C&C Corvette (Hull #166) Original A4
 

Hello everyone! I am the proud owner of the C&C Corvette, Astral, she has been in our since her birth in the 70's. My grandfather was the first owner and after he passed away my aunt and uncle had her for a few years before deciding they did not have the time to use her. Now I find myself the owner of the good ship.

Anyway she does have the original A4 in her that she came with her. It is RWC at the moment, she has spent her whole life living in Lake Ontario up until this point, however now that I have moved her to New Brunswick and salt water I will be looking at changing the old girl over to FWC. She still sports the original water jacket exhaust. I don't know how well it runs yet, although I know when she was laid up 3 years ago she did so with a running engine.

When my uncle first dropped off the boat he tried to "help" me get he engine running although I now have a suspicion that his help may have caused our biggest fault. When first trying to start the motor we had a big gush of water come out of the carb. Now I believe this may have happened because my uncle I believe performed a dumb dumb move. We were running the cooling via the T in the raw water supply hooked to a garden hose. After hooking this up he used a rubber ball to block the outlet of the exhaust on the transom, I believe this may be why we had water come out the carb, must have had water back flow into the manifold. Anyway I am now in process of hooking everything back up an dgiving it another shot.

Never use water under household pressure to feed an A4 when running on the hard.

Water bucket that is refilled by a garden hose is fine - but water under hosehold pressure is much higher than that generated by the water pump on the engine and will simply show where every tiny pin hole leak is located in the engine cooling system.

:(

Ya I learned that quickly after doing a short bit of reading on here. I have bucket for running it now when i get it hooked up again. Using the household pressure garden house was my uncles brilliant idea, along with plugging the exhaust to "pressure test". This is the same uncle who traded off the beautiful custom racing spar for another rig that has a roller furling boom system...grrr.

Well, don't beat up on your uncle. I bet he'll make a good sailing buddy anyway. I made so many mistakes over the years I could write a book!

Welcome,

Russ

I'd reserve judgement on Uncle Buck until you determine the condition of the inside of the engine. You'd better get some Marvel Mystery Oil in the spark plug holes and get the engine turning, raw water intake closed, ASAP. Look for mocha colored oil in the crankcase too.

Done and done
 

Yes right after this occured I removed the spark plugs to check for water in the cylinders, added some oil to the cylinders and hand crank it over. I have also removed the manifold and pressured tested it as well as replacing the gasket. The old gasket was so squashed and dirty you could hardly tell it was there! Now once i get my exhaust flange reattached I am going to try running it again.

P.S. this whole water situation happen last fall, I work away on tugboats and haven't had time or resources to tackle the issues again until now. I have been occasionally hand cranking the engine over throughout the winter. I had drained the block and water jacket exhaust down before winter.

Is this a 3rd generation C&C? On the second generation here with #3 in training.

As for your engine, it sounds like you saved it from rusting into a non-moving lump, so it will likely recover well. Remember no pressure feed! My usual system for a flooded engine is 1st oil change, run for about 10 minutes, 2nd oil change, run until good and hot, and then the third and final one. If you skip the HOT part you'll be doing a lot of oil changes. If you look around your tugboat you might find an oil heater someplace to do this task, but we have no such luck with A4s.

http://www.dellabarba.com/sailing/images/airphoto.jpg

I guess I am sorta 3rd generation, the aunt and uncle only had it for a few years and hardly used it, too busy running their business. I also have a 4th generation in training, she's only 2 1/2 but can already climb up the ladder to her on the hard and loves wandering around the deck and playing aboard!

Anyone else here with the original bronze water jacket exhaust? I'm looking at replacing the lagging that covers the exhaust pipe after it leaves the water cooling sleeve. Mine currently looks like it may be some sort of asbestos so its gotta go. Wondering what others may have used in its place.

Is the existing lagging damaged or insufficient in some way? Secure encapsulation of asbestos materials is an acceptable remediation procedure.

Its damaged near one end and I may need to take it off to remove the muffler to do some work on it.

I see. Take care in handling/removing the stuff. I've lost more than one friend from my boat industry days to it. This is serious business.

Ya I've run into it before working aboard tugs and other old commercial vessels. i will take precautions.