Day 418 First on keel Engine start/ wood odds & ends
The day has finally arrived to try starting the engine. All of the lines, sensors, controls, and hoses are connected up, water in the radiator and pre-lube online. Keep in mind that this engine has been sitting for 5 years, first outside, then through the whole construction of the decks and topsides. We saw it running in the garage where we bought it but that's as far as it went.

Our anxiety about the whole "engine thing" has been a bit high.
Upon turning the key, a click was heard but no starty-starty. After checking the wiring, Gena concluded the starter she had pulled off of the other engine because it looked new, was no good!! It just jammed up as soon as power was applied so obviously something is very "not right" with it.

She promptly ripped it out and brought up the original starter, then installed it. She turned the key to see if it would turn the engine over, as all kinds of nightmares were going through our minds about then i.e. seized engine, broken tooth etc.

Boom! It started immediately! Inside the engine compartment it was very noisy, but once the hatches closed the sound was substantially muffled down to where one can talk without yelling. After insulation is on the hatches, the sound will be further reduced.

  
Outside, you can't even hear it at all, which is very good. Guess the muffler is doing it's job.

The second time she started I got some video. We left it running for some time to check the hull cooling water flow. Under the hull one can feel the warm water heating the metal some, but only for a few feet. Looks like this cooling system might actually work. Only time ( and a full load for hours on end in the water ) will tell for sure.

It a huge worry lifted that the engine appears ok. There was no nasty puff of black smoke, and it seems well balanced etc. Gena kicked in the transmission for only a second or two and all seems fine there too!
We are trying to figure out how would be the best way to calibrate the tachometer. It's a VDO electronic type that can run off of the alternator. I would guess it picks up the waveform (ripple) that rises and falls each time the stator goes by another field. Problem is, we don't know how many there are in the alternator. This and the ratio of pulleys can be used to determine the pulse to engine turns ratio which in turn can be (somehow) entered into the tachometer. I'll be back with that report...

I passed my time today doing some little jobs that have been pestering the back of my mind for weeks now. One being the little spice rack in the galley, which also doubles as a support. I used gutter guard screen and painted it up pretty to match the wood.

It's kinda basic, but will serve the purpose.
Next I put together the little aluminum vent door so warm air from the engine room can be re-circulated into the pilot house at will. The pictures pretty much explain how it all works.
 The little lifter slider thing seems to do it's job, but because it's "backwards" from the way it was intended to be used, I must find a little knob to bolt to the end. It's a little hard on the old fingers.
 Next I installed the power seat control out of the car. After figuring out the wiring for it, it wasn't too bad. I put a little LED in behind the Chrysler symbol so it could be found in the dark....well  also because it looks cool! Now the seat goes up/down/tilt/fwd/back. I almost killed the poor test battery playing with it! Back and forth, up and down. Yee hawww!

A power seat on a sailboat adds something indescribable. 

The little panel on the vertical is for the remote searchlight at the bow.
 Last but not least, I cleaned up and coated the pilothouse window center supports after having sat in a closet for so long. Now the ceiling can go back in (yay!)

Drilling for the bolts wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. These are to stop the front window from flexing in too much if hit dead on by a wave. They are 2x2" solid oak so should hold ok.

On top of both is a strip of closed cell foam so the window doesn't tap against it.
Once the engine had heated up, Gena went to shut it off for the third time and it wouldn't stop. It turns out the stop solenoid is burned up. We're not sure if we did this, or it was already well done before we even transferred it from the other engine below. That other engine is starting to look like it was a bad deal. It was expensive to ship here, and hasn't presented anything that has more than one moving part that works! Now I'm wondering about the injectors, are they going to be any good? Who knows, perhaps the guy we bought it off of (eBay) just collected all of the toasted parts from around the garage and attached them to this block to sell it to us. I hope not!

After doing a little research we found that this is a common problem with this particular stop solenoid. It works fine when cold, but when heated up by the engine it jams. Great! Oh well,  there are other solutions to this problem including a manual "choke-like" stop lever. It just is a shame that the thing doesn't work right.

Also, we have noticed there is no oil pressure, according to the gauge. There must be oil pressure or the thing would have seized up by now! The only thing we can think of is either the sensor we bought isn't working, or the engine manuals' instructions on which "hole" the sensor should be in is wrong. I'll be updating on that as soon as we know.

Day 418:
10 hours: Finished hooking up engine, started it, runs fine. Made spice rack, installed window supports, installed vent door


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