Thursday, 14 April, 2016 - I worked on the heat exchanger again this morning and have come to a point that, even though I wasn't sure I could do what I've already done well, am even more sure that putting the bevel in the housing really needs to be machined. I've been talking to the marine shops and no one is willing to do the work. In talking to someone today, I realized that an automotive shop should have the capabilities to do this too, and I remembered passing a auto restoration shop several times, not far away, so I went over there. They restore all kinds of old cars and had several beautiful Vets, an MG TD, Mustangs, a Nash Rambler, a Porsche, a Jaguar, and several others on their lot or in their shop. I thought they just have to be making or machining parts for some of those. Wrong! and they didn't think anyone on the island could do the work except Intercoastal Machine. They've already turned me down twice. I was near the welder's shop that had told me he wasn't interest in doing the welding because the aluminum was too corroded and couldn't be welded, so I decided to ask him if, now that I have that part done, he could refer me to a machinist that could do the machining or mill work. He saw me approaching and started toward me saying, "No, no, no. I already told you, I wouldn't do that." I pulled the housing out of my backpack to show him that I didn't need the welding done, only some machine work. He looked at it and asked who had done the welding and I said, "I did...with JB Weld epoxy." He took it and said, "You'll never get it flat without machining it." He then pulled out a machinists square and stuck it on the end. He got a quizzical look on his face, then checked it from about 5 more points and said, "How did you do that?" I told him, "With a file." He said, "That's good, very good." and his whole attitude changed. He said, "You must have put in a huge amount of time." I said, "Yes, about 6 days," and he said, "I believe it, that's amazing. I've never seen anything done by hand that well." That made me feel pretty good! He took me a couple of doors down to another car shop to see if they had any idea how to get the bevel cut on the 3" opening, but that fellow had no ideas.
                  On the way back to his shop he said, "You know, as well as you did the shaping of the flat part of the housing, which was very, very good, you could do the beveling yourself." I protested that I have no way to check the angle or get it smooth. He said, "I'm not kidding. You can do this. The hardest part is behind you. Doing the bevel won't take a third of the time. Just go SLOW. You don'd want to screw it up with all the work you already have into it." "You've got that right," I said, "That's why I wanted to find a machinist to do it." "No," he said again. "You can do this. Don't try to use any machinery like a drill or grinder. Do it with a half-round file or a sharp box knife and carve it. Go slow. You can do it."
                  I went to the bank for some cash, the grocery store for a few items, and returned to the boat thinking, "Maybe I can do this."

Friday, 15 April - I started on the bevel on the heat exchanger about 9am. I tried cutting it with a box cutter, and the first time around the hole went pretty well, but after that, I couldn't control the depth of the cut well enough, so I got out the files and used the half-round. Filing on the thin edge of the hole, the filing went very fast, but as I got further along, it slowed down, which is good. I really did want to sneak up on the depth, not cut too deep too fast. An first, I was just guessing at the angle of the bevel and could tell that I wasn't doing a very good job of that, so I switched to another idea I'd had. I got out a piece of stainless sheet that I used to scrape the wax off my skis with, thinking that if I stuck the corner of the right angle into the hole, that would give me the 45° angle I needed, and I could just rotate the stainless to scrape away the material to the depth I needed. I found a corner that was exactly 90°, sharpened the edges and tried it. It wouldn't cut. Next I burnished the edge of the scraper to put a tiny burr on the edges so it would cut better, and it did...for a turn or two. The JB Weld was hard enough to take the burr off. Back to the half-round file.
                  Now I had to figure out how to get that angle right with the file. I got out a short block of 2 X 4 and marked it with a pencil at 45° so I could lay it across the top of the housing, then match the angle with my file. I got lucky and realized that there was a ring down in the housing that the end of my file hit if I was cutting at the right angle, so I didn't have to keep the 2 X 4 in the way all the time. All went well and I finished around 6pm, then cleaned up tools, wiped down about 20 of my files with WD-40 and filled a few bubbles that surfaced in the housing as I filed with JB Weld and stopped work around 8pm. I'm sure glad I have that behind me. I had assumed cutting the bevel would be much harder than it was and dreaded and avoided it as long as I could. Now it's done.
                  Of course, the proof is in the pudding. Will it leak externally or internally? It has to not only keep all the fluids from leaking out, but keep the saltwater and antifreeze from mixing. There's still a lot of work to do. I have to assemble the heat exchanger, install it, refill the system with water and an internal engine cleaner, start the engine and run it awhile, drain it again, refill it with water and run it awhile, drain it again, and refill it with antifreeze.

Saturday, 16 April - Assembling the heat exchanger was easy...reinstalling it, not so easy. I got in on top of the engine and using a mirror while hanging upside down, finally managed to get one of the main bolts lined up and started. The second and longest bolt was too short! These are the two bolts that I rode clean to the other end of the island to replace. I can't believe I let the salesman hand me the wrong size. I would have bet good money I had double checked. I can see it happening in my mind. But here's the proof. The bolt was too short and I had to reuse the old bolt. The head on it was mangled, so I had to reform it to the next head size smaller with a file. I'm well practiced with those. I got it lined up and installed, the started putting hoses back on. I had gone earlier today and gotten a replacement for one of these, the others look ok. Something else I had tried to do was find a drain valve to install in one of the hoses. As the system is currently configured, the only way to drain the antifreeze is to pull one of the lower hoses. That done, you have antifreeze flowing uncontrollably from two places, the hose and the nipple you took it off of. Antifreeze all over the engine room and into the bilge. NAPA says they don't have valves for that. Ace Hardware says to go to NAPA, they have them. Anyway, I didn't get a bleeder valve for the antifreeze to install. Back to the hoses. Two went on real easy. The third one fits really close to the thermostat housing and has to bend around it in very close quarters. Try as I might, I couldn't get it on, even after loosening the mounting bolts. I finally had to totally remove the heat exchanger and put the hose on, then remount the exchanger. Much harder the second time because of the pressure caused by the bend in the hose. It started raining and I had to close up the boat to keep tools dry, so I was sweating like a hog when Steve Luta called from Isla Mujeres, Mexico to update me on his adventures. I let it ring. I couldn't have gotten out of the engine room in time anyway. I did have to exit the engine room about 10 minutes later, however. I was sweating so much my glassed wouldn't stay on my face while hanging upside down and they had so much sweat on them, I couldn't see anyway. It was getting dark and, as usual, my headlamp went on the fritz. Remember, I said a couple of weeks back that the flashlight that wouldn't work is the one I'm trying to use. I could see that I wasn't going to finish tonight to start the engine, so I gave up for the evening at about 8 o'clock.
                  At least the wind is blowing so my batteries will more than keep up with my refrigeration tonight. With 10kt. of wind, my charger will barely keep up, at 15kt. I can get a little ahead. I've been having to turn the refrigeration off about 2/3rd of the time lately, because there hasn't been enough wind, about 5 to 7kt for the past three or four days...and I can't start the engine to recharge because I have the heat exchanger removed...and because my auxiliary generator, that I was told would be fixed the same day, hasn't been repaired yet.
                  Speaking of which, I'm amazed at how many people, even businesses, won't return phone calls, even when they say they'll call back. I always thought if I told someone I was going to do something, I'd better do it, but I'll bet I've had about 15 or 20 people in the last two weeks of trying to get this heat exchanger fixed that said they'd call me back, that never did. They ought to call back, even if it's to say, "We're sorry, we can't help you." If they don't, they rarely get any business or a referral from me after that.
                  I was so tired after working on the heat exchanger all afternoon it the engine room, that I was glad I had a "Seafood Salad" from Publix Grocery Store for dinner tonight. At least I was till I tasted it. I guess they call it "Seafood Salad" because it's some kind of nondescript Mystery Meat from the ocean...maybe Sea Cucumbers or Sea Slugs. Yuck! It tasted terrible.

Sunday, 17 April - I got started on the repairs about 9am, got all the hoses tightened down, the seacock for the saltwater coolant opened, and everything rechecked by noon and decided to take a break before filling the engine with water and starting her up. I talked to my brother, Mike, for awhile, then put 4 gallons of fresh water in and started the engine. I discovered a small leak while checking all the hoses and the ends of the heat exchanger. Nope. Not my work. I'm surprised I hadn't noticed the drip there before. It was a drain plug that I wish I had known about before I started. It was about three whole revolutions from being tight enough, just finger tight. I'll use it to drain the engine from now on instead of pulling one of the hoses. It's a plug with a 3/8" allen wrench fitting. I think it should be a petcock for control. Maybe I can rig one for it.
                  I ran the engine for an hour to let it get warm, charge batteries, and run the engine powered refrigeration, plus the 12V DC refrigerator. The good news is, I didn't detect any leaks; the bad news is...wait a minute, there isn't any, although I know this isn't a done deal. The heat exchanger could still be leaking internally, letting the fresh water and salt water mix. I need to get a salinity tester and measure clean water, then run the engine for a while and recheck to see if the salinity has changed. I know there is some salt water in the engine now, even though I added fresh water back in, but it's not possible to completely drain the system, so I'll let it set overnight to further dissolve salts that are in there now and cool down, then drain it again tomorrow and add fresh water in again. There's no sense adding antifreeze back in till I am sure that there's no seawater getting mixed in with the fresh. So, there's still a ways to go to finish the job, but I'm encouraged and glad to be able to start the engine. Now I'll have to be careful when I wash. It's been so long since I had hot water it's easy to forget that the hot water is hot again. HOT! Very hot! About 185°F hot, right off the engine HOT. Heated by the engine to its running temperature.
                  At 4pm, I have the engine room all buttoned up and all the tools cleaned up, wiped down and put away. I think I'll take the rest of the afternoon off.

Monday, 18 April - I went ashore and bought parts to install a ballcock drain for the antifreeze on the engine and installed it today. I went to several stores to price antifreeze today and was amazed at the prices, $16.99 - $22.99 for a gallon, and several stores are now carrying nothing but pre-mixed 50/50. Why would anyone pay that kind of money for water. If you buy pre-mixed at $17 per gallon, that means that you are paying $8.50 for a half gallon of antifreeze and $8.50 for a half gallon of water, or $17 per gallon for water. Seventeen dollars per gallon for water seems a little high to me.
                  I also took 7 pairs of 40", 38", and 36" shorts to the thrift shop to donate and bought two pairs of 34" shorts.
                  I had intended to start the engine and run it for an hour to help dissolve any more salt that is in it, but when I came out of the cabin and looked across the water, I discovered than two more CSY sailboats had pulled in and anchored next to me. I thought that has to be a rather rare occurrence these days, and decided to take a picture. As I was standing there, the captain of the nearest one came topside and said, "What a rare occurrence, this ought to be worth a picture or two." It was almost sunset, so I got in my dinghy and went out and took a couple of shots, but the angle for the boats wasn't very good, so I decided sunrise would be better, and that I'd try again tomorrow morning.

Tuesday, 19 April - Up early this morning because I need to take the 15hp Yamaha to the end of one of the channels close by so the repairman can work on it. I needed to remove the engine from the rear railing on the boat and put it into the dinghy and meet him at 8am. When I got it into the dinghy, the timing was good to take a few more shots of the three CSYs, in the morning light this time. I also ran the diesel for an hour, let it cool, and drained it again and refilled it with water. I finished the day out by working on my music collection in iTunes and writing this.

Wednesday, 20 April - After breakfast this morning, I created a couple of quick mount systems for a pair of small solar lights I recently acquired to add to the visibility of the boat at night. Tonight I'll see how much they really light up. If they work well and last all night, I'll try to get more. I got a couple of garden type solar lights about a month ago at an Ace Hardware store that were branded Duracell that won't last through the night. I opened them up and they don't even have Duracell batteries in them. Kinda makes me wonder if they may be "Grey" market ripoffs.