Winifred recently threw a monkey wrench in the midst of a busy charter week. Her Perkins 4.108 engine was overheating and was not very happy. (Neither were we) Remembering back to our days at Maine Maritime and following some great advise from, Don Eley, a well renowned professor we “stopped cranking and started thinking.”
"The Don"
So there we were covered head to toe in motor oil. First on the list was to check the thru hull and sea strainer. Nothing too interesting was found in the sea strainer.
Our seastrainer was much dirtier than this as were we. Hence no pics from our actual adventure
Next, the raw water pump, which pumps saltwater through a heat exchanger to cool the engine. Removing the faceplate the impeller was missing half of its blades. Most of the broken off rubber parts were still inside the pump. However, some of them had made their way to the heat exchanger. After draining out the coolant we cleaned the heat exchanger.
The end of the heat exchanger. Sea water flows thru the middle and coolant stays on the outside
At the moment Winifred is back to running. Our fingers are crossed that the problem is taken care of. We are a little nervous at the moment but as the warm tropical days pass, hopefully so will our worries that the engine will overheat again.
the reward for all the hard work
A day at " the office"
While we were already in an engineering mindset we (Kenny) also replaced all the plumbing for the head. Maintenance is always on going and a constant challenge that we both enjoy. This past week we had more of it than we had planned on.
April has been steady with guest coming and going. In April we’ve had guests from the Netherlands, France, Toronto, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Wisconsin, Idaho, Illinois, New Mexico, and Missouri. Sorry if we left anybody out.
