Engine Adjustments

I met Joel at the boat at 8.30 this morning so that he could adjust the engine alignment.  When he arrived I was looking at the travel provided by the accelerator lever in the cockpit and he confirmed what I was observing that when the accelerator lever is in full forward the accelerator on the engine is pegged out to its maximum.

After he separated the shaft and transmission couplings I asked him how the shaft was centered in the stern tube.  He slid the shaft back a couple of inches then moved it up, down, and sideways and reported that the shaft was properly centered when it was joined to the transmission.  He did say that if the shaft were making contact with the stern tube I would hear a distinct "bang bang bang' instead of a steady grinding sound.

He spent about 30 minutes with feeler guages studying the problem.  No gap around the coupling interface could exceed .003".  He made the curious observation that the gap moved around when he spun the shaft around, leading him to think that there might be a slight misalignment of the coupling on the shaft, bolted down hard as it was.  Mind you, with the tolerances that he was working with the variations must have been slight.

He made some adjustments in the front engine supports, rejoined the couplers, and we ran up the engine at 1800 rpm in forward gear, then reverse gear to check for wobble.  He was not happy with that result and had another go.  That's what I like about Joel.  He doesn't work to a schedule or deadline - a job will take as long as it takes.  He wound up raising the port forward mounting and lowering the aft starboard one ever so slightly and got the result that he wanted. 

Along the way he removed the gear shift cable and compared the slight play of the transmission  shift lever when in neutral against the position of the cable when the cockpit lever was in the neutral position and made an adjustment of several degrees.

After Joel left I finished cleaning and drying the bilge.  I left the bilge open so that it will get very dry before we set out on our week's tour of the nearby anchorages.  With no prospects of rain or heavy seas I will be interested to see if we ship any water during our motoring tour.

Brenda and I plan to motor out of the marina on Tuesday, filling up the diesel tanks on the way out.  Our first night will be probably at nearby Puerto Balandra, where Arnold and I spent our last night at anchor before reaching La Paz.  After that we will work our way up Isla Espiritu Santo, Isla Partida, and maybe spend a night at Isla San Francisco.  After that we'll probably head up the Canal de San Jose.  We've been told that the winds are very light this time of the year and to expect a lot of motoring, but that suits us fine because we want to put some hours on the engine.  We plan to return a week later to give Brenda a few days to prepare for her return to Australia.