Yanmar-san!

It was a family day today so I could spend only few hours in the evening for working on Meritaten.

First thing I did was to put back the sprayhood. Since I still cannot locate leaks on cabin back-walls I want to protect them from rain with sprayhood. Besides - it gives me some privacy in busy boatyard.

Next I connected batteries to the engine circuit and “domestic” circuit. Bingo! The electricity is back - after I connected all wires around the engine. Indeed, Yanmar-san is an integral part of my boat - it is a ground plane for electrical wiring.

I’ve left my temporary bilge pump solution in place since today I waned to focus on engine only. Later I will re-instal my standard bilge pump.
Jim came by to check how I am going - he was already sailing Kaika today. That motivated me even more to finish this job and move on into sailing season.

The next thing was to solve the collision between my new cockpit structure and engine generator: mounting screw could not be inserted due to too wide cockpit beam. Some drilling and filing was needed and finally the 20cm long screw could be driven home.

After tensioning grooved belt I noticed that there is too little clearance between the beam and generator wheel. Some more filing of oak and the problem was solved. Thanks god my boat is not made of steel…

I also changed a fuse for engine control circuit: there was a 8A glass pipe fuse sitting in rather fragile housing. I changed it to standard car-type flat 7.5A fuse in water-proof rubber housing.

Last hose was connected - for sea-water inlet into water pump - and I could open the sea cock. To my dismay I instantly saw water droplets coming from sea-water pump. Dammit! One more leak to fix - but I think I can leave it until I sail to home harbour. I don’t want to mess with that here, prolonging my stay in the slip.

After filling fresh-water system with glycol/water mixture, adjusting gearbox controls and checking all hoses I moved on to the last step: fuel lines bleeding.

If one wants to find information how to do it on Yanmar 1GM10 then trying to find it in the engine manual is fruitless. This book was apparently written by law department - lot’s of useless warnings and disclaimers and very little useful information. Drawings are few and bad. It surely was not written by any engineer.
I followed a procedure found on some other blog. It’s easy: there are just 3 places where one needs to bleed the circuit: fuel filter, fuel pump and injector. Takes about 5 minutes.

Once done I could finally crank the engine. Add it started instantly!

What a joy! I can finally leave the slip!

I checked the sea-water pump. It leaks quite substantially. It must be a gasket on the axis, I should have changed it when I was messing with the propeller.

Anyway - I can use the engine as it is now, just need to be sure that sea cock is closed after motoring and sea-water is wiped from oil pipe running below. This pipe rusted last year causing engine spit all oil. Now it is changed to copper pipe, painted for security.
I’ll see to it after I sail home.

What is left now is to instal new mainsail track and anchor it to the boat. Then we can rig her and start preparations for sailing!