Messing around with boats

….. which generally means fixing.  That’s the part Ratty failed to mention – a lot of the time you spend messing around with boats is actually fixing time.

This time I deliberately broke something that wasn’t broke yet. 

That’s a cast iron pulley and a compression hub. 

This is the piece of shit pot metal pulley that I am replacing.  The last time I replaced it I drilled and tapped for 2 additional setscrews plus put loctite on it.  I’ve still had to retighten it regularly.  Its just not up to the job.

If you look closely at the first picture you will see that it wasn’t up to the job either.  When I tightened the hub into the pulley it split the pulley.  I’ve never seen that happen.  There’s 2 identical pulleys on the drive – one with a 3/8 hub and the other with a 5/8 hub.  I rattled the first one tight with my 3/8 impact wrench but as soon as I started tightening the second one the pulley split.  Then of course I had to wait some more for the local store to order in another pulley because nobody stocks anything anymore.  Since I had nothing better to do last night I spread the crack in the pulley open and worked some good epoxy into the gap.  Then I clamped it tight in the vice overnight.  I wouldn’t want to depend on it for the long term but it might get me out of a bite sometime when I don’t have any other option.

Finished up and running. 

I’ll let it run for a couple of hours and then re-tighten the belt before I close up the sound shield again.  I don’t suppose this will be the last of this adventure but I can always hope.

I may have dodged a bullet when I started the generator.  Before I left the boat in November I had shut off several fuel and water lines.  Of course today when I started the generator I missed the shutoff so the gennie started fine, ran for maybe 5 minutes and then starved itself.  Fortunately I realized what I had done and immediately opened the valve.  And wonder of wonders it restarted and ran without having to be bled.  So I didn’t end up getting a fuel bath or running fuel into the bilge.  Yet.