Pump Removed

This article is going to assume you have the skills to safely and easily remove your own water pump from the engine. This one is easy and uses four bolts and a gasket to mount to the timing gear case on the engine.

In this photo you can see how the pump came off the motor. While not leaking badly the oil seal side was weeping a tiny bit of oil as shown. Also, when they installed this motor they used 1″ hose on a 7/8″ hose barb so there was some water leakage that caused some of the corrosion. This pump appears to have never been rebuilt and the motor has 2878 hours on her, so raw water pumps can last a long time.

This raw water pump is made by Johnson Pump as a specific OEM unit for Westerbeke. Unfortunately Johnson Pump will not sell you parts, other than an impeller, due to OEM agreements with Westerbeke.

A new Westerbeke pump is $480.00 and the rebuild kit is $130.00. This kit includes literally everything but the pump body. Rebuilding is the cost effective and obvious choice, provided your pump body is in good condition.

Remove The C-Clip

Raw water pumps, while similar, all have a few features in common; a pump body, shaft, impeller, seals and either bushings or bearings.

This particular pump uses two bearings that are pressed into the pump body then retained with a c-clip.

To remove this clip you will need a set of c-clip pliers. You will need the type that pinch rather than spread when you squeeze the handles. Sears, and other tool retailers, sell these and they are called everything from “retaining ring pliers” to “circlip pliers” to “c-clip pliers”.

Removing the c-clip is as easy as it looks. Simply insert the pliers tips into the retaining ring holes, squeeze and then lift out the ring.

I Used A Block Of Wood

When driving the shaft out it would be advisable to use a press but most boaters don’t have one so I am showing you an alternative method. If you are of a mechanical mind set and own a lead or brass hammer then it would be OK to tap directly on the shaft as brass and lead are softer than the shaft material. If you do not own a soft metal hammer simply insert a block of wood such as Maple, Oak or Teak, as I have done here, and tap on the wood with a regular hammer.

Please remember this is a light tapping not a smashing or pounding.

If the shaft won’t come out, with some gentle taps, add some PB Blaster, let is soak over night, and try again. If you still don’t have any luck drop it at a machine shop and for about $5.00 or $10.00 they will press it out for you. I have never seen one that required this, but with boats anything is possible..

Seal Locations

This is a well designed pump. The oil seal is isolated by a weep slot or weep hole from the water side of the pump and seal. Even if the water side seal were to leak, the water will just drain out the weep hole. If the oil side were to leak it too would simply drain out the weep hole. Neither side of this pump can pressurize or leak into one another.

On occasion I have seen weep holes plugged with dried salt. In theory this could create some pressure that may press though a weak oil seal when the engine was of and the seacock open. With the engine running the crankcase becomes pressurized and should reject the water.

I have yet to see any water in the engine oil, even with a salt encrusted weep hole. It is quite possible that if water did get in, it was so minimal it was evaporated off with engine heat. Either way, if you have dried salt, water leaking, or oil leaking you’ll need to rebuild the pump.

Unfortunately some pumps, by certain makers, do not have or utilize adequate weep holes so a water side leak could inevitably leak into the engines oil or vice versa.

The Rebuild Kit

As of this writing the replacement for this pump was $480.00. I only paid about $130.00 for the rebuild kit, which makes it a very good value. This particular kit contains every single gasket, screw, washer and piece that makes up this pump other than the pump body casting itself. Buying a rebuild kit and doing this job yourself can represent a tremendous savings over buying a new pump.

This kit included the following:

• Water seal
• Seal spacer
• Oil seal
• Shaft
• Impeller
• Impeller lube (Glycerin)
• Cover plate
• Cover plate gasket
• Cover plate screws
• Cam
• Cam screw
• Cam washer
• C-clip
• Bearings
• Shaft
• Pump to engine gasket.

Sadly, not all pumps have re-build kits available. If not there is a great company in Florida called Depco Pump. Depco can usually get you what you need or perhaps even sell you a re-built pump.

EDIT: Since writing this article Westerbeke has increased the price of this rebuild kit to $195.95

Putting It Back Together

The first thing I re-installed was the pump cam. Be sure to use the small copper crush washer that came with the rebuild kit or it will leak out of the screw hole..

Shaft In The Ice Box

Here’s the shaft chilling down in order to shrink it ever so slightly.

The Home Made Bearing Press

I wanted to be able to show how to do this without needing to use a shop press. As long as you have a bench vise you can do this job.

My first task was to drill a hole just slightly bigger than the shaft in a 3/4 thick piece of Maple. I used the old shaft and bearings, as a guide, to drill the hole deep enough.

Measure The Bearing Depth

It is important that your bearings end up in the same location as the originals, only on the new shaft.

To transfer this measurement from the old shaft to the new one I used the depth gauge on my calipers and measured from the impeller end of the shaft to the inner bearing race.

The Pressing Washer

In order to press the new bearings onto the shaft it takes considerable pressure. This type of pressure should only be applied to the inner bearing race or the one that is in contact with the shaft. Pressing on the outer race may cause damage to the bearings or races or even brinelling the race or bearings. This is a metric washer I had in my nut & bolt supplies that fit perfectly over the shaft but remained just inside the outer race.

Again, this method was used for those who don’t have a shop press.

The Bench Vise / Home Made Press

In this picture you can see that I have faced the jaws of my vice with two maple blocks and held them in place with electrical tape. Both wood blocks have holes in them to accept the shaft & keep it in place. The holes and blocks are also centered perfectly over the center line of the vise jaws.

Vises are not the most precision instruments, therefore it is important that you line everything up so the jaws don’t cock-off one way or the other when you tighten down on the shaft & bearings.

The bearings need to press on at a perfect 90 degree angle to the shaft, or they won’t.

If you look closely you can see the pressing washer.

Install The New Shaft & Bearings

Just like you removed it you can re-install it with a block of wood and a hammer. Please be careful to make sure your bearings & shaft are 90 degrees to the base of the pump before tapping them home. You do not want to try and tap them in crooked.

If your bearing press-fit into the pump housing is tight you will want to come up with a way to press on the outer bearing races that meet the pump body. This takes the pressure off the bearings and inner bearing race. This pump was not a horribly tight fit, so the block of wood worked fine.

The Socket, Washer & Oil Seal

This is what I use to press the oil seal into the pump body with. When pressing in the oil seal DO NOT drive it all the way in. Press it in so it is just slightly proud of the weep hole. The spacer and water seal, when pressed in on top of it, will seat it to the proper depth so it does not interfere with the bearings. You can over-seat the oil seal if not careful and reversing an over-seating of the seal is not easy.

Oil Seal Seated

If you click on this image and blow it up you’ll notice some red paint. This paint is the weep hole. The oil seal is just slightly proud of the weep hole so when the water seal and spacer are installed on top it gets seated to the precise depth needed without impinging upon the bearings.

Before sliding the seal over the shaft it’s a good idea to pre-lube it with some motor oil. I usually just tip a bottle of oil over, then right side up again, quickly and with the cap on, and this leaves enough oil on the underside of the cap to dip your finger into.

Before installing the pump on the motor it would be a good idea to squirt a little oil into the bearings with the pump sitting on its face. Gravity will bring the oil to the seal. Doing this will pre-lube it prior to installation. I would advise draining this oil though before installing it. This will prevent getting oil on the gasket. All you need is a surface film of oil to prevent a dry start.

Spacer / Weep Hole

If you blow this one up and look carefully you can see one of the spacer feet. This photo should explain why the spacer is important. It keeps the two seals apart to prevent a water side leak from getting into your engine oil.

Install The Impeller

When you install the impeller it is important to apply a liberal amount of Glycerin or “Impeller Lube” to the pump body and the impeller.

TIPS:

1- Glycerin can be purchased at any drug store for far less than it is sold as “impeller lube“.

2- Contrary to the myths about aligning the impeller vanes in a certain direction, it really does not matter. Just squish them and install the impeller, they will orient where they want to be the second you hit the starter button.

WARNING: It is not advised to use petroleum based lube products on impellers as these greases or oils can damage and shorten the life of the impellers rubber compound. Lube with glycerin.

All Done !

The pump is ready for paint & then for use.

Good luck & happy boating!

An Infrared Thermometer

This is an infrared thermometer and it is what I consider to be an important tool for any boat owner. As I always say “tools are free“. What I mean by this is the expense of the tool, and doing the job yourself, is almost always paid for by the labor savings. In 35 years of tool buying I have yet to find one that was not paid off in one or two projects or uses. Lucky for the average boat owner infrared thermometers, also called pyrometers, have come way down in price over the last 4-5 years.

There are lots of things an infrared thermometer can be used for on a boat such as refrigeration trouble shooting, stuffing box trouble shooting, electrical trouble shooting and it has plenty of uses for engine trouble shooting. You can also aim it at the ocean, before jumping in, to avoid the “I was in the pool.” / shrinkage argument.

What is engine temp monitoring and why am I reading this?

I wanted to pass along my process and pre-planning assessment for potential future overheating events. By following these procedures you will be able to trouble shoot over heating in your own engine based on the baselines you create before a problem arises.

This measurement process should take place well before you’ve had an overheating situation and is the whole premise of this article. It’s to get a baseline when your engine is running well.

You’ll use the infrared thermometer to measure various marked locations on the engine prior to an overheat so that when you have one you can pull out your notebook, tablet or computer, compare measurements, and more quickly isolate and locate the problem.

We’ll call this our engine temp baseline;

Your engine temp baseline should always be derived from a properly running engine with a clean sea-strainer, clean heat exchanger (HX), clean unclogged exhaust elbow and a new or relatively new impeller. Measurements should only be taken after the engine is 100% warmed up from having been run under load long enough to bring the water heater temp as high as the engine normally gets under cruising load.

Heat Exchanger Raw Water Outlet to Transmission Cooler

Here I’m reading the temp of the raw water circuit on it’s way out of the HX.

The raw water path on this Westerbeke engine is as follows;

• Raw Water Seacock To Sea Strainer
• Sea Strainer to Raw Water Pump
• Raw Water Pump to Heat Exchanger Intake,
• Heat Exchanger Outlet to Transmission Cooler Inlet
• Transmission Cooler Outlet to Siphon Break,
• Siphon Break to Exhaust Elbow.

Please IGNORE the temp readings on my Raytek Infrared as I did not have the time to properly warm up my engine. They are illustrative only! I already had these numbers recorded and merely wanted to photograph how to get your engine temp baseline.

Measuring The Wet Side of the Exhaust Elbow

This is the exhaust elbow. The exhaust elbow serves the purpose of injecting cooling water into the hot exhaust gasses so they can be expelled through the rubber hoses, inside your boat, without melting them.

In this photo you can easily see my numbering system and the dot for repeatability.

The brass elbow coming into the top side of the exhaust elbow is the injection point for the raw water (ocean or lake water) circuit. This is where the water that gets spit out your transom gets injected into the exhaust system to keep it cool.

This temp, and the next one, are very critical measurements. Exhaust elbows, on short run time sailboat installed diesels, tend to load up with rust scale and carbon until they become blocked or clogged. A blockage of the exhaust elbow can definitely cause an over heating event.

Injection Point and Measurement Dot

This is just a wider angle photo of the injection to the exhaust elbow and the dot I aim the infrared at to get good repeatability.

Measuring the Thermostat Housing

In this photo I’m measuring the temperature of the upper thermostat housing.

I know the red laser dot is off slightly from my dot but holding the DSLR camera, with a hot shoe flash, and the infrared while upside down and contorted leaves it up to; close enough is good enough, for this illustration.

NOTE: The petcock mounted to the top of the thermostat housing is where you would bleed any trapped air off the sealed or anti-freeze side of the system to prevent an air lock. Some engines have this feature & some don’t. On some engines this petcock is just in a different location.

WARNING: Before attempting a bleed a petcock moisten a rag with COLD water so you don’t burn your fingers and wear insulated fishing gloves made of rubber. The antifreeze can burn you if you are not careful. I recommend a cold rag over the petcock, rather than pliers because it can spray out at a high force. Trust me, you don’t want to use just pliers with no rag to prevent spray while upside down and contorted. Ouch!

Measuring the Temp of the Sending Unit

In this photo I am measuring the actual temperature of the sending unit where it threads into the engine block. The t-stat on this Westerbeke is rated at 180 and the Raytek reads 178.5. Keep in mind t-stats are not all that accurate and can have as much as a 5+ degree variance.

Again, monitor this reading for a while to get a low normal range and a high normal range for your baseline.

Measuring The Raw Water Pump

The impeller is lubricated & cooled by the ocean or lake water that it’s pumping. It’s a good idea to get a baseline reading on this as well. If you develop and blockage of your intake or sea strainer the temp of the raw water pump can climb due to decreased water flow and thus less cooling.

It will normally read a little hotter than the ocean temp as measured on the outlet side and this is normal. This temp differential, even with a brand new impeller, should still be under a 10 degree spread.

Measuring the Return Line From the Water Heater

As you can see in this photo, based on the differential, the hot water heater is not yet up to temperature. I have about a 40 degree differential temperature across the supply and return lines for my water heater.

The water heater acts like another heat exchanger and can actually throw off your readings and overheat findings. Your supply and returns from the water heater should be within about 5 degrees of each other before creating your baseline assessment.

I often hear “My engine runs fine for about 30-40 minutes then begins to overheat?“. This could just be a situation of a clogged HX, sea strainer or other raw water circuit problem getting masked by the cool water in the water heater. This cool water acts like, and can mimic, a heat exchanger. As the temp in the heater rises the engine can no longer dissipate heat into that water and the engine begins to over heat.

Don’t forget to write all these numbers down with both your high normal and low normal range readings. When or if you have an over heating situation you can now easily trace it by comparing these numbers to the measurements / readings taken during an over heat.

 

Good luck & happy boating!

The Raw Water Pump

Changing an impeller is not a daunting task and it’s one that every boater should consider adding to their arsenal of DIY maintenance. Changing an impeller, on many engines, usually takes less than 20 minutes even if you are fairly slow. The most complicated aspect of the task is physical access to the pump.

Raw water impellers are a wear item unfortunately they do not always abide by a time or hours of use schedule. A simple mishap like forgetting to open the engines raw water intake, or a partial weed plug in the intake, can kill an impeller in short order. Impellers don’t like to be run dry and they don’t like heat. If run hot for too long they can throw a blade or lose a chunk that can lodge in a hose, elbow or in the heat exchanger. If this happens you’ll have a much larger job on your hands in terms of finding the missing piece. Finding all the missing impeller bits is important in order to prevent further damage or overheating issues.

I change my impeller every spring regardless of condition. Some feel this is overkill and you’ll need to decide for your self what your maintenance schedule is. I look at it this way, impellers are cheap insurance. I pay $16.00 for the impeller in our Westerbeke and it takes about 8-10 minutes to change it. It took me just twenty minutes, even while photographing it, and the access for my large camera was not very conducive..

An over heated engine or a thrown blade can cost many, many times more in both time and money than the few minutes and the minimal boat bucks required for this simple maintenance. Changing an impeller costs less than changing my engine oil and filter..

If you do it every spring, or every time you run it dry for more than a 30-45 second period, or under restricted flow due to a blockage in the strainer or intake system, you should have a trouble free impeller and never throw a blade or lose flow due to a worn impeller again.

Removing The Screws

As I mentioned this job is very, very easy. If you can change oil or an air filter or clean a blender after making frozen chick drinks you can certainly change an impeller.

Step 1: Loosen the screws and remove them. If they are frozen or rusted use some PB Blaster but be very, very careful not to just blast it everywhere.. Please understand that PB Blaster can eat pump seals, engine seals and engine gaskets for breakfast. If you need to use a penetrating oil I’d advise spraying it into the spray can cap and then dab it on the screws with a Q-Tip.

Tip: Buy yourself some spare face plate screws as one will always wan to drop into the bilge. That Murphy guy is always waiting for you…

Check For Wear

The face plate of a water pump is considered another wear item. If it’s scored and worn you should replace it or flip it. I keep a spare brand new cover plate on board just in case. Even at Westerbeke’s exorbitant prices it was only $13.00, and again is cheap insurance.

Some pumps, such as certain Oberdorfer models, have cover plates with no stamped part numbers on them. If your cover plate is worn, and the opposite side has no paint or stamping marks, you can simply flip it around and re-use it. My Westerbeke face plate is embossed with a part number and can not be flipped.

My paper gasket came off, except for one small chunk, in one piece.  That is not by design but rather dumb luck… Sometimes you get lucky!

Ready To Re-Install

After I cleaned this plate I decided that I’d install my new one instead, and keep this as a back up. The pictured plate has fairly minimal wear and could certainly be re-used with success but for the $13.00 I decided to go new.

Remove The Impeller

While the concept of water pumps is the same across brands the method of how the impeller sits on, or is attached to the shaft may be different. This pump has a slotted shaft and the impeller has a screw that sits in the slot. To remove it I simply use my needle nose Vise Grip pliers. It just pops right out and could not be any simpler.

Some pumps use set screws or c-clips. Impellers with c-clip retaining rings will require a set of c-clip pliers. It’s always good to know what your pump looks like before taking it apart so you can have the right tools on hand. Most engine manufacturers and pump makers have on-line parts manuals that will show an exploded view and will allow a sneak peek into the inside of your pump before you open it up..

New Impeller

To install the impeller lube the entire exterior with glycerin. After lubing compress it with your fingers and seat it into the pump body..

I often hear of folks talking of using zip ties to pre-compress the impeller for insertion but I honestly don’t understand why one would need to do so. I’ve replaced impellers on very large Detroit diesels, Cummins, Caterpillars and even one lung teeny tiny Yanmar’s and all of those impellers went back in fine without a zip tie pre-compressing it. You really do not need to over think the re-insertion just do it.

If your impeller had vanes pointing in different directions when you took it out, as the photo of the old one shows, DON’T WORRY. This is rather normal and is due to the little bit of back spin a diesel can develop as it shuts down. Sometimes during the last revolution the engine may actually spin back a notch or two causing the impeller blades to be out of spin direction unison.

Even of you put an impeller in with the vanes completely backwards of the pumps rotation it would correct itself with the first bump of the starter. It is 100% urban myth/dock talk that impeller vanes need to be installed in the direction of rotation.

Pumps just like these, which use identical impellers, are used in industry every single day and the pumps are often forward and reverse pumps switching directions many times per day to drain or fill tanks, vats etc.. Please don’t beat yourself up over vane direction, it simply doesn’t matter..

Prep The Gasket

These cheap paper gaskets tend to suck donkey balls. (grin)

To aid the gasket in making a good seal I sometimes use HondaBond 4 (do not confuse HondaBond 4 with HondaBond HT which is silicone).

Personally I do not like silicone gasket maker for this application and much prefer products like HondaBond 4, YamaBond or ThreeBond 1104. A product called The Right Stuff from Permatex is also similar. These sealants do not totally cure, remain flexible and will not contaminate sealing surfaces with silicone.

Do not over apply any gasket sealer. You only need enough to have skim coat on the surfaces.

I like to insert two machine screws and lay the gasket over them before installation of the plate. This keeps the gasket aligned and makes it a simple one step procedure. With the two screws finger tight I then insert the remaining screws and torque them to proper spec which you will find in your owners manual. If your handy with a wrench you can do this by feel, if not, you may actually want to use a torque wrench.

You can install the gasket using any method that gets the gasket in the right place without ripping it, as that is all that really matters.. These paper gaskets can go in dry too.

All Done

See changing an impeller is quite easy!

 

Good luck & happy boating!

Westerbeke 3″ Heat Exchanger

This is a typical 3″ raw water heat exchanger as found on many Westerbeke an Universal diesel engines.

Removal of End Cap

The end cap assembly consists of a brass end cap, a stainless bolt, an o-ring and a rubber gasket. The o-ring and gasket go together as shown.

The Zinc End

This is about as good an example as I can come up with as to why you need to change your heat exchanger anode regularly.

Each engine will be slightly different in regards to anode erosion so test it at three, four, six weeks etc. to see which works best for your engine. This is why these heat exchangers have end caps.

By not changing the anode often enough this is what will happen. Chunks will break off the anode which can clog the heat exchanger leading to an over heating engine.

HX End Cap Before

Most often the end caps are reusable but they do need to get cleaned up or the gaskets may leak.

The HX – Ready For Fresh Paint

This heat exchanger was pressure tested, cleaned inside and out and readied for a new coat of paint. A good auto radiator shop can pressure test it and then clean it all for about $30.00 to $50.00, depending upon your geography. I have a local guy that will do this for $30.00-$50.00. Not really worth my time to even consider doing it myself.

All Clean & Boiled Out

This is what the tubes look like after being boiled out…

Ready For Paint

When painting be sure to mask off the hose adapters. Painted hose adapters can lead to future leaks.

After Cutlass Bearing Removed

I get lots of comments to the effect that I make these jobs look too easy. They are easy, it does not however mean they don’t get frustrating. I wanted to use this post to assure readers that I face the same obstacles as everyone when working on boats. This post will give you a good understanding of how boat jobs often go, with one problem leading to, or unmasking yet another problem. I call it the snowball effect.

The Snowball Effect:

This job was to be a simple shaft, cutlass, coupling & prop replacement but oh how things change when you get going. The boat, a mid eighties Ericson 34, had relatively low engine hours for her age but exhibited a very high level of vibration. After I pressed out the cutlass bearing it became very apparent just how badly the vessel was misaligned.

Not only was the engine sitting far to low in the shaft log, and the shaft was thumping it when the engine was in gear, it was also not passing through either the shaft log or the cutlass anywhere close to parallel. The minute the cutlass was pressed out the shaft sprang up and pressed itself into the top of the strut.

While boats can lose some alignment out of water, it is usually in the order of thousandths of an inch when measured at the shaft coupling. My own CS looses about .001″ from in water to out of water in terms of alignment, and she has a longer shaft. This boat has a fairly short shaft and robust engine bed area so hull-flex was not causing this level of alignment issue. Read on and you’ll find out the real reason this motor was so badly aligned.

Failure Mode 2

One thing I often see that destroys motor mounts prematurely is the lack of properly tightening the stud nuts that clamp the motor mount bracket. If these nuts are allowed to become loose the motor mount bracket or bell housing ears will vibrate over the threads and wear them away to nothing. All three of the mounts on this Ericson 34 had badly worn threads.

Worn threads will prevent any future re-alignment and require new mounts whether the rubber is ready to be replaced or not. One of the mounts was still in operable condition, had the threads not been destroyed by letting the nuts come loose. The other two were toast and both spinning in the rubber.

Unfortunately in order to replace these mounts with a different model or brand would have entailed a far more costly and time consuming job due to differing bolt centers for the mounts. The three point design of the Ericson motor configuration is dependent on the rather stiff lateral design of these mounts. It was decided, though not happily, to re-place these mounts with the same brand & model despite their many short comings..

Sheared Motor Mount

This was the sheared motor mount stud. It had obviously been broken for a while as evidenced by the mushrooming of the stud. Broken mounts are not all that uncommon in Maine. We have lobster traps to snag a motor and stall it abruptly, by tangling  the prop, as well as lost of floating debris, such as polypropylene line, dragged off 3000+ miles of shore line during spring tides. In short shaft, prop, reversing gear and motor mount damage is not all that uncommon in these waters.

Sometimes the shaft bends or breaks, sometimes the prop, sometimes the gear box fails and sometimes a mount fails. I can’t say what caused this mount to shear but I can say having only two mounts left, when one fails, is a little unsettling.

Oh & Failed Hose Clamps Too..

The snowball just keeps getting bigger and bigger.. I’m not kidding, and yes this comedy just keeps getting better, or worse, depending upon how you look at it. This picture is one darn good reason why I detest Ideal style or perforated hose clamps. This was the hose clamp for the stuffing box hose. Two out of the four literally fell apart the minute I touched the screw driver to them.

Because the perforations make the center of the clamp softer than the edges, due to the removed metal for the perforations, they can bend upwards and away from the screw threads over time. The screw on this perforated hose clamp one literally fell out of the holder and yes, they were marked “all stainless”. These hose clamps were keeping this boat afloat and thank God there were four.

Please consider the use of non-perforated hose clamps for your below water connections. I prefer the AWAB brand and have never once had one fail. I have seen literal buckets full of the perforated style hose clamp fail.

Socket Extensions Help

This engine room had very tight access on the starboard side. In order to remove the motor mount lag bolts, I used multiple socket extensions. This made for a quicker and easier job.

Replacing The Starboard Rear Mount

The camera angle makes this area look a lot more roomy than it really is. The scissor-jack fit quite nicely between the engine bed stringer and the engine. In this image the scissor-jack is lifting in-board of the motor mount hole but using the motor mount bracket to jack the engine. This is a good illustration of why this little jack has stayed in my tool quiver since the mid 80’s..

Snowball Still Growing….

Yes, believe it or not I discovered yet another problem. Once all the new mounts were in place I began to do a rough alignment of the motor to the shaft, cutlass & shaft log.

For some reason the I could get close but she just kept popping back out of alignment no matter how I moved the engine. After 20 minutes of mucking with her I realized why the engine was so low to begin with. A previous owner had replaced the exhaust elbow, a whole other set of problems, and made the nipple between the manifold and the exhaust elbow too darn long.

To correct for this mishap they Mickey Moused it by simply lowering the engine so the exhaust outlet cleared the bulkhead. This fixed the exhaust issue but caused many more as you’ll see below.

More Frustrations

As mentioned the exhaust elbow was a disaster of an installation. Who ever did this install clearly knew nothing about thread sealants or pipe dope. It took nearly four hours of heat, PB Blaster, a massive bench vise and a 3.5 foot 1 1/4″ black iron pipe as added leverage to an 18″ Rigid pipe wrench to break these fittings apart. This is complete insanity.

Due to the improper installation of these threaded fittings they had been leaking since very early on and had physically rusted together as hard as I have seen in a long time. PB Blaster & Kroil are great but when you are dealing with sealing threads, such as NPT, that are meant to keep fluids out, they also tend to keep most of the PB Blaster or Kroil out too.

This exhaust flange fitting is a $90.00 part from Universal so I clearly wanted to save it for the owner.

A Lot of force Was Required

This is what my 3.5 foot black-iron pipe looked like after I broke the stuck fittings free. I have not done the calculation on how much force I applied but all my 200+ pounds were going into that leveraged pipe and the fitting was over 4.5 feet away away from the end of the pipe.

IMPORTANT: When putting NPT threaded exhaust fittings together please use a proper high temp rated pipe dope. It will make future repairs significantly easier.

Exhaust Elbow Ready To Reinstall

I was able to take nearly 2″ out of length out of the nipple between the exhaust flange and the exhaust elbow. This allowed the elbow to no longer hit the bulkhead and to also clear the new heat exchanger. I used a *street-elbow  for water injection which allowed the assembly to be shortened.

Street-Elbow = Male NPT on one end & female NPT on the other.

This particular exhaust elbow is not a Universal Engines genuine part hence the reducing bushing from 1 1/2″ to 1 1/4″. Gotta love that snowball…..

The motor mounts were actually the easy part of this job. It’s all the little things you find along the way that cause the job take longer and tend to get frustrating. For example, getting the exhaust elbow off the engine required the engine to be completely lifted off the mounts and moved forward. None of this extra work was planned on when we started and most of it could not be identified by a cursory inspection. I used a 4:1 Harken block & tackle rigged to a beam across the companionway for lifting the engine. This little extra step added almost an hour and a half to the job..

Summary:

A simple shaft, folding prop & cutlass replacement led to:

* Three new motor mounts – all failed

* Removal, cleaning, re-plumbing & reconfiguration of the exhaust elbow

* A new heat exchanger

* Failed hose clamps

* Engine antifreeze flush & fill etc.etc..

Believe it or not this really is a more typical job than it would seem. This sort of snowball effect happens quite often with boats and is not really all that uncommon.

The next time you get an unexpectedly large bill, for work done to your boat, remember that this started as a simple shaft, folding prop & cutlass bearing but ended up as much, much more.

 

Good luck & happy boating!