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I had not even heard of these until a few weeks ago. I was looking to add a solar panel and came across the concept. Basically, a solar photo cell that collects on both sides isn't that difficult to make, but it has had little practical application (the Soviets first used them in outer space)...

I thought I would post this as a separate thread instead of occasionally commenting in other stabilization threads. As with anchors, one’s choice of stabilization is based on the boat’s size, usage, location, etc., as well as the crew’s tolerance and the captain’s wallet. One of the things...

The owner's manual for the Ford Lehman has a tiny picture of the injector pump with an arrow to the idle adjustment. It says to loosen the lock nut to adjust the idle screw. On the top of my injection pump is a lock nut on a screw but it has a wire securing it. In the picture, it is on the...

In the past, I took a clam shovel and dug both inside and outside of Vancouver Island. A BC fishing license includes a shellfish license, and I always paid more attention to squirts at low tide than to which of the thousand "sub areas" I was harvesting in. I just checked the official BC rules...

My thru-hull transducer is dead. It is an older Airmar bronze with a fairing and is connected to a Garmin GPSmap. That connection requires a Garmin specific interface. Speed through water and temperature had never worked and the depth was only reliable under 35', spotty up to 85' unless going...

I'm trying to troubleshoot why my overtemp idiot buzzer isn't working. Best I can tell from my investigation to date is that the ignition circuit breaker energizes the oil pressure buzzer (normally closed and open with pressure to stop the buzzer) and the overtemp buzzer (normally open but...

Our TT has the common dinette table that can be lowered to make a double berth. Lowering is fairly simple. Just loosen the jam screw handles on each post and the table top drops into position. But raising it back up is much more complicated. The outer edge of the table is easy to get a grip...

I noticed that I have a scum stripe in my bilge in line with the drip from my stuffing box. The wood underneath the engine room decking (removed for the picture) had been soaked with salt spray over the years, as apparently was the surrounding area. The shaft coupling was just wire brushed and...

There appear to be two heat sensors on the Lehman underneath the coolant tank, one on each side of the thermostat (removed in the picture). The one one the right goes to the gauges and measures temp. I assume that the one on the left is a high temp warning? The multimeter didn't show any...

Our Weaver davits can be a bit of a hassle, especially for my wife, who is usually in charge of operating one of them. For those familiar, a catch is slid back while the bail on the dinghy is raised off of the hook on the swim step. It kind of turns into a "pat your head, rub your tummy"...

I wanted to examine my damper plate after getting a little saltwater in the flywheel casing (another thread). My 80 hp Lehman has front motor mounts on the block and rear mounts via cast iron "swan neck" arms on the Velvet Drive transmission (picture below). I'm not sure if this setup is used...

Went to start up yesterday and nothing. After lifting the engine hatch, I could tell it wasn't quite nothing. The starter would spin. I tried the shade tree mechanic "fix" of tapping the solenoid with a hammer. That seemed to make it "click" louder when the start button was pushed, but still...

I seem to have temporarily solved my Garmin MFD not picking up my GPS position by installing a Vesper AIS transponder connected with NMEA 2000. the Vesper instantly picks up satellites. I'll work out why the Garmin internal GPS isn't receiving later. What is kind of weird is that the Garmin...

These screens fit the original white plastic opening portholes on my 1981 Taiwanese trawler. Approx 5 by 11.75 inches. Probably fit a lot of similar boats of the era. Pay shipping and they are yours.

I thought I'd post first before trying to call Garmin. It might be something others have faced. When I purchased two years ago, the newly installed Garmin 942sx would pick up enough satellites to lock into position in a minute (even when under the metal roof of my covered moorage). About one...

Installing fire extinguisher ports has been on my project list for awhile. They aren't really expensive ($20-30), but I've seen some iffy reviews, including that some of the larger Halotron nozzles don't fit through and that some are one-time "break the glass" type of fittings. So I thought...

There were a few electrical things that were removed/disconnected when I bought (2 years ago) that I slowly got around to fixing, usually by completely removing the old wiring. One of the last things on my list is a sender unit on my Velvet Drive tranny. The sender is under the blue crimp-on...

After deciding to add a pure sine wave inverter large enough for my induction stove and a "dorm room" size 120V fridge, I came across a relatively recent model of 12V fridge by GE. Although not as cheap as the little dorm fridges, the GE was still fairly cheap. Prices were all over the place...

My house batteries are in two banks, each with an ANL 250 amp fuse right by the post. The prior owner left a tool box with lots of electrical stuff, but no 250A replacement fuses. Looking on Amazon, prices are all over the place for these fuses. Here is a single 250A fuse for $38. Here is a...

I'm getting ready to work on my packing gland. I've never done this boat, it has required tightening more often, and the plunger looks to be close the as far as it can go. So, sort of routine maintenance. I guess the old packing slowly wears away, otherwise there would be no reason for...

This project started out as the alternator hack using a turnbuckle as in other threads. While replacing the alternator arm with the turnbuckle, I noticed that my original arm was different than some. Some Lehmans have a curved arm that attaches to the lower bolt on the water pump and the...

I started removing some of the propane cooking appliances right after purchasing. There was a stainless BBQ hanging on a flying bridge stantion. It had a hose (removable) that threaded down to the propane tank on the back deck. My wife bought a BBQ at the house. It hasn't been out of a...

My Garmin had more trouble than usual getting GPS sattelites last time out. I'm in covered (metal) moorage, so I often don't see Lat Lon until minutes after leaving the marina. But last time out, it was more than half an hour and then I lost coverage several times for +20 minutes at a time...

A current thread is discussing mixing start and house batteries, but I don't think it is dealing with an issue that I've been wondering about. I understand that LA start batteries have more plate surface and can put out a lot of juice. House batteries (deep cycle) have thicker plates and are...

I've had some concerns with how close my compass is to my Garmin EchoMap MFD. It was installed by a local boat yard and I thought maybe they had determined that the screen doesn't have much effect on a nearby compass. Yesterday, I was setting up the Garmin WiFi to work on a laptop to be used...