Back in March, when we were crossing the US/Canada border heading for Maine to start the re-power project on Morgan’s Cloud, a US Homeland Security officer asked the usual questions about what the purpose of our visit was. After I explained that we were replacing the engine in our boat, he asked how long we would be in the US? My answer was greeted with a look of incredulity and “THREE MONTHS?”. Clearly the officer had never owned an offshore sailboat.
The way we came up with the three month estimate was to list everything that had to be done, assign reasonable times to each task, total them up, and then double the result—pretty accurate as it turned out.
Here is a captioned photo essay on what we were doing all that time.
Click on the images to see them larger.
Ready to get the old engine out. We have removed the forward engine room bulkhead and disconnected everything. One of the great things about Morgan’s Cloud is that we have good access in the engine room.
Good access meant that the old engine came out in two hours, start to finish.
We chose a new ZF transmission with a 5 inch vertical offset to replace the old Velvet Drive with no offset. This decision necessitated welding blocks onto the bearers to raise the mounts.
But it was well worth the trouble in that the ZF is a much heavier duty gear than the Velvet Drive and the vertical offset has made the new engine both higher and more horizontal than the old, providing much better access.
We also laid in all the plumbing and wiring for the new engine prior to swinging it in.
The change to the ZF gear and the four cylinder Perkins engine from the Velvet Drive gear and six cylinder Cummins gave us room to install an Aquadrive constant velocity joint, which reduces noise and vibration as well as the need for accurate alignment. The latter feature allows the use of very soft engine mounts, which further reduce noise and vibration.
The new plate welded to the aft end of the bearers relieves the transmission and engine mounts of the thrust from the propeller.
The plate with the pointed shaft temporarily bolted to the forward face of the Aquadrive is one half of a tool that David, machinist at Billings Diesel and Marine, made to assist in the alignment of the connecting shaft.
A welded pad to take a new seacock for the new water separation exhaust. More on this part of the project.
Looking down from above at the engine in and hooked up to the Aquadrive. The red disk is a DriveSaver that we installed both to protect things in event of hitting something with the prop and also to isolate the shaft from the engine and hull. The bolts holding the Aquadrive to the bulhead are insulated too so that the engine is isolated from the hull.
We have heard of two Aquadrives flying apart due to the bolts backing out, so we had the bolt heads drilled and wired, just like an aircraft.
While all this welding was going on, I was building a custom electrical panel. A task required because the standard Perkins panel would not fit and also because we added gauges for transmission oil pressure and exhaust temperature.
The three circuit boards are, from top to bottom:
- Spare voltage regulator that can be easily brought into service if the primary regulator fails.
- Primary voltage regulator.
- The Perkins circuit board that normally resides on the back of the panel. While we were re-wiring we moved this vulnerable item into the engine room.
The custom instrument panel built to our design, by Heritage Panel Graphics, to fit the existing opening in the binnacle.
While rewiring the panel, we mounted the engine start controls on a panel at the companionway where they are protected from rain and spray, and are easy to reach in an emergency.
This also allowed us to fit a completely water proof cover (not pictured) over the instrument panel since we will not need to access it.
Our new water separation exhaust system from Halyard. The raw water is injected at the mixing elbow on the top left and flows down to the water lift muffler at the bottom. So far, pretty standard. However, the now cooled gas, together with the water, rises to the white device at the top, where the water is separated and drained out a sea cock through the no-return valve and the center of the three hoses. The cool and relatively dry gas is then routed through hose to the exhaust exit in the transom.
The advantage of this system is that it is very quiet. But even better than that, since the engine must only lift the water to the separator, rather than all the way to the transom, it reduces exhaust back pressure, which is generally the bane of center cockpit boats.
A drawback of a water separation exhaust is that there is no water coming out of the exhaust outlet, the cessation of which would warn us of a cooling problem.
To solve this problem, I glued an aluminum plate to the aluminum cockpit drain, with Plexus adhesive, to provide some thickness, and then tapped an aluminum pipe-to-hose filling into that. I then connected it to the top point of the loop in the hose taking the raw cooling water from the engine to the exhaust mixing elbow. This gives us a tell-tale jet of water that we can see by looking down the cockpit drain.
The tell-tale also acts a siphon-break with the advantage of not being vulnerable to blocking up with salt like normal siphon-breaks, a failure that can result in flooding the engine.
Built by Clarence, at Billings Diesel and Marine, this connector in the lazarette solves a hose to pipe sizing problem. It also, with its 90 degree turn and surge pipe continuation, substantially reduces the chances of any water making it back into the exhaust, even in a following sea.
A custom made aluminum panel that we installed on the engine room roof with oil pressure and water temperature gauges, both mechanical, and a start button wired directly to the starter motor, which is particularly useful for pre-lubricating or priming the engine.
David removed the small standard alternator and fabricated a custom mount for this 190 amp, two belt, large case model. Note the really beefy threaded tensioning device. With a couple of wrenches we can adjust the belt tension perfectly in just a moment.
Also, note the red heater hose wire-tied to the hose in the way of the sharp corner on the breaker box. We protected every wire and hose that could possibly chafe with this stuff. For example, it is covering the heavy starter motor and alternator wiring in the picture below.
The job all done. The white wrapped pipe in the foreground was made by Chris, master welder at Billings, to bring the raw water injection elbow well above the lift muffler and even above the water line. The latter is not strictly necessary with this kind of exhaust, but it is one more barrier against engine flooding.
The two drain valves just below the water lift (click on the photo to enlarge) are:
- A drain for the water lift for winterizing, and also if the engine is turned over for a long period without starting.
- A drain for the lowest point in the exhaust hose for winterizing. This valve can also be left open in very heavy weather when the engine is not running, to drain any water that makes its way past Clarence’s surge tube.
Pretty much everything you have seen in these photographs has worked well to date except that the flow from the raw cooling water tell-tale is rather more than we expected resulting in splatter and a wet left foot for the helms-person—kind of like having a puppy. I should have angled it down.
If you have waded through all this mind numbing detail, you now know why it took three months. I’m going to email the URL of this post to the Homeland Security officer.
If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
John,
Nice fix for the water tell tale, a duel purpose solution and one I would like to steal. Thank you.
Hopefully it should be a long time before you get oil or diesel in the bilge but do you have a seperate engine room bilge and do you have an oil staining/ filter unit to “clean”the water?
You obviously have spent a great deal of time considering what you you like to have and how to achieve it. A good job well done. ( I hope you remembered to fit the lowest nut to the aquadrive plate missing in the photo!)
Hi Andy,
Feel free to “steal” it. Actually I have to give credit to Greg Sanborn, service manager at Billings Diesel for suggesting it.
No, we don’t have a separate bilge for the engine room, although it is something I would do if building a boat from scratch. Nor do we have a filter on the bilge pump, although it is a good idea. My only worry would be restriction on the pump reducing flow in an emergency. But then again, one could install a bypass valve.
We are very careful not to get oil in the bilge, to the point that we have oil absorbing pads under the engine at all times. Not only to catch any leaks, but also so that we will see any small leak before it gets worse.
One of the big reasons that we took the Cummins out was the amount of raw fuel and oil that it was sending out the exhaust due to the cylinders being out of round.
John
Do you use an oil bypass filter with dryer and if so what brand?
Have you considered using an electric oil pump to pre lubricate the engine before starting? I think I read somewhere (Calder?) that most engine wear comes from the debris that the standard oil filter doesn’t filter and the first minute of running your engine when it is poorly lubricated.
Since I’m asking questions: Do you pre heat your engine block and fuel in Arctic conditions?
Hi Carter,
No we just have the standard Perkins oil filter installed.
We have considered a pre-lube pump, but did not install one. If the engine has not been used for more than a few days we pre-lube it by turning it over on the starter motor with the key off, so it does not start, for about 30 seconds until we see oil pressure on the mechanical gauge. This was a big reason for the starter button in the engine room and the mechanical gauges.
Note that you must be careful doing this if you have a water lift muffler since you are pumping water in to it with no exhaust flow to clear it–you can flood an engine that way. That is one of the reasons we have the drain valve on the lift.
I guess I would generally vote against adding a lot of after market stuff like bypass filters and pre-lube pumps since each is just another thing to go wrong. Also a big leak in all the additional piping could be catastrophic.
This is an industrial engine that Perkins specifies to go 10,000 hours and presumably they are assuming that life in the configuration they sell it. And 10,000 hours should see me out of the voyaging business!
John,
I’m glad to hear it all worked out in the end. You are very fortunate to have found such a meticulous team of technicians to put it all together.
As for the pre-lube stuff, I’ve never come across it on any engine I’ve personally encountered. I can see the possible benefit on a very large engine, but with modern oils (which tend to cling to rings, cams, etc. for a very long time) and a smaller motor (which will likely achieve OK oil pressure in the two or three seconds of cranking before it catches) it’s not something I’d worry about too much. Unless you have one of those Yanmars with the upside-down filter that drains every time you shut it off.
In most of the engines I use, we change the oil because of age or convenient timing long before the required intervals are reached. Sure, you end up spending an extra few dollars on oil and having to carry a bit more back to the recycling depot, but I suspect it’s still cheaper/simpler/has fewer failure modes than bypass filters and such, at least for smaller engines (say under 8 litres or so).
I’ve been complaining about cramped, badly installed sterndrive engines at the last few boat shows…. it’s nice to see you showing off a setup that, although certainly not simple, is relatively organized, accessible, logical and soundly put together.
Hi Matt,
I think you are right that a pre-lube system might be worth it for a larger engine.
The Perkins has an upside-down filter too but it has a check valve in it that stops it draining when the engine is stopped. The result is that oil pressure comes up very fast, a matter of less than five seconds, even when just cranking with the starter motor.
On the flip side, the upside-down filter is messy to change, but not as bad as the side mount filter on our generator. Engine designers should be forced to do a few oil changes on their creations. On the bright side, Perkins provides an oil change pump as standard.
Hi John, I really need ur help on this, please. My religious community (Dominicans, in Nigeria) operates a Perkins 13oo series, 2004 model diesel generator, model GCD325, engine family DTA 53DE. for some months now, i’ve noticed oil sipping out from the neck of the oil filter during operation. I initially thought the oil filter was either loose or was faulty. we’ve tried to tighten it, and have replaced with new oil filters three times already, but still oil sips out from the neck of the oil filter during operation. what could be the cause of this and what solution? many thanks, John.
Hi Joseph,
I’m really not an engine expert. My only thought is that it is the wrong filter. I have also hear of bad batches of filters where all the filters from one batch have defective seals.
Anyone else out there have any bright ideas?