Renegade Cruisers

Next installment - HEAT !!!!!

Spent the last few weekends working on getting a Dickinson Newport heater installed. Bought it on E-bay for $200.00. It's mounted on a bulkhead in the main salon.


Juli is working on the tile work for the back, She is custom making all the tiles so they are not installed yet. She's doing a fantastic job and I will post pictures when we get them up.

The main fuel tank I cleaned out by hand ( took most of a weekend) I have added a fuel manifold - Thanks Pat (Never Monday) for this suggestion, it worked out great! I ground down the fiberglass, laid up 6 layers of new glass and set the manifold plate on top to make a perfect mate to the surface. I then bolted and sealed it in place. Now I have 5 access points for fuel lines and returns and still have an easily removable access panel to clean out or inspect the tank.



Added the mount on the cabin top for the Charlie Noble.


The fuel filter setup for the heater is also setup with an added return line back to the main fuel tank. If I open the shutoff valve at the manifold the heater pump will keep the heater running and pump 20gallons/hour from the bottom of my fuel tank (pickup is 1" off the bottom) through the Racor filter and back to the main tank - Fuel polishing on the run! The Racor filter has an electrical sensor on it for water and an idiot light will be on the main panel.


Next project, now that I have heat for the winter is to pull the engine up and start working on that. Till next time.

It's the diesel heater, runs off my main fuel tank.

Just gotta pick on something don't ya Pat! If your talking about the packing gland for the prop shaft, yes. The entire fitting will be removed and fitted with a PSS shaft seal and re-fitted. I have to deal with the engine stuff first. It's on the list.

Ran it through a racor filter and as we speak it is burning in my house boiler. Should be gone in about a week or so. Glad that messy job is over, hand pumping 25 gallons of deisel in a micky mouse plumbing setup was a mess to say the least.

I asked Juli to do the tilework behind the fireplace about 2 months ago, I expected her to go to Home Depot or a tile shop and just by standard tile. Needless to say, Juli really got into this little project and decided that she did not like any of the standard tiles available. Here is Juli's custom handywork on the fireplace installation. Juli met a woman (Craig) about 2 months ago who owns a custom tile shop. They hit it off in about 5 minutes and Craig offered her shop to Juli so she could custom make the tile work for the fireplace. Each tile is hand made and designed by Juli. The silkscreens of the gypsies are from drawings done a few hundred years ago by a french artist who was travelling with the gypsies and he drew these pictures of them. I am very impressed with the artistic talents of my wife Juli and I thank her dearly for all the work she has put into this project.



Here is a close up of the top.





The very proud artist at Midnight last night just as we finished lighting the fireplace for the full effect.
[/img]

Next phase - Engine work in a warm boat. The temperture outside today was 28F but the boat is a constant 60 to 65 depending on how many times I go in and out. This is god damn wonderful, I can work on the boat all winter on the interior stuff and be warm. Today I pulled the engine, it was rebuilt 700 hours ago and runs great but I need to change the transmission for the new 4 bladed prop, I want to have all the heat exchangers pressure tested and all the hoses, wiring replaced, clean and paint the bilge, new engine mounts, new 200 amp alternator, pulleys and belt, clean it, paint it and put it back in. Plan on one month for this then on to the electrical panel and wiring.

[/img]

Dave, I don't know what the heater burns yet. My guess is about 1 to 1.5 gallons every 24 hours.

Bryanj, Neither actually, the engine was rebuilt 700 hours ago and runs great. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I am having the heat exchangers pressure tested since I can only get at them with the engine lifted. Changing the transmissions out to change the output ratio from 1 to 1 to 1 to 1.9, painting the bilge and changing the front pulley setup to drive the 200 amp alternator.

Here's the next installment on our progress. We have spent the last few weeks working on the engine and the bilge. The pictures below show what we started with and the pristine condition that everything was in when we bought her.


Here's the lovely bilge.



Now here we are several weeks later. The engine was removed and we hand scrubbed and powerwashed the bilge till it was clean enough to apply a new coat of paint. This took an entire weekend and was by far the messiest job we have done to date.

The engine block was recently rebuilt but we did replace the following items so we hopefully will not have any problems with them.

Main heat exchanger for the engine oil and transmission oil
Fresh/saltwater water exchanger
Fuel pump
salt water pump
Installed a drain line from the bottom of the oil pan so we can pump the oil out without using the dipstick method.
Intalled a new (rebuilt) 1.9 to 1 Borg Warner Transmission
New Engine mounts
New 200 amp large case alternator - this barely fits in the engine compartment, we had to fabricate a new adjusting arm and modify the bulkhead for the shower stall in order for this to fit and properly function. We can now adjust the belt tension my simply rotating a large stainless turnbuckle - no more 3 handed belt tension procedure.

Here is the engine today, we still have lots to hook up, but the engine is back in place and ready for the exhaust system, fuel system, and connecton to the driveshaft.




Here is the new 200 amp alternator with the new 6 groove belt, main drive pulley and adjustable linkage.

Next project is to install the new electrical panel and all the new electronics. We will keep you posted as we continue.

Duncan, Thanks for the compliments on the pictures and update.



Only from my own Loco head. I did have a friend weld it up for me since I can't weld stainless right now.



Crud is a good description. It's the old foam/lead soundproofing material that had been soaked in diesel fuel/oil/water etc. then cooked by the engine heat. The stuff was really disgusting, greasy, flaking and all over the place. I'm glad it's all gone.