June 10, 2015 engine decisions

We had a slow start this morning.  Should have cut off the adult beverages sooner last night.  We moved the boat back into the boatyard, but the engine had to cool before they could work on it. 

We weren’t picking up their wifi at the boat today.  So I packed up the laptop and a lawn chair and went up by their office to spend time on the computer.  While I was there, we had a heavy rain shower with lightning.  So they waited until early afternoon to start working on our boat.

Dexter put in the new fuel injector, but we still weren’t getting the RPM’s that we should.  He checked with Dennis, the main engine mechanic and came back.  He tested some things further.  The compression was good.  So that is a good sign that there aren’t cracks or major damage.  Then he checked the fuel injector pump.  He figured that the injector pump wasn’t getting fuel to the #2 piston.  So he replaced our fuel injector, because that wasn’t the problem.  And they said they would keep the new one and not charge us, unless we wanted it as a spare, which we didn’t. 

fuel injector that was actually good and replaced

it was nice to watch someone else work on the boat, even tho we were paying him

Fuel inflector pumps aren’t worked on in a boatyard.  They can remove it and send it to the states to be rebuilt or for a new one.  OR we can run the motor as it is and deal with it back in the states.  Evidently, we’ve been running the motor like this for a long time.  So we elected to make that decision in the states.  Especially because it could take 3 weeks to be done here and our time here is getting short. 

We settled our bill and took off for Elbow Cay.  They really apologized for not being able to fix our problem.  But we were fine.  We fixed the original problem of the lift pump.  And we will monitor our oil level to be sure that problem doesn’t return from a different source.  And they figured out why our engine isn’t running at the normal level.  I can relate it to dentistry.  You start with a cavity, place a filling, then the tooth is weak and still bothers the patient, so you place a crown.  Then it’s too much for the nerve to handle, it dies, and you do a root canal.  You start with the simple solution and sometimes it needs more attention.  Our only regret was waiting for that part for a week and it wasn’t needed.  I don’t know if further tests could have been done at the beginning.  They still charged us labor and called it “trouble shooting”.  Which helped us pinpoint the problem, so that was fair.

I told Dave last night that if I wasn’t writing this blog, would I have as much interest?  Or would I just blow it off and say “you deal with it”?  I really am learning a lot about engines and the boat in general because of this blog.  And a friend commented to me that she has learned so much reading my blog. 

What I found strange was when Cheryl came to visit.  I would start to tell her a story about something that happened.  But then I would stop myself and say “oh, you probably read about it in my blog”.  But she was kind or polite enough to say “yah, but I want to hear you tell about it anyway.”  True friend.