Well as emily stated in the previous blog we have definitely both been pretty busy. we are definitely moving forward though! well, i think we are 🙂 a few weeks ago i noticed the engine, a Yanmar 2gm20 hard to start when me and my buddy mark went for a night sail. i though the engine was just cold natured. Well, the next day i was supposed to take my family out and maybe some friends from work. I went to start the engine and she just wouldn’t fire. once i managed to get it running it seemed like i wasn’t getting fuel to number 1 cylinder. i thought it would be a simple fix so with the help of my dad we cleaned the injectors and put them back in. We reinstalled them and the engine seemed to start alright but not perfect. we took it for a test run and it ran great through some pretty rough water.
The following weekend i tried starting the engine and nothing! At this point I knew i was looking into something a bit more serious. I rolled the yanmar over by hand and noticed i had very little compression in cylinder 1. ok, not cool but chances are it can’t be that bad, right? The engine always ran fine when warmed up and revved up. The yanmar also never blew any blue smoke. i was thinking bent valve or spring or something along those lines. a head rebuild should be a piece of cake! well… so i thought.
After removing the valve cover i noticed the exhaust valve quite tight. thinking to myself,” alright maybe it just needs a simple adjustment!” so i thought….. after loosening the valve i still had air blowing past the valve. I went ahead and bit the bullet and pulled the head off the engine. inspecting the cylinder head I noticed a crack on cylinder one side that ran through both intake and exhaust valve seats and also the precombustion chamber. Definitely wasn’t wanting to see that. the valves were also burned. looking more closely, the water passages were clogged up from years in saltwater i suppose and who knows what else. The engine is raw water cooled so everything sucked in goes through the engine. The cylinder also got warm and warped the rings slightly.
So, we are doing a complete rebuild with one size over bore. after measuring the bore we would be past our limits for original specs. we will also have the block boiled to have it super clean and to check for any other problems. every gasket will be replaced. all bearings will be replaced. I managed to find an awesome exhaust elbow in stainless. and once everything is fixed, replaced, renewed and probably kicked a few times I will give it a nice caterpillar yellow paint job. It is so much easier to see any oil drips and any other problems with the yellow color.
Trying to order engine parts was a bear at first but i should have all parts in by tomorrow (fingers crossed)
Other than that, alot of progress has been made on the webasto forced air heater. I have also finished the bilge pump. that should make us sleep better at night. Alot of wiring has been done, and oh ya, I took an angle grinder and sawsall to the fridge/peltier cooler/ piece of junk that hogged electricity and never anything very well. that should be a good project in the near future. 🙂 oh ya, we also re did part of the propane system, installed a solenoid, and got the stove and oven working finally. we also have a partially finished cedar closet. things are looking up! now we just have to put the engine back together and hope there aren’t any leftover bolts or metal important looking things that i forget to put back on. well, at least when the engine is running we will have onboard forced air heat! we will need it by november! I need to definitely throw thanks out to my dad, schmitty, ray and mark as well as everyone else who have helped me get the hunk of metal out of the boat.
