Grampian G26 - A4 Repower

[hanleyclifford]

One of the best I've heard

Apparantly this engine was rebuilt 24 years ago and then just sat in a garage. Was full of auto antifreeze. The appearance of the cylinders from the water jacket side was one of very low hours and the sound of the engine running bears out this impression, Not even the usual "tick tick" in the area of the accessory drive. Color me green.

[PT26]

Couplers Won't Couple

Everything seems to be running wonderfully and we are now working on aligning and coupling the shaft to the gear box.

They will not snap together. Any suggestions?

[Marian Claire]

PT: Hope I have the terms right. Is the issue the space between the prop shaft coupling and the drive shaft coupling? Could you make a "spacer" to fill the gap and use longer bolts? The bolts carry the load anyway right??? Its late. Dan S/V Marian Claire

[hanleyclifford]

The issue is indeed the space between the two couplers. A suspicion is growing that the nut may not be the correct one but may in fact be a generic "jam" nut which is thicker. This will be investigated tomorrow.

[PT26]

Dan,

I had a similar thought. If I had the room, the shaft saver piece (a sacrificial spacer for lack of a better explanation) that came in the boxes of stuff would be the perfect spacer and may have solved this issue...

[Marian Claire]

PT: I remember seeing those pieces and as I placed them together I noticed the hole patten was slightly different between the two. Hope the one you need works or that I was just spacing out. Dan S/V Marian Claire
Edit: I have a few of those pieces/spacers/couplings from a direct drive in my spares here. I plan to head to the MC tonight or Sun AM. Will bring them with me just in-case.

[Marian Claire]

The spacer I have is 1" thick, 3.5" across. The recess is 1 7/8" across and 5/8" deep. The holes match up with the prop shaft coupler I have. It is for a 7/8" shaft I believe. Will be on the road soon. Call my cell if any of this can be used. Dan S/V Marian Claire

[PT26]

Finished

We really had a hard time trying to get the two couplings to go together.
The three of us had our own theory so we tried them all one by one only to find that none were the culprit.
Hanley was on to something though... The coupling must have been hit with a mallet or hammer when installed and buggered up the male part of the coupling by the motor re-builder.
It was also possible that the female part had a bur of some sort.

The solution we came up with was to carefully clean out the female part and try to get it as smooth as possible, this proved to be very hard to do due to the limited space.
The second was to leave them uncoupled and start the engine and using two different files letting the coupling turn and very carefully cut the male side down and smooth it with the file. this was a slow process because we didn't want to take off to much and ruin the coupling or put a flat spot on it.
Much to our surprise we have completed the matching of the coupling and have it within four thousandths and the alignment is good with no shaft wobble
The motor mount sleds have proven to be less than desirable and when we get home this is on the to do list to fix!

Our test run has proven to be a success and we will be leaving here at the first sign of good weather.

I have learned so much on this project and am so thankful to my friend Hanley for all of his help.


All the best
Paul

[Mo]

That there is the difference between mechanics and Afourians....good job!

[Marian Claire]

Yep. Today would have been no fun on the Neuse. Have a good run north and be safe out there. Dan S/V Marian Claire

[PT26]

We left Oriental this morning around 7am and have made it up the Nuese and across the Pamlico to anchor up in Pungo Creek around 3:30 this afternoon. Although the weather turned a bit cold and fowl, the ride was great.

The motor sounded wonderful today and aside from a little hiccup that we are attributing to the coil possibly getting too hot, everything went well. At our next stop we'll be looking for another or a larger coil resistor.

Also the cooling on the motor is so efficient that we'll be altering a little plumbing when we get to Elizabeth City, I'll post pictures when we get there of the current set-up and what we do to modify it. Right now we're using a system based on the idea of preferential flow to help warm the engine as we are running without a thermostat and we are using the "Tom Thatch" modification for water flow through the manifold.

[hanleyclifford]

Also, at the Alligator River anchorage we moved the coil+ feed to the OPSS so the circuit now has the electric fuel pump and ignition together. Voltage at coil+ dropped to 10.75 and performance was satisfactory with cool coil.

[Sony2000]

Regarding the fuel pump and ignition modification, are you saying that the ignition wire + and the pump wire + are taken from the + of the battery in a bench test situation, or the key "on" terminal, in the boat?
Resulting in a cooler coil! What is OPSS?

[hanleyclifford]

Sorry I wasn't clear. What I meant is that the ignition switch now feeds the oil pressure safety switch (OPSS) and the switch feeds both coil+ and the electric fuel pump. Since the coil already has a .8 ohm external resistor, the voltage at coil+ tested at 10.75V.

[PT26]

I am glad we made this change when we did it would have been bad to loose the coil in the sound. The engine ran so smooth, motor sailing at hull speed just above idle to charge up batteries. It was an Ideal day to sail

Now today I am going for all new filters, I don't like to make more than one change at a time.
Also when this is complete we are looking at making a change to the raw water flow. Even when we recirculate it takes some time to heat up the engine but then when we give it more water it cools off to fast and runs to cold.

I am tempted to wait just for the reason that I am going to FW when we get the boat home.
I am sure I will have to remove some of this to do the FW system or maybe not... Could this still be of some value?.

I am guessing it won't hurt to run cool for a few days or so until we get here?