Putting it all together.

[Frosty]

Don't use white then, use mold colour.

White would not look good on those window frames anyway.

 

[LP]

Is that why we call it window MOLDING.

If I have to choose between white and black, most likely, I'll go with black. I thought I had struck gold with mahogany colored 5200. Removablility is certainly a plus for Sika. I haven't looked at colors options for 3M-4000 yet.

 

[Frosty]

5200 is for applications that you will never expect to remove ever again. Once you've tried to you can understand the instructions that say removal by mechanical means.

It is almost a molecular bond --quite incredible stuff.

 

[pistnbroke]

The tempered saftey glass is just standard glass heat treated so can be cut at your local glass/window maker and sent for tempering ...had some done for a vintage car so no problem ....

 

[PAR]

Tempered glass and safety glass are two completely different animals in the USA. Tempered is just heat treated, but safety glass is laminated from two sheets, with a ballistic film between them. We call this stuff "lamie" and it's all I prefer to use. It does cost more, but it's also stronger and much safer, so the glass portion of a pilothouse structure (for example) can be incorporated into the overall strength of the assembly.

 

[Frosty]

Its the same in Europe too Par Piston lives in his own little world.

 

[Manie B]

really good work - looking good

 

[LP]

An exciting day in the boat shed.

I picked up the replacement starter for the Thunderbolt first thing today. It was used, but still going strong. In preparation for starting attempts, I removed each spark plug and squirted some 2-stroke motor oil into each cylinder. This motor has been hanging on the back end of my project for at least three years and I am completely unaware of it's dormant time before my ownership. Several day before hand, I had also removed plugs and was able to turn the motor through by hand without any trouble. I felt sure that the engine would crank through nicely. Against better judgement, once all was bolted in, I blipped the starter for a moment. The starter jumped to life turned the engine over like it should. I figured a moment on the starter wasn'y going to hurt the impeller, though I could be wrong about that. I didn't have a lot of faith that the impeller was intact anyways.

The last several days of connecting controls, making adjustments and connecting wires has been a great moral boost on this project. Turning the wheel and seeing the engine move, moving the power lever and feeling the the gears engage, seeing throttles move has built the anticipation of seeing the completion coming near. With the engine electrics in place, the controls connected and the new starter installed, the smell of burning hydrocarbons couldn't be far behind. I pulled the top plug wire, inserted my screwdriver and had my wife hit the starter for a couple of seconds. Yea! A nice strong, blue-white spark jumped over to the nearby head. One third of the combustion triangle was in place.

Time to grab the fuel tank and lines. Embarassingly, the fuel tank still has fuel in it from when I purchased the darn engine. I burned a bit of it in my lawn mower, but there was still a fair amount in the tank. My father-in-law was over and he commented on my old gas and I just told him, "Well, it's an old engine." We pulled the boat out of the shop, attached the garden hose to it and pumped the hose primer. I felt the gas flow and then a little back-pressure. I looked inside the and saw some raw gas dripping that had primed out somewhere. Crap. Investigate or go on? The urge was too strong. I rounded up a couple of fire extinguishers and said, "Damn the torpedoes." We are going forward with this endevour until we hit a logical conclusion or at least can't go any further.

I put my father-in-law on the starter. He has way more experience operating outboards than I do. I stood by with a fire extinguisher in each hand. Well, maybe just one, but the other was was close by. The water was turned on and the signal givan to start cranking. Crank, crank, crank, and she caught. Coughed and sputtered a bit, but she kept on running. Smoked like a bunch of pot-heads at Woodstock, but kept on running. The smoke cleared up a bit and she kept on running. The shifter cable needs adjustment as the prop tries to engage. Never got the stream of water out the back side. We maybe let it run for a minute and shut it down. Looked things over, felt the engine. She still felt cool. Ok, I want to start it. Started it again. Fired right up. Ran it up a little bit. Sounding pretty good. Noticed a fuel leak at a hose connection. Decide to shut down. Turned the key off and the motor kept running. Great. I've got a magnetoed motor with a fuel leak that I can't turn off. I tried loading it up by putting it into gear. Nope. I made sure the idle was as low as it could go. Earlier it might have died, but now it's starting to run strong. I went for the battery master without any conviction of it stopping the engine. It did, but I'm not so sure the engine didn't just die. I'll have to think that one through.

It's obvious the kill wiring wasn't functioning properly. We pulled the wiring diagram and tracked down the wayward wire. It was an obvious replacement and showed signs of being overheated by it's melted insulation. I invision the kill wire shorting and killing the engine and the previous owner wondering why his engine won't run. With the cowl off and a broken wire somewhere, i have the opposite problem. I had one more exersize I wanted to do before calling it a day. I took a length of wire and connected it at the kill wire connection and left the other end loose to be touched to ground to see if it would kill the engine. I went in the house and told the wife to grab the marshmellows and come out and see the engine run. Father-in-law to the controls, wife with the fire extinguisher, mother-in-law has the marshmellows and I've got the kill wire. Father-in-law cranks, engine fires, wife watches, mother-in-law standing by with the marshmellows. Does it make sense to make an electrical spark by a leaking gas line? :?: I touch the kill wire to the ground side of the starter. Engine quits. Nice. That's not good enough. The engine was idling slowly. It could had died. Start it again. We idle it up a bit. Touch the kill wire. Engine dies. Yea. Mission accomplished. Crap. I forgot to look at the tach to see if it was registering.

Very exciting. The engine has problems, but they don't seem insurmountable. My father-in-law thought the engine sounded strong. He was surprised I hadn't even changed the spark plugs.

Problems/questions:

1. Should priming cause gas to leak in the engine compartment? Probably not. Solutions? Ideas?
2. Bad impeller. No surprise. I've got leaking seals in the lower end. I was standing by for engine life before starting to break into the lower end.
3. Leaking fuel line. Different from priming problem, I believe.
4. Faulty kill wire.
5. Shifter adjusment.

Hopefully, i don't find any major gottchas with this engine. Otherwise, it's being a great learning tool.

Here's to crossed fingers.

 

[Submarine Tom]

Tempered glass is awesome. Really tough. You can order it with wonderful tints and reflection characteristics. It's dam near bomb proof. You can beat on it with a hammer and it will not break. Fail it will into a thousand pieces. I've had both break in my lap in adverse seas, neither is particularly pretty.

I'd go with tempered first but it depends a lot on the size and location as well as the service demand...

 

[PAR]

Your engine sounds easy enough to sort out. Pull the plugs, if worn replace them, if not clean and reinstall. Impellers are consumable items, just like an oil filter. Replace once a year, regardless of hours on it. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, get over it, they're cheap. Shifter adjustments are normal, use LockTite on the screw that connects the shift rod.

Ethanol fuels will eat up all your fuel lines and rubber carb parts, so use real gas or possably an additive. In short, if your fuel lines are pre-ethanol days, they'll break down. This is a big problem with the landscaping guys, so many places are selling real gas, which costs more, but you don't have to pull apart all your mowers, weed wackers, chainsaws, etc. just to address the ethanol. Examine the fuel in the carb bowl or just dump some from the bulb end of the fuel line. If you see little black specs, your lines are being eaten by ethanol. Personally, I just replace lines on older motor purchases, ditto on plug and other "consumables". This way you know what you have and are starting with a level playing field.

 

[LP]

Should I apply any kind of goo where I put my cockpit sole down on my floor/frames? I was going to do dry, but thought a layer of "stuff" from a tube might protection from vibration and abrasion over a dry joint. As, my design stands right now, the soles are removable through a multitude of countersunk, washered, stainless steel screws.

 

[troy2000]

Your engine sounds easy enough to sort out. Pull the plugs, if worn replace them, if not clean and reinstall. Impellers are consumable items, just like an oil filter. Replace once a year, regardless of hours on it. Yeah, it's a pain in the butt, get over it, they're cheap. Shifter adjustments are normal, use LockTite on the screw that connects the shift rod.

Ethanol fuels will eat up all your fuel lines and rubber carb parts, so use real gas or possably an additive. In short, if your fuel lines are pre-ethanol days, they'll break down. This is a big problem with the landscaping guys, so many places are selling real gas, which costs more, but you don't have to pull apart all your mowers, weed wackers, chainsaws, etc. just to address the ethanol. Examine the fuel in the carb bowl or just dump some from the bulb end of the fuel line. If you see little black specs, your lines are being eaten by ethanol. Personally, I just replace lines on older motor purchases, ditto on plug and other "consumables". This way you know what you have and are starting with a level playing field.

Amen. I let my brand new Troybilt lawn tractor set for a few months, and the ethanol gas ate everything that wasn't solid metal. Took me a couple of days to clean up the mess and unclog everything..... that was only about four years ago, so don't count being safe because you don't have 'old' lines, seals, etc.

 

[troy2000]

Should I apply any kind of goo where I put my cockpit sole down on my floor/frames? I was going to do dry, but thought a layer of "stuff" from a tube might protection from vibration and abrasion over a dry joint. As, my design stands right now, the soles are removable through a multitude of countersunk, washered, stainless steel screws.

I'd say the rule of thumb is to never have dry joints. They won't stay dry.... what you use doesn't need to be adhesive, but it should fill the joint and keep moisture out. Permanent flexibility is good, when deciding what to buy.

 

[PAR]

With removable floor boards, the joints should be dry. You can protect the joints with a smear of polyurethane. The trick is to get an even smear and an old cassette case door works good for this. Cut the case with a notch so it'll ride the supports or stringers along the edge, with a 1/16" gap above the stringer. apply a generous bead of goo, and use the cassette case door as a trowel, to smear the goo in a uniform height gasket. It's going to be a mess, so tape things off. Let the goo cure for a week (or longer), then put your floor boards back in. I use a similar trick for window gaskets, sometimes making a 90 degree smearing tool so I can do the whole flange in one shot. Practice on a some scraps first, as it takes a steady hand, but the results will look like a factory made gasket, with crisp edges and a uniformly thick layer of cured goo. The goo is shown in red below. The notched "window" permits the even smear, just try to hold it at the same angle the full length of the smear.

A boat builder is a problem solver more then anything else.

 

[LP]

Very nice. I'm trying to decide if I want to invest the time and effort. At the aircraft company, we would apply parting agent to access panels and bed them in sealant. When the sealer cure, we would pull the panel, clean up the excess and have a form fitting gasket as a result. I'm trying to recall if we used washers as spacers to control thickness. It might have depended on the installation. My other thought would be to use some thin weather stripping. Self-adhesive stuff. Peel the back, stick it on, no muss, no fuss. I am considering the same under my windshield frame.