One of the things I knew about Windsong when I first saw her was that all of the seacocks needed to be replaced ASAP. They are very old-school style Groco seacocks and all have corroded to the point where they are inoperable. What does that mean? If a hose were to leak, I would not have had a way to shut off the thru-hull and the boat would probably sink unless the hose or seacock was plugged.
Seacocks are meant to be the #1 insurance on the boat against sinking, and I didn’t have that insurance for the entire time I owned the boat in the water. Since I started the bottom job I have been contemplating how the heck to get the seacocks and thru-hulls off the boat. They were so corroded that unscrewing the thru-hull from the seacock was impossible. I spent many months contemplating my approach and did as much research I could on the subject. Unfortunately there aren’t many articles written on how to get this job done on old, corroded equipment. There are plenty of articles on how to take apart modern seacocks, but non on how to tear apart old ones with no hope of reuse.
I did, however, find a few blogs and forum posts from people who just cut the thru-hulls up with a Dremel or some other tool to help remove them. But with my limited experience in doing things like this, I really needed a step by step instruction on how the heck to do that. After some creative thinking and experimentation, I finally figured out how to do it and here I will show my process.
Here are the seacocks in the head with hoses removed. One is the sink drain, another is for the head itself, the other […]
David Gill, new owner of Tondelayo and new member here ran into an interesting situation that is relevant to us here. As a matter of fact I have 6 AGM batterys on Valkyr. I like them because you can’t spill acid out of them. I have had bad problems on a prior boat with that. However the description here and the photos David provided are very sobering. I have had 3 AGM batteries in the past that have swollen in a very limited way and went bad. We had them replaced. I have had this happen to a couple of west marines SeaVolt AGM group 27 and 31 batteries as well as one of the optima blue top spiral AGM batteries just in the last month. So this is a very reasonable heads up. Thank you David for writing this up, and submitting it with the pictures.
Hi Scott.
Here’s a bit of information that may be relevant to anyone using Sealed 12v batteries. I don’t use them on Tondelayo but anyone who does wouldn’t want this to happen while at sea.
At 0848 hrs on 12 July 2010, pumper 402 Nelson Bay attended a caravan park in Nelson Bay. On arrival they found a 12V sealed caravan battery (also called Valve Regulated Lead Acid or VRLA battery) with its sides and top markedly bulging.
Park staff had removed the battery from inside a caravan to a grassed area.
The BA team was to cool the battery with spray from a line of 38 mm hose from behind substantial cover. However, the battery slowly continued to expand. Temperature readings taken with a TIC registered 49 ºC.
As it appeared the battery could explode, a hot zone of 30 m and a 50 m exclusion zone were established. A […]
Credit for this information goes to Markus Ritter owner of a Mariner 36 s/v Sankaty check out his website at http://sankaty.homestead.com
Original Front view. with five inch long 1/2" ID Thermostat by pass hose
Existing barbs are good enough for 1/2 inch ID hose. Original Barbs in place
I ended up using a 1/2" hose on the existing barbs. The 1/2 " hose runs about three feet back to the existing 5/8" heater hoses. At that point there is a 1/2" to 5/8" plastic adaptor that makes the conversion as shown.
Plan view w/o brass elbow
I have found some brass 90 deg elbows that may fit into the pipe thread of the engine so that the “From WH” line can stay below the “to WH” line to make it easier to fill the water heater when changing coolant. I may install them next winter, but so far everything is working OK and our continuous speed is 15% faster as we are no longer cooling system limited. Click here for curves showing temperature after one hour runs a various speeds. Check out Racor’s comments on blow by.
Front View w/o Brass Elbow
There is a manufacturer that specializes in marine heaters I ordered their H-406, H-417, and H-407 3/8″ Male Pipe Thread to 5/8″ inch hose adaptors, but I have not installed them yet.
Heater Craft’s, Dan Shull at 208-687-4400. or e-mail him by clicking here
Westerbeke has the straight adaptor P/N 302391.
I have not been able to get the old barbs out yet. The system is working fine now so I may never add the brass elbows. It is difficult to get the air out of the water heater lines, and I expect that the […]
This was another project from a few months ago.. actually last october.. since then both cowls have been replaced with Nicro Solar vents.
The plastic cowls on Valkyr’s dorade vents had become very discolored and brittle with large chunks broken out.
As a last project before we left the boat yesterday we decided to replace the cowls on the dorade boxes. Angela who we bought the boat from had already bought a couple Nicro plastic cowls.. They were the exact same cowl as was originally installed on Valkyr so all the holes perfectly matched for the mounting screws. We thought it would take a few minutes to do this. Two hours later we actually finished. The screws holding the cowls on were all bronze with a nut on the opposite side. So we ended up taking the entire top lid off the dorade box to get to the underside. I’m very glad we did. There was really nasty stuff in the dorage boxes. Mud dobbers had been living in one years ago and left behind about a two cups of dirt that was holding moisture. The other dorade box was a cockroach motel. Shop vac to the rescue.. it sucks dirt and cockroaches equally well.
Also as you can see in the above images the wood in the cross pieces the box is attached to on deck is starting to rot out.
The design of the current opening through the deck leaves something to be desired. It is a flanged piece of pipe that is screwed to the underside of the deck and comes up through a hole cut through the deck. It only extends about an inch above deck level. It also doesn’t have any way of sealing it closed. Under most conditions it is probably […]
Good varnishing brushes are definitely not cheap! The quickest way to ruin one is to let varnish dry in the brush – not something any of us wants to do.
But cleaning a brush is not an easy task. You may think that after triple-rinsing it in fresh paint thinner, the brush is clean. But put it away for a couple of days, and when you go to use it next, the bristles are disappointingly stiff.
As a Chemical Engineer, I learned several things that have made brush cleaning a lot easier. (What? Practical knowledge? Who knew?):
Use a counter-current wash system. This keeps the clean end of the system separate from the contaminated end. In a real chemical plant (for example, an alumina refinery) there would be as many as 10 stages or more. Here we will make it simple – we’ll use only two. Do it like this: Save an empty paint thinner container. When you rinse out your brush, dump the now-contaminated solvent into this container. Soon you will have lots in there. As soon as you have enough, this is now your stage 1 rinse. Squeeze out all the varnish you can from the brush, and then clean it thoroughly in the stage 1 rinse solution. Squeeze out all the stage 1 rinse, and wipe the brush on a rag, trying to absorb as much of the stage 1 rinse as possible. Dump the stage 1 rinse back into the stage 1 container. Next, rinse the brush in 3 small changes of clean solvent. As above, drain all the now contaminated fresh solvent into the stage 1 rinse container, wiping the brush nearly dry between rinses.
This works because even tho the stage 1 rinse is not pure solvent, it is not very far from it, […]
If donating please state in the extra info field during the donation process if you do not want to be publicly credited for your donation on the forums donation page.
Or jump to Amazon from here to purchase stuff. This gives us a very small referral fee that costs you nothing when you actually purchase qualifying products on amazon.
Recent Comments