Friday, 16 June 2017
Ready
in all respects for sea – at last
Today turned
out to be a banner day, but it was
not always apparent because there were ups and downs along the way. I ran to the nearest auto parts store early
and got a hydrometer to test the battery cells of the house bank and found them
all to be OK. Then Glenn Miller, the
mechanic showed up around 11 AM with the repaired generator starter and the new
gaskets for the exhaust manifold. I had
been troubleshooting the battery charging system trying to figure out what
electrons were going where when he showed up and had to hurriedly put things
back together so we could have lights and ventilation in the engine room. He finished up about 2 PM after running the
generator for a few minutes to ensure all cooling connections were good and the
coolant and oil were at correct levels.
I went back to my troubleshooting intending to give the generator a more
thorough test of a couple of hours after finishing my battery charging work. Before Glenn showed up, I had narrowed my
focus to a battery cable about as big as your thumb running from the main
engine starter on the same post as the positive power cable from the starter
battery to the center post of the multi-position switch which is used by the
operator to pick the battery or batteries used to power all the 12-volt systems
on the boat from potable water pump to GPS/radar. This cable connection made NO sense because
it was supplying power to a place which is designed to SEND power along to the
end use. Ken Price, the owner, and I
have discussed this cable and elected at the time to leave it alone since the
boat seemed to be running OK, but once the Pathmaker automatic battery charge
router quit on us, changes needed to be made because even with the new
automatic charging relays I had installed the main engine would not charge all
batteries. Once I removed this odd cable
from the switch, all was sweetness and light with the charging system with the
main engine, shore power, and generator power all able to charge the batteries. You sorta hadda be there to understand the
intensity my sweaty smile. So with that
finally solved after about nine days, I turned to testing the generator. I started it up and switched from shore to generator
power and loaded it up with a two of the three air conditioners and the water
heater, and it ran, for an hour. Then as
I was opening the hatch beside Mary’s feet to go down to look it over, the
danged thing suddenly stopped. OH
SH___! I let it cool for a while before
attempting to troubleshoot but could find nothing to indicate way the generator
quit. I finally decided that the high-heat
shutdown switch might have been remounted by Glenn just a bit differently from
how we had found it when we disassembled the exhaust system last week. I realigned it bit and restarted the
generator and ran it for an hour and a half checking all over the machine with
my IR thermometer finding no temperature higher than 174F before calling it good. I called the office to get our bill ready,
and we are now ready to go tomorrow headed for Midway Marina 60 miles up the
river.
