you were were, let's just say, thrifty.
We've also spent some time when we'd normally be working on the boat to further improve our video editing skills. We shoot thrilling sequences such as cars driving by our house or birds enjoying our bird feeder and then edit those sequences and add sound and special effects. It is surprisingly complicated but if the kids on You Tube can do it, we'll be damned if we can't too.
Speaking of You Tube, we've had a "channel" there for the last five years. For us, it's just a fun way to publish our boating life but it has grown quite a lot despite the narrow lifestyle interest it serves. We have 147 subscribers to the channel and our videos have been viewed over 490,000 times. Videos about boat maintenance always get a lot of views and surprisingly, we get very few nasty comments.
The most popular video we ever posted was taken at Mitchell's in Greenport, Long Island during our visit in July, 2013. It's just some poor guy in a go-fast boat trying to get out of his slip. We thought it was funny, even though we've all been through that docking problem more times than we'd like to admit.
That video has garnered almost 200 comments and some of them not very polite. It's amazing to us that something this simple (and short) would be viewed more than 100,000 times. It certainly underscores the importance of You Tube.
We were back at it on Sunday. Our next step was to reinstall the intake manifold. A friend had offered to give us a hand with it because it's heavy but since we were there with gaskets ready, we decided to give it a try ourselves.
One note about the photo shown above. It's taken from video and it appears that the engine is rusty. It isn't. Our lighting consists of four clip-on lights, each with one of those compact fluorescent bulbs. They give off a weird light that I have to set the camera to compensate for and I haven't bothered to do that so far. Anyway, everything is shiny and bright.
The manifold is more awkward than heavy. There's really no place to grab the back of it without getting your fingers between the manifold and the block. After putting on the four gaskets, being careful to add some extra sealant at the corners, we put the manifold in place. And yes, we used Permatex Black Gasket Maker on all the surfaces before we started.
On this particular engine, the position of the mounting bolt holes makes putting the new bolts in really time consuming. We've shown a little of that in the video. Only an offset box wrench seems to work on the five or six most difficult ones. Figuring out how to torque them down will be a challenge. But, everything about this job has been a challenge to some degree, so we'll figure that out too.
Our video is short, which I'm sure most of our friends are thankful for.
As we write this early evening on January 25, we're being bombarded with news of a big blizzard heading our way. Yikes, I'll bet the supermarket is out of bread. What do people do with all that bread? This is New England, after all. It snows here. Get used to it!
