[Public-List] A Cautionary tale... again.

Gordon Laco mainstay at csolve.net
Thu Nov 21 07:33:48 PST 2019


Good day friends,

I wrote earlier about the first part of the repair of SURPRISE’s Atomic IV’s exhaust system.  I’d noticed a change in the sound of the engine and discovered a perforation in first elbow coming off the engine's exhaust manifold.  I made a temporary repair using a nifty epoxy tape which baked on satisfactorily… and instituted a rule that for the balance of the season no-one was to linger below and the fore hatch was opened to promote ventilation… we also ran the engine compartments exhaust fan whenever the engine was running.

So once ashore, with the help of a generous friend, we set about a proper repair.  Because of the rusted condition of the exhaust fittings, we removed the whole manifold, elbows and bronze water lift muffler so as to bring it to a workbench for disassembly.   The rusted black iron elbows succumbed to gentle but very strong torquing using a pair of pipe wrenches with pipes extending their handles, and a welders torch.  We took care not to let any torque touch the water lift assembly directly…

So with everything in pieces, Don Moyer sent over a new exhaust flange and gaskets.  At the workbench we reassembled the pair of elbows and new threaded flange in preparation for replacing the whole shebang in the boat.

Putting the exhaust hose on at the top was easy… but we found a problem down at the flange/manifold union.  We’d put the manifold back in place first.   We realized that we’d put the elbows back on assuming 90 degrees forgetting that the engine has an incline… a few seconds with a pipe wrench adjusted the angle and the bolts now fit.

We snugged everything up… and then noticed that the fuel line down low where it comes into the sediment bowl assembly had fallen off.  I’d not had my head in that far before, but now I was right in there and found something horrifying.

At some time in the past the fuel line had been of the sort with a pressed on brass terminal which was screwed into the female fitting on the sediment bowl.  At some time in the past that hose had apparently broken and was replaced by the hose I’ve been using for the twenty years I’ve owned SURPRISE.  There was no hose barb… there was not even a threaded male end that the hose was pushed over.  What was in place was the old broken bit of hose… and the brass nut of the pressed fitting, about 3/16” of an inch wide.  The new hose had been pushed over that nut… and a hose clamp much wider than the narrow nut was ’sort of’ holding it on.   For the past twenty years that tenuous connection was all that was keeping the fuel line on.  

Had that hose fallen off, we’d have had a significant amount of fuel run into the pan under the engine and or into the bilge… imagine that.  I had no idea I was so close to becoming an astronaut all these years.

For a few dollars and a few moments work, I replaced the broken fitting with a proper hose barb which is now securely holding the fuel line.  That fitting lay there like a sea mine, undetected by any surveyor over the six surveys my boat has had over the years, and undetected by myself during the times I replaced the in-line fuel filter a few inches upstream of that connection.

Well there’s a cautionary tale.  The moral of the story is that one should look at everything in the rig and down below with a critical eye that doesn’t assume all is well.  

Gord Laco
#426 Surprise






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