Engine Pre Work

This afternoon I made a shopping foray to CCC. I had been out of fresh fruit and vegetables for days and knew that I would be too busy with the SABB engine for the next day or two for shopping. I came back with bananas, apples, oranges, potatoes, carrots, broccoli, and yoghurt along with less interesting things. One the way back I purchased two small punnets of fresh strawberries for 20 pesos from a roadside vendor that Bob had recommended. Back at the boat I sliced up a banana, drowned it in yoghurt, then sprinkled the dish with chopped fresh strawberries. Yum!

After a short nap I did some preliminary work to clear the deck, so to speak, for tomorrow's SABB reassembly effort. I remove both copper seals from around the cylinders and was disappointed to see that their diameters were a bit wide for the spread of the flame from one of my gas stove burners. I had to settle for heating the first seal in sections. Unfortunately I was not able to reach the cherry red stage of the metal and I had doubts about the success of my effort. I threw the seal in the water and heard the zzzttt sound indicating that the ring had gotten very hot. Then I compared its stiffness with the untreated seal and the difference was amazing. I may have not done a perfect annealing job but I achieved at least partial success. As a bonus the quenching process threw out most of the carbon coating that had been clinging to the metal.

I then did the valve seal test that Mark had told me about on both heads. The process was to flood the area above the valves with mineral turpentine and see if any leaked past the valves. All four valves were tight as a drum. I suspect that whoever was supposed to grind the valves the first time either honestly forgot to do it or did one damned sloppy job. Perhaps the knowledge that we were going to check the results focused his mind.

The attached photo shows Pachuca's first course for the evening meal from the galley: flame grilled copper seals to be followed by steak fried in olive oil and smothered in onions with boiled potatoes, carrots, and broccoli on the side.