Messages

[BC]

I'm trying to diagnose an issue with plugged fuel filter and/or air leak into my fuel system. I know that the lift pump operates when the key is turned to glow plug position. Once the motor starts, does the lift pump continue to operate, or does suction from the high pressure injector pumps pull the fuel in without a lift pump? (Neither owners manual nor service manual is 100% clear on this, though there's a slight hint in the troubleshooting that the former is the case.) If it's actually the latter, does anyone know for sure whether the secondary pump is under negative pressure or positive pressure?

In a related question/comment, if the lift pump continues to operate when the motor is running, I assume that the excess fuel continuously recirculates back to the fuel tank, continuously polishing the fuel. Is that correct based on your understanding? (Note that this is an M35BC model.)

Following up on my prior message, I just got home and got a chance to pull out some pics from my latest polishing job. You can get an idea of the appearance of the restored boot stripe, as well as the shine on the overall hull. Unfortunately, I was in too much of a hurry to get started, and neglected to take "before" pics. But the boot stripe was pretty severely chalked beforehand.

We'd so love to take this, but cross country shipping is probably prohibitive.

Last summer we struggled with visibility problems under our 150 genoa. We also felt it was too large for spring/fall sailing, so we ordered a new 135. The sailmaker duplicated the luff length of the 150 when making the new sail.

When I raised the new 135 a few days ago, I discovered that it is possible to raise it significantly higher than our old sail was raised. When we bought the boat last summer, the owner's hired riggers attached the tack directly to a shackle on the furling drum. I didn't think anything of it, and it did not occur to me at the time that I could have raised it further. But when raising the new 135, I decided to improve visibility by raising the sail to where the tack is about 16" above the shackle, and to lash the tack to the shackle with some nylon braid (for now). See pic below.

I know that CE will be raised slightly by this, which could make the boat very slightly more tender. Another benefit is that the sail now fully clears the bow pulpit and lifelines. But are there any unanticipated issues that this could cause? Is there any chance of problems with halyard wrap?

I've done the Mainesail polish/wax treatment twice on my prior C250, and just a week ago on my C34mkII. It gets easier each time.

He does give some options on which materials to use, so I'll briefly describe what I use.

I really like using the Presta Ultra Cutting Cream for the polish. It starts as a course grit, but breaks down into a fine polish as you work it in with an electric buffer with wool pad. This gets you a nice shine in one step. The 32 oz bottle is costly at $30, but lasts a long time. I've done my C250 (twice) and 34mkII once, and still have a little left over. I also have the Collinite Liquid FG Cleaner that I use for hand-polishing intricate areas, but for a large smooth surface I prefer the Presta with electric buffer.

Make frequent use of a spray bottle with water to extend the open time of the Presta and provide cooling. If it dries out, you may damage the fiberglass due to excessive abrasion and/or overheating.

For the wax I have used Collinite 850 Fleet Wax. If you have done your polishing correctly, it should be wipe on/wipe off without any electric buffing required. If it's hard to get off, you're waiting too long, doing it in sunlight, and/or did not do a good enough job polishing. This year I used up the 850 and needed more on short notice (not enough time to order online or drive all the way to West Marine), and the guy at the nearby auto refinish store told me their 476s is the same stuff, just packaged and marketed for the automotive market. So I bought some and it seems to be the same as 850. Collinite's application tables suggest that it's the same stuff as well (same balance of properties). So if you want to support your local business, I'd suggest considering the 476s if your Presta dealer also carries Collinite. One advantage of buying locally is the ability to return unused material, which came in handy when I didn't end up needing that new bottle of Presta.

For my bootstrip restoration I have always started with a wet sand on the blue gelcoat bootstripe, followed by the Presta and wax. Don't overdo the sanding. You will see some light blue residue during the wet sanding. If your bootstripe is painted, all bets are off and you should be very careful. If the paint is Awlgrip or other 2-part urethane, I would only follow manufacturer's instructions for polishing.

I've used Poliglow on other boats, and have very mixed feelings about it. I'd always recommend the Mainesail procedure, and only resort to Poliglow if you find it impossible to get a truly glossy, non-porous finish by that method, or the hull form of the boat is too irregular to use a mechanical polisher. The former was the case with our Phantom sailing dinghy, and the latter was the case with our Trophy fishing boat. Polyglow worked well for those cases, but the Mainsail procedure gets superior results that last longer.

No worries. I realize that it's always a work in progress.

I did not make this up.

I went to the section that seemed to make sense: Diesel Engine - Mechanical

http://c34.org/wikiwp/?rdp_we_resource=http%3A%2F%2Fc34.org%2Fwiki%2Findex.php%3Ftitle%3DDiesel_Engine#Mechanical

Scroll to the text that says "Transmissions:Hurth Transmission Cable Adjustment PDF file" to confirm that it is a dead link.

The service bulletin covering adjusting the travel is on the tech wiki.

It seems that there is a placeholder for it in the Wiki, but the actual link to the PDF is missing. (I can't find the message right now, but I remember us discussing this before and realizing Westerbeke had reorganized their website, breaking many of the Wiki's links):

https://www.westerbeke.com/service%20bulletin/sb_136.pdf

This 1984 service bulletin is unremarkable for owners of later engines, because our manuals were updated to incorporate its recommendations. However, the pictures can be useful for visualizing the required throw distance of the shift lever. (Picture worth a thousand words.)

As for the issue of the pedestal's shift lever not being able to throw the transmission's shift lever far enough to be in spec, please see my attached picture to see how I fixed the problem by adjusting the mounting plate. The two holes with worn paint around them are the ones that were originally used to mount this plate to the transmission. You can see by the red circles that I enlarged an adjacent hole, and drilled a new hole, which enabled mounting the plate 1/2" further aft, causing the shift cable to throw the shift lever symmetrically forward and reverse (with some minor adjustment on the normal linkage screws), and in agreement with Westerbeke's recommendation.

After drilling the holes where the red circles are, I polished the rust off of the mounting plate and painted it up nicely, but failed to get a picture of it. Next time I am down at the boat I'll get a picture of the modified plate as mounted on the transmission.

A little Google searching shows that this issue (insufficient throw into forward gear) is fairly common for the Hurth/Westerbeke installations on multiple boats, having been reported here and on Sailnet and CruisersForum, and elsewhere. So this modification does have potential to help a lot of people. But it all has to start with a measurement of the actual throw distance of the shift lever on the transmission. If the throw does not go far enough into forward gear (per Westerbeke's spec), my modification could help.

I too have problems shifting into forward gear. When coming off the mooring, it takes four attempts before I'm successful, that is I push into forward gear, wait a bit, then a little accelerator, but nothing then back to neutral and try again.

I've had my boat (C34 Mark II #1801) about eighteen months. When I bought it, the Edson shift lever was hitting against the pedestal guard tube. Last September I replaced the original two lever system with an Edson single lever side mounted engine control.Now the lever doesn't hit anything.

My mechanic says he's adjusted the cable as much as possible and that now the gearbox needs to be pulled out and overhauled, in particular the shift selector.The only thing that makes me question this advice is that once I've been motoring for a while, say fifteen minutes, and I take it out of gear, it will go into gear on the first attempt every time. This may be a co-incidence or it may be related to the gearbox warming up. I would have thought that if the problem was cable adjustment, the problem would remain regardless of how long the engine had been running. The engine (M-35B) only has about 260 hours on it, so the gearbox should not be too worn.

Does anyone have any suggestions on solving this problem?

Thanks

I'm sorry to hear that you may have wasted your money on a shift arm that didn't fix the problem.

I think your mechanic may be lacking a little creativity in saying that he's adjusted the cable as much as possible. He (or you) can drill another hole or two in the mounting plate and get a whole lot more adjustment latitude. That resolved the issue for me. See my replies #22 and 27 for information on this.

But before you do that, you need to refer to your engine manual for the specs on how far the shift lever (on the transmission itself) should be moving. There should be a couple of specs listed, depending on which hole your cable is connecting to. (I suggest the inner hole, as that gives the longest travel of the lever.) Actuate the shift lever at the transmission with the shift cable attached, since that will let you know if your cockpit lever is limiting the motion. The travel should be the same forward and aft, and greater than the mfr spec in each direction. If not, then you you need to get it right, possibly by repositioning the mounting plate as I described in reply #22 and 27.

I would not consider a rebuild unless you confirm that the shift lever complies with mfg specs, because if you rebuild and the problem goes away, it may come back later due to wear/damage from the shift lever not moving far enough.

My own transmission was rebuilt by the prior owner, and I wonder if the shift lever being out of spec is what required the rebuild in the first place.

Just a quick update. As a test I re-masked around the hatch, taking care that everything was sealed very well, and it was bone dry through several heavy rain storms. So I spent the last couple days picking the old caulk out from around the LP tank pan (using utility knives, putty knives, multi-tool scraper, various solvents -- whatever worked). Today I filled up the void with a nice large bead of 3M 4000UV. It will be several days before our next rain event, but since the masking tape worked and the pan itself looks to be water tight, I expect that this leak is history. I'll try to get pics someday. It the leak isn't fixed, I'll be back for advice on what to try next.

Unfortunately, I live in a place with seasons  , so with the winter cover in place I was limited to putting masking tape around the hatch. It rained yesterday, and there was still water that leaked in. So either the masking tape failed to make a good seal, or the leak is coming from somewhere else. I'll try again in the spring.

What kind of caulk did you use?

Thanks for posting this. I tried your weatherstripping fix, and it didn't stop the problem. My caulking is clearly deteriorated, and is a likely source of the problem.

How did you re-caulk? Did you remove the whole liner and re-bed it? (Might be difficult if there are propane vent hoses attached.) Or did you just pick out as much old caulk as you could and shoot some new stuff in from above?

That whole are is a little tough to get to right now under my boat cover, but this will go to the top of my list for as soon as my boat is uncovered.

I fully agree, and share your concern about people being fooled and/or forced to buy a cocktail of 6 medicines when 5 of them are unnecessary for a given need. The reason that people are being "forced" is because manufacturers are discontinuing their one- or two-medication products in their race to have more comprehensive label claim on multi-symptom concoctions. For instance, "Sudafed" has become a brand instead of a trade name for a decongestant. "Sudafed Plus" (which was renamed as "Sudafed Cold & Allergy") was a useful pairing of ingredients because the undesirable side effects canceled each other out, so that was good. Unfortunately you can't even find it anymore, as it's been displaced by multi symptom cocktails that cause some to overdose when people unknowingly double up by taking it in combination with things like Advil.

Off my soapbox now.

Back to the original topic, my specific curiosity was over the implication that WD40 is as bad as silicone. That's a strong condemnation, and I'd like to know what, specifically, makes it deserve that.

Your criticism is more mild and more reasonable. I'd like to compile a list of single-ingredient recommendations for rust removal, penetrating anti-seize, crevice lubrication, etc. Is there a thread that covers these things all in one place?

Back to WD40, I have found it to be a really good plasticizer. I have a really nice inkjet printer that happens to be 20 years old. Only problem is that every few years it stops feeding paper because the rubber rollers dried out and won't grab the paper. Some WD40, applied to the rollers every couple years, has kept it running great. Like Stu, I've found that this makes it really good for restoring the sealing effectiveness of rubberized gaskets on ports, hatches, etc.

No need to paint it, Bill. Paint traps heat, right?   But throw away the WD40.  I think of it as silicone (only place to use it is on the Beckson ports).  Get Boeshield T9 for that use, and PB Blaster to remove stubborn nuts & bolts.

Just to keep this fact-based, what offending ingredient does WD-40 contain, and what are its objectionable effects?

...Unfortunately the world of laptops is not so sane. Different laptop brands and models specify different voltage levels and need more than 2 amps to charge quickly. Unless a particular laptop offers a 12 volt charger as an accessory, it means that you have to provide its proprietary charger with120 volts AC via an inverter if you are the boat or in the car...

I'd encourage anyone to shop around for a pure DC charger that runs off of 12v instead of an inverter. Step-up chargers that provide 19-20vDC are easy to find with plugs to fit virtually any laptop. I have a Targus one with about 8 different tips for Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc; a genuine HP/Compaq one that also works for an old MSI netbook, one from PWR that's designed to work with a newer Asus (with a smaller tip), and another one from PWR that works with an Acer tablet/laptop hybrid. The generic ones can be found on Amazon usually for under $15. So far, every one that I have has outlasted the laptop they were bought for.

It's worth the effort to have the more efficient charging of pure DC. I hate inverters with the passion of someone who has had one catch fire. My new boat came with a really nice pure sine wave inverter that someday I'll use to for the microwave while at anchor, but meanwhile it's much better to invest in 12v appliances on the boat and avoid inverter wherever possible. So much runs off of 12v these days anyway.