Your best ever DIY maintenance idea

sum escape said:

Shop vac to get genset impeller parts out of heat exchanger. Pull the "output" hose off the water pump, duct tape your shop vac to the hose, make sure the exhaust "flap" is open (if you have one), turn on the vac and count the pieces you get to match how many are missing from the impeller. Works well on my Onan.

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Does it not suck hard enough to be concerned with the water laying in the muffler coming back into the Manifold?

N4712 said:

Is pumice that gritty stuff?

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Yes.

bayview said:

........ I have not had good luck with the do it inside a baggie process. If the filter is full, oil comes out and its like grabbing a greased pig. ........

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Neither have I. I gave up and bought some disposable aluminum baking pans. There's a place under the horizontally mounted (what were they thinking?) oil filter where I can place the pan and catch the oil that leaks out.

bayview said:

Punching a hole in big diesel lube oil filters to drain them before removal. No more dirty oil spills

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Absolutely. I was told this trick by one of the mechanics at our diesel shop. A particularly good tip for FL120 owners with the stock upside down oil filter mount.

I run the engine until the oil filter is warm to hott-ish to the touch, shut down, punch a couple of holes in the top (bottom) of the oil filter, then proceed to pull the oil out of the engine sump. By the time I've finished that, the oil filter is virtually empty. Wrap a rag around the base, unscrew the filter and drop it in a small trash bag and that's that. No spill, no mess.

eseyoung said:

Does it not suck hard enough to be concerned with the water laying in the muffler coming back into the Manifold?

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Not a lot of water comes out, it sort of "spits" water and bits of the impeller. So I personally have not had an issue with annual impeller changes using this procedure.

I used to always do the hole in the filter trick till one time the replacement had bad threads.

So now sitting on my garage floor with no way to the parts store......

I use bags....for many not all applications and with a large , heavy duty bag I have no issues.

That would be a problem, no question. However, with two engines and always a spair pair of oil filters on board, it's not a problem we'd be likely to encounter.

Some great tips just like I was hoping for due to all of the experience on this board.
I really like the dipstick idea and am learning a lot from other posts.

When I got my first boat that was big enough to overnight on (27 foot Searay) I rented my first marina slip. Lucky for me that in the slip next to me was a mechanical engineer living on his boat while working on a project for a nearby DuPont plant. Lucky because he was always happy to help when I was doing stuff on my boat. He was full of great tips and practical advice which I was soaking up like a sponge. I credit him with keeping me from giving up on boating because I couldn't afford to pay a shop for maintenance or repairs.

Thanks to everyone who has responded so far. Keep those ideas coming ��

psneeld said:

I used to always do the hole in the filter trick till one time the replacement had bad threads.

So now sitting on my garage floor with no way to the parts store......
.

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Yep, that could be a problem. And I got hold of a Racor for my boat with bad threads once.

Speaking of shopvacs, I use a "Buckethead" from Home Depot for about $20. Its a vac head that fits on a std 5 or 3 gal bucket. If you are short on room on board, pop the head off, empty the contents and store the head. Then you can use the bucket for something else.

High Wire said:

Speaking of shopvacs, I use a "Buckethead" from Home Depot for about $20. Its a vac head that fits on a std 5 or 3 gal bucket. If you are short on room on board, pop the head off, empty the contents and store the head. Then you can use the bucket for something else.

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I have 2. One older one I keep set up for liquids. The other I have in the engine room with a short exhaust hose that reaches the saloon door and a 25 foot hose that comes up and stores in the saloon door step that can reach the whole interior of the boat. I leave it turned on and just pull out the hose, plug it in and I have a powerful, inexpensive built in vac system.

I've also used oxyclean in a bucket to clean gummy electric cords. Soak for a few hours and wipe off. Keep the ends out of the bucket.

A ice maker type valve with a short piece of tubing to drain my Simms injection pump on the FL 120. Also the capacity of the pump is 14oz. No need to remove the overflow bolt.

Great thread. I'm a DIY'er to the max. I dive the boat myself and got tired of going through all the motions of getting into the cold water just to find out all's well with the zincs and such. Now I just lower a GoPro camera attached to a pole and video record the bottom. The image is then downloaded to my laptop and I can see if I need to get wet or leave it be till next month.

SteveH

If you don't have a ring compressor to install impellers you can use a plastic zip type cable tie, just orient the impeller fins and tighten the tie close to one end of the impeller start it into the housing and slide the zip tie back as the impeller slides into the pump.

Repair holes, damage, on molded-in deck texture. Lightly grease a section of undamaged textured deck. Apply silicone sealant to a piece of cardboard (not corrigated) larger than the damaged area. Press this into the greased area. Remove when cured. Use this mold, also greased, keyed into surrounding area, to texture the repair area. Keep it for future use.

Steve said:

If you don't have a ring compressor to install impellers you can use a plastic zip type cable tie, just orient the impeller fins and tighten the tie close to one end of the impeller start it into the housing and slide the zip tie back as the impeller slides into the pump.

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or use a hose clamp..
HOLLYWOOD

Brooksie said:

Repair holes, damage, on molded-in deck texture. Lightly grease a section of undamaged textured deck. Apply silicone sealant to a piece of cardboard (not corrigated) larger than the damaged area. Press this into the greased area. Remove when cured. Use this mold, also greased, keyed into surrounding area, to texture the repair area. Keep it for future use.

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Great idea


1983 Present 42 Sundeck
Twin Lehman 135's

Here is one I have used to save:
Use valve grinding compound on screws, bolts, nuts that are rusted or worn to prevent slipping, rounding off of the part. Valve grinding compound is available at most parts stores. A small tube lasts for years and saves many Phillips screws that the driver slips on. Just a dab on the tip is all you need to increase the friction.
I place an inline squeeze bulb in the fuel lines to my Racors to fill to the brim after filter change.
The tips you have shared are very good Thanks for all!

I know there are different opinions about metal polish and stainless but here goes...
I wipe all inside and outside stainless with NEVR DULL as my last step in winterizing. I do not wipe it off until spring commissioning leaving a light film on the surfaces. It seems to protect the stainless over the winter and all I have to do in the spring is polish it off and I have sparkling stainless.

hollywood8118 said:

or use a hose clamp..
HOLLYWOOD

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I think hose clamps and zip ties work up to a certain size, but not beyond. I used zip ties for a couple of years and the problem was that if the tie was close enough to the edge of the impeller to keep the fins compressed enough to fit, the pressure from the uncompressed fins on the other side tended to push the tie off the impeller, or push the impeller back out of the pump body before it's completely installed. If I placed the tie more towards the center so it wouldn't pop off, the parts of the fins hanging out beyond the tie would be too wide to fit the pump body.

Now we are talking about a pretty big impeller here, and this is much easier with smaller ones. The QSC has an impeller that 3-4" long and about 3" in diameter. Extraction is with a 7/8" bolt threaded through the center of the impeller. Even with the compressor, I found I still had to remove the pumps and do the work on a bench, and it was still a wrestling match.

The nice thing about the cuff-style ring compressor is that it completely encompasses the whole impeller and compresses the whole thing with no parts hanging out causing it to want to pop out.

I'm quite happy the new boat is dry exhaust, and the wing and genset have small impellers so I won't have to deal with this any more.

I thought of another "tool" that others might find useful. It's actually a two part tool.

I found winterizing my AC, generator, and raw water washdown we difficult. So I made strainer caps with how fittings. Just bought replacement caps in the correct sizes (I needed two different sizes), drilled and tapped the center of the cap, and installed a hose bib fitting. To winterize I just put on the special cap and a hose to draw in non-tox.

The second part is that the AC and wash down pumps have no draw and need to be naturally flooded/primed to move any water or non-tox. So I took a 5 gal pail and installed a fitting and ball valve at the bottom. I used a $5 plastic discharge fitting meant for a small boat bilge pump. The mushroom side is inside the bucket and the threaded part and retaining ring on the outside. A little 5200 and the whole thing will seal up real well. Then fit a ball valve to the threaded end of the thruhull, plus another hose fitting, and you are good to go. Now I just fill the bucket with non-tox and locate it above the strainer and/or pump. Gravity primes the pump and it draws the pink in with no trouble. Combined these made winterizing much easier, and can also be used to circulate barnicle buster to clean scale out of systems, and I use it for servicing the water maker as well (cleaning in between, of course).

Thanks for the great tips!

I got tired of messing around with the large buckets when I changed my oil so I started looking for a better solution.

I found it at the brewery restaurant right at the top of our docks. Restaurants get their cooking oil in these cardboard containers. They're perfect for putting the old oil in....they have a built in handle at the top, they're reusable, they store nicely because they're square, and they're easy to handle. I asked the restaurant to save me several (they just throw them out when empty) and have them stored in my garage.

A simple bucket for bringing water from overboard is at every feed store.

The black pails will not mar the vessel side and the smaller size makes them easier to lift.

Not Boat , so pretty cheap to.

They DO NOT FLOAT , so a long cord with a float on the end , or a snap shackel to a life line might help.

Battery water system (I know it's been mentioned) works great and allows the 8 battery (6V golf cart) bank to be topped off in 5 min, 100 bucks +-.

Battery Watering Systems, Marine Dock Products, Solar Dock Lights

I added a commercial 6 inch exhaust fan to run constantly at the dock (120 volt) to ventilate the boat, it's below deck in the AC plenum and pulls air from all compartments. This allows me to change the air in the boat every 3 or 4 mins (425 cfm) and prevents odors, mildew and saves the AC units as they are now off. This works great.



4 6 8 10 12 Inline Fan Duct Exhaust Blower Vent inch Hydroponics Air Cooling Can | eBay

That's a great find Scott. I'm gonna look at setting one up.


1983 Present 42 Sundeck
Twin Lehman 135's

Forkliftt said:

That's a great find Scott. I'm gonna look at setting one up.


1983 Present 42 Sundeck
Twin Lehman 135's

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I got the idea from here..

http://cleanairflo.com/specifications/caf-100x-specifications/

But I'm to cheap for that kind of cost.

I tried all the method posted trying to keep oil from getting into the bilge. My fix was an off the engine oil filter kit that is used a lot by off road 4 wheelers and those re-powering older cars/trucks. I ordered mine from a Jegs catalog but I think most auto parts stores can order them. You need to take in an old filter so they can match up the gasket seating area and thread size. the kits come with the adapter plate, filter receiver and hoses. I added the backing board. The best thing about changing the filter now is no oil spillage, I can use a larger filter and I can prefill the filter with oil.
Bill

HiDHo said:

The best thing about changing the filter now is no oil spillage, I can use a larger filter and I can prefill the filter with oil.
Bill

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Does the larger filter extend your oil change interval? If so, by how much?