Messages

Getting back to the dripping stantion, no one has mentioned that the weld should be checked on the stantion base.  I rebedded all my stantions and I found that the weld for the wire support to the base which appears to be in a hole punched in the base had a void in it, letting water that pooled on the deck when the scuppers were clogged leak into the core.  Also the weld for tube the hose connects to was also a leaker.  I just re-welded mine with a mig I happen to have but any weld shop can fix that in 5 minutes.

You're not starting that engine with a rope or a drill or a hand crank. 
A spare battery is the only practical backup.
but I could be wrong!

ouch... that took all the fun out of it.

If you can't look at something and determine by looking and handling that it's bad or good, you should buy new lines and hope the monkey putting the ends on knows how to use the crimper as good as the first guy. 

Maybe Ron could offer an explanation why his just fell off... after only 20 years? 

KK

50$ was a pick out of the air... do you happen to know how much a new non marine oil pan is? ballpark?
The dip stick tube.... let me get to my boat and have a look at that... not really seeing a huge difficulty there just yet.

KK,
Are any of the other non marine oil pans that fit this block of the same shape? 

It would be easy to mod a non marine oil pan that cost maybe 50 bucks with the dipstick boss and a relocated drain plug.

My tank has baffles.  I siphoned the tank empty with it's own fuel lines into a 5 gal diesel can in the head.
I then emptied the rest by shaking upside down into a tray.  Then I put a gallon of simple green in the tank and put the tank in the back of my truck for most of the winter driving all over Western NY Pennsylvania and Ohio for work.  Rinsed with water and then rinsed with a 1 gal pot of boiling water twice.  Left it in the sun to dry.  Clean as a whistle. 

I stripped the crappy nylon off my lifelines, dunked them in phosphoric acid ( "prep n etch" concrete cleaner at your local home depot) to remove rust and orange stains, then recovered them with white UV resistant shrink tubing available at heatshrink.com  85$ delivered for 200+ feet of the stuff.   It took working to get two layers on but as cheap as it is I can re cover 15 times the cost of new life lines.  Mind you, there was nothing wrong with my original life lines.  a little orange stain here and there does not mean the lines are rusted, corroded and ready to fail.  It was just the cover that was cracked split stained and generally looking awful. Shrink tubing is not as tough as the original cover but I have no regrets after a full season last year.

Could you post some pics of the rusted out parts of the oil pan?  This is bound to happen to another C34 and I'd like to see if this something repairable.  I do a lot specialty sheet metal and tubular steel work and it just seems overkill to have to buy a new pan for 500+ boat bucks if this is a restorable defect.  Thanks!

can't resist adding my 2 cents:
Is it possible it is supposed to warm up and run at a warmer than ambient temp so that the tolerances are where they belong?  Adding a cooler will keep it cool but is it supposed too be that cool?  Unless your clutches are slipping, gears turning in oil should not really develop any heat, especially at the turning speeds in this application. Being connected to the engine block probably inputs more heat to the gearbox than the gears ever would.  If it were me I wouldn't waste my money.

Ya'll know there are two steel lifting points cast into the lead on the top of the keel?
Are ya'll sure this rusty residue isn't from these?  Leaking the rusty red crap up through your keel bolt holes?
That's what I had.   I had rusty water running out of the smile on the hard and water coming up through the bolt holes every year until I re-bedded the keel.

I filled my screw holes with 5 min. epoxy from the hardware store.  Put tape on the bottom, fill hole flush, redrill and counter sink slightly.
Coating the entire bottom with epoxy is expensive and quite unnecessary in my opinion. I used a can of old polyurethane for wood to seal the bottoms.  It just needs to be sealed from intrusion of water or spilled liquids in the galley. MILK is the worst!  Also I got some bad info to fill dents with epoxy and sand flush.
I won't do that again, you can see every dent this was done to.  The epoxy turns dark amber... darker than the finish of course.  Just let your finish flow into the dent and leave it at that.

The only place you find this topic of "oxy starvation" corrosion of SS is in sailing forums... I'm very skeptical of this old wives tale concerning rusting of SS since oxidation can only occur in the presence of Oxygen.  Opposite of this I have cheap low quality stainless cutlery that rusts in the dishwasher. If  you look elsewhere (not in a sailing forum) for this topic you'll find this at the McNally Institute:

"The basic {corrosion} resistance of stainless steel occurs because of its ability to form a protective coating on the metal surface. This coating is a "passive" film which resists further "oxidation" or rusting. The formation of this film is instantaneous in an oxidizing atmosphere such as air, water, or other fluids THAT CONTAIN OXYGEN. Once the layer has formed, we say that the metal has become "passivated" and the oxidation or "rusting" rate will slow down to less than 0.002" per year (0,05 mm. per year).

Unlike aluminum or silver this passive film is invisible in stainless steel. It's created when oxygen combines with the chrome in the stainless to form chrome oxide which is more commonly called "ceramic". This protective oxide or ceramic coating is common to most corrosion resistant materials.

Halogen salts, especially chlorides easily penetrate this passive film and will allow corrosive attack to occur. The halogens are easy to recognize because they end in the letters "ine". Listed in order of their activity they are:

    fluorine
    chlorine
    bromine
    iodine
    astatine (very unstable.)

These are the same chemicals that will penetrate Teflon and cause trouble with Teflon coated or encapsulated o-rings and/ or similar coated materials. Chlorides are one of the most common elements in nature and if that isn't bad enough, they're also soluble, active ions; the basis for good electrolytes, the best conditions for corrosion or chemical attack."

There is more on the subject debunking O2 starvation corrosion here:  http://www.estainlesssteel.com/corrosion.shtml   

It would appear that the two things very common in boats are chlorine and salt  which make far more sense than O2 starvation. 

Why aren't all the properly bedded keels falling off left and right if lack of O2 at the keel bolts is eating them away?   I'm certain there could be a situation where one of the aforementioned chemicals permanently appears in an o2 free environment where the stainless can't repair itself. 

I hope everyone finds this interesting.

I'm not onboard with the improper blocking theory either.  I attribute the instance of cracking of the joint at the bow to be from several things happening over time:  loose keel bolts from no maintenance, possible very high back-stay tension, bumping into sandbars or other strata on the bottom, and the very brittle material used to bed the keel stub to the top of the keel. That's my two cents.  The "smile" shows no sign of reappearing 5 years after re-bedding the keel stub with 5200.

Since you need a speed transducer and it sounded like a wind instrument too... have you considered a Garmin bundle wireless wind speed direction, depth speed and water temp?  Have a look at what I put on my boat last summer and the topic of getting it all work with a free chartplotter program for a tablet or PC.

http://c34.org/bbs/index.php/topic,9092.msg66283/topicseen.html#msg66283