Fuel Gauge Working

We had problems with the fuel gauge.

I filled the fuel tank, noting the reading of the fuel gauge at every 20 liters.  The filler overflowed at an unexpectedly low 125 liters yet the gauge remained stuck at one half tank.  I retrieved the instructions from my garage over the weekend and last Monday Greg Hansen used the instructions to verify that the gauge was working correctly and the sender in the tank had an electrical resistance consistent with a half full tank, so the problem was definitely in the sender.

Fuel Sender

Bruce and I removed the sender and found things that I didn't like.  I wasn't too happy with the design of the sender, with the float at the end of a long thin stainless steel arm which I considered susceptible to metal fatigue in a rolling sea where the fuel would be sloshing from side to side.  The holes for fixing the sender onto the tank had been drilled so far from the center that they broke the perimeter of the plate,which didn't look right to me.  The drill holes in the tank were very poorly centered and finally, screws of two different lengths had been used to fix the sender to the tank, something that I considered sloppy and amateurish.  (I purchased a new set of screws.)

After measuring the length of the float arm we concluded that it was hitting the side of the tank and attempted to rotate the sender 180 degrees but we found to our surprise that the mounting holes would not align properly.  At that point we gave up and telephoned the Rob of Sheet Metal Fabrications for help, and to his credited he visited the boat the next morning.

Holes drilled at the perimeter of sender flange

Tank holes off center

Rob assured us that the design of the sender was the standard one that he installed on most boats without ever having experienced a failure.  The drill holes around the mounting plate of the sender were as delivered by the manufacturer.  But he did concede that the holes in the tank could have been better centered.

Success!

He attempted to install the sender 180 degrees from the original as we had tried but ran into the same problem of hole alignment.  He then nipped about 10mm from the length of the float arm and fit the sender in its original orientation.  To our disappointment the sender still reported 1/2 tank so he removed the sender and saw that the wiring which was now excessively long after having cut down the unit to fit my tank was tangled around the float arm.  He tied off the excess wire with a plastic tie and installed the float with no further difficulty.  The excess wiring had  been the problem all along and had cost Bruce and me hours of work, not to mention the visit from the the installer

Re finishing the shower duck board

My homework for last weekend had been to clean, sand, and re varnish the shower recess duck board with Everdure 2-part epoxy wood primer from International Paints.  Belt sanding the outside of the piece was easy, but the120 internal holes were a big problem and I had to be satisfied with a good clean out. of those holes with no sanding.  I hung the piece in the carport and laid down two coats in the holes, four coats underneath, and five coats on the walking surface.  This was a relatively fast process because Everdure can be laid down "wet on wet" with as little as 6 minutes between coats.

I also spent about 8 hours over two days painting the bilge.

By the end of the week I had laid down the required two coats on most of the bilge until I had run out of paint. Bruce painted the rest of the bilge on the following Monday morning. That would put us in position for plumbing the water tanks and finally, after months of accident prone walking along the bilge, re installing the cabin flooring.   The section of the bilge forward of the bulkhead was painted with Hempel 1-part Multicoat Primer/Topcoat, an excellent product that is sadly no longer available.  For the main part of the bilge I used 1-part "Bilgekote" by International Paints.

Bilge Painted

We also put one of the powder-coated toe rails on the deck to see how the color would blend in with the rest of the boat.  I had chosen the color with the intention of changing the deck color from light blue to more of a beige color.  From the top of the boat that would look very good but after considering the color from the perspective of a side view of the boat I agreed that it would be best to retain the light blue deck color.  Fortunately the toe rails will look OK, partly because they will blend in with the generous amount of teak on the deck.

Toe Rail color check

Toe rail at port gunwale