Launchpad McQ's Catalina 30 Atomic 4 Saga

[Boat]

I Love the fuel tank. However... Powder coating can hide pinhole leaks and corrosion from the inside. as long as the tank was in good shape inside before you did it you should be ok. but it is something that can happen over time.

[sdemore]

Jonathan,

Where are you in Denver? I'm out on the Chesapeake now, but still have my house in Northglenn.

Steve

[Launchpad McQ]

We’re in the city just a couple blocks northwest of City Park Golf Course, once they finish ripping it up and putting it back together. Thanks Mayor Hancock

[Launchpad McQ]

I Love the fuel tank. However... Powder coating can hide pinhole leaks and corrosion from the inside. as long as the tank was in good shape inside before you did it you should be ok. but it is something that can happen over time.

Thanks Boat. That was my main hesitation to go through with it. I read of a few instances where that had happened and considering the amount of water I pulled out of the tank, it was a legitimate concern. I've never had anything powder coated so I went down that YouTube rabbit hole for a little while. My thought process in this case was that if the aluminum tank were getting thin in places, the powder coating would help "strengthen" the corroded area. I also figured if the tank developed a leak, it would be a paperweight either way. I'd love a polyethylene tank but I never saw one available for the Catalina 30 during my cursory research. I'll report back in a couple years on how the thing is holding up.

[sastanley]

Jonathan, i have a 17 gal Moeller poly tank in my C-30. I'll go look up the part number. I replaced it after the alum. developed a pinhole leak.

edit - I have this one. #032518 - http://moellermarine.com/moeller-mar...l-tank-032518/

I ripped out the metal tank and then glassed in a few blocks to screw the hold downs to.

The other nice thing is this doesn't 'need' a gauge. You can shine a flashlight thru it at night and see the level easily. In the daytime, you don't need a flashlight. Depending on how much junk I have in the quarterberth determines whether I pull the drawers in the galley and do the flashlight trick..however, if you keep track of hours run, you should know about how much fuel you have anyway. I always count on 1 gal/hour, but I burn just a little less.

[Launchpad McQ]

Dang I should've looked harder! That Moeller tank looks nifty. It looks like $185ish would've gotten me a new tank that would never corrode. Shoot. Oh well at least I can say mine is "vintage"

[sastanley]

I have had zero problems with that tank in 9 years. I did have to bend the fill hose around the cockpit floor, but no issues other than that.

[Launchpad McQ]

So the next installment of my "Operation Learn Everything the Hard Way" came in the form of distributor overhaul. Reading through the various timing/distributor/electronic ignition/ignition-coil-overheating threads, I determined that I had the late model Delco distributor with points. Despite the well-documented coil overheating issues that can arise with electronic ignition setups, I felt the benefits of a simplified ignition system with less moving parts seemed to outweigh the drawbacks and bought the Pertronix kit with the suggested higher resistance MMI ignition coil. (The only pictures I can find in my iPhoto album are of the pre EI install)





The Pertronix kit installed easily enough. While I had the distributor opened up, I thought the flyweights in the body of the distributor could benefit from some white lithium grease so I smeared a little bit on with my finger. I don't recall what, if any, thread prompted me to do that but I'm not even sure that's advisable. Unfortunately my ignorance when it came to all matters of ignition timing and distributors may have manifested in a much more significant way later on. To be continued....

[sastanley]

Jonathon, One of the issues we are finding with switching to electronic ignition (because it is low maintenance) is neglect of the advance weights, (which still require regular maintenance.) It is great you decided to clean/lube them up. Also, the higher resistance moyer coil should pair nicely with the Pertronix unit.

edit - I will be curious to hear how the grease does. I personally worry about caking and build-up, but I have no real world basis with this assembly to back that up. I usually use a lightweight oil, so let's compare notes after you've got some time on the engine. Mine seems to still stick on occasion and the motor stumbles here and there after running for a few hours at 2,000 RPM. What I have discovered that is slightly counterintuitive, is when the motor stumbles your brain says to throttle down...I've found it is better to go WOT for a couple minutes to force the weights out even more to break the stickiness (and stumble) that seems to occur during long duration cruise RPM events.

[Launchpad McQ]

At this point in the process, I started to piece the motor back together. To recap, up to this point I had done the following:

1. Unnfrozen the rotating assembly by copious amounts of MMO deposited down the spark plug holes combined with brute force/sledge hammer on the flywheel
2. Rebuilt the carb
3. Drained the fuel tank of old gas and water
4. Refilled the tank with fresh gas (ethanol-free 100 octane low lead aka "avgas" for piston-powered aircraft)
5. Installed a new electric fuel pump
6. Replaced and rerouted all the fuel lines
7. Removed, cleaned and re-lapped the valves
8. Installed new valve springs
9. Installed new batteries
10. Installed Pertronix Electronic Ignition in distributor
11. Took the cylinder head to machine shop to get "Decked" and repaired 3 out of 4 stripped spark plug bosses
12. Vinegar soaked and painted manifold
13. Reassembled everything
14. Drank enough beer to cause an increase in hops commodity prices in the western United States
15. Philosophized if the internal combustion engine was really just an elaborate Rube Goldberg riddle established by a diabolical secret society with informal ties to the Free Masons in order to promote human suffering.

"At this point, what else could possibly go wrong?" Cough, cough, cough.

With everything pieced together, I hooked up a 6' piece of 1-1/4" black iron pipe as a makeshift exhaust since I hadn't finished replacing the wet exhaust hose from the water lift muffler to the transom yet. I hooked up a remote starter, gave it some gas, and...

[YOUTUBE]EUIbijLfZ8E[/YOUTUBE]

You'd think after all that effort and a successful start you'd hear me shouting with joy in the background over the noise of the Atomic dutifully putt-putting away, but you don't. It's difficult to see in the video, but when I cranked and throttled up the engine, I lost my balance and fell over when the boat all the sudden jolted forward. That's when I noticed that despite the fact the shifting lever on the engine (as well as the cockpit lever) were in neutral, the prop shaft was turning and pushing the boat forward in the slip until it pulled tight against the dock lines. Riddle me this Batman: What would cause the prop shaft to turn despite the reversing gear lever in the neutral position!? I'll give you a hint....

[southcoasting]

Oh man! after your rebuild that's what your tranny looked like? Is that water/antifreeze in there?

[Launchpad McQ]

Believe it or not, that's what the oil looked like after sitting for 2+ years. There may be more to the story. #@NeilDutton.com/Facebook/Twitter/SnappyChat hypothesized that water may have gotten into this engine and I'd be inclined to agree. My guess is the 'PFO' had difficulties getting it started and had the thru-hull open as he cranked and cranked and flooded the engine. I'm basing this on my pre-buy conversations with him as well as the 'dimpling' I discovered on the block surface described in this thread:Dimpling

To cut to the chase, the problem (as I've yet to see anyone else encounter), was that the reversing gear 'discs' were rusted together from having been left in Forward while the boat sat unused for years. No matter what position the reversing gear lever was in (I had long since disconnected the shifting linkage from the cockpit to help isolate the problem) the entire assembly turned "as one piece of steel" as Don phrases it in his Reversing Gear DVD. I have to admit, this drove me absolutely bonkers. After having gotten the engine running just to discover I couldn't reverse out of my slip, sent me through the roof. "Why the **** did I buy this boat?" was a frequent expression of mine around those days. As with many other "repairs" the ultimate solution proved to be copious MMO treatments squirted onto the top of the discs through the open reversing gear cover followed with gentile tapping against the bronze disc tabs with a punch and small ball peen hammer in addition to prying with an X-acto knife between the discs. Amazingly after almost a month of infrequent tinkering, I was able to loosen up the reversing gear cluster to allow the engine to turn while allowing for a 'neutral.'

[southcoasting]

Believe it or not, that's what the oil looked like after sitting for 2+ years. There may be more to the story. #@NeilDutton.com/Facebook/Twitter/SnappyChat hypothesized that water may have gotten into this engine and I'd be inclined to agree. My guess is the 'PFO' had difficulties getting it started and had the thru-hull open as he cranked and cranked and flooded the engine. I'm basing this on my pre-buy conversations with him as well as the 'dimpling' I discovered on the block surface described in this thread:Dimpling

To cut to the chase, the problem (as I've yet to see anyone else encounter), was that the reversing gear 'discs' were rusted together from having been left in Forward while the boat sat unused for years. No matter what position the reversing gear lever was in (I had long since disconnected the shifting linkage from the cockpit to help isolate the problem) the entire assembly turned "as one piece of steel" as Don phrases it in his Reversing Gear DVD. I have to admit, this drove me absolutely bonkers. After having gotten the engine running just to discover I couldn't reverse out of my slip, sent me through the roof. "Why the **** did I buy this boat?" was a frequent expression of mine around those days. As with many other "repairs" the ultimate solution proved to be copious MMO treatments squirted onto the top of the discs through the open reversing gear cover followed with gentile tapping against the bronze disc tabs with a punch and small ball peen hammer in addition to prying with an X-acto knife between the discs. Amazingly after almost a month of infrequent tinkering, I was able to loosen up the reversing gear cluster to allow the engine to turn while allowing for a 'neutral.'

WOW...yeah, that is a lot of rust in there...you must've had to take apart the tranny bits to clean them up as well then (a scary task to me when I took apart my tranny bits)...

[Launchpad McQ]

And spoil all the fun?! Sorry guys this isn't going to wrap up any time soon. Believe it or not I'm still in the rebuilding process so there's much more to come. According to iPhoto, here we go back to 2015...

[YOUTUBE]Ppg9Q6DTKMQ[/YOUTUBE]

In the video description I typed up in 2015 you can see just how off base I was. My thought at the time was "sticking valve lifter, incorrect valve/lifter spacing, or 'burned valve.' Will update when cause is diagnosed." I can just see you ol' guys shaking your heads at the computer screen but keep in mind my background from post #25. I didn't have the wise Grandpa or mechanically inclined Dad to say "son, thats called 'detonation' and you've just gotta twist 'dat there distributor to set the timing right." So I didn't. And I ran the engine. Hard. For hours. I pulled the plugs to see if they offered any clues as to the noise but nothing incredibly conspicuous appeared:


So back to the drawing board I went.

[Launchpad McQ]

Once I realized the knocking noise was ignition related, I watched Don's ignition DVD again and took notes this time. I read through some of the threads on "power timing" the ignition, the significance of 'Top Dead Center,' the relationship between the advance weights and the springs in the distributor. I excitedly hurried out and bought a timing light and watched every YouTube video on the subject. It was then I realized without any timing marks on the flywheel, I didn't have anything to really aim it at. I know some people have used the accessory pulley to set the timing but I found that a Dremel, a Bic white-out pen, and a protractor was the right solution for me:









BTW, the small teak door and frame were off of a smaller Catalina that happened to be in my local Pick-n-Pull junkyard in Denver. How that thing ended up in a Colorado junkyard is anyone's guess: