Saturday, July 26, 2008

Success on the water.

I believe when I last posted, I still needed a trim solenoid, to change the lower unit oil, and to mount the control box. Well, as the title suggests, that has all be done now and the boat has seen water. Of course, it wasn't all smooth sailing...

First of all the solenoid. I found one at Oreilly's Auto Parts for $17, unfortunately I had lost one of the post nuts along the way and couldn't find a proper replacement. I found some machine screw nuts, and decided to try just jamming it in place. After all, I didn't need to actually ever get it back off. It was a spliced wire after all, I could just cut it again if needed. I experimented on the old solenoid first, and it work without any real issues after the initial cross threading. But after only a couple turns on the new solenoid...CRACK!!!...there goes the new casing. $17 worth of stupid right there.

So at this point, I decide to do what I should have done int he first place. The old Mariner also had a 3 wire system, just with two separate solenoids. It wasn't that hard to figure out the wiring, so after about 30 minutes I had a working trim system. Wish I would have just done that to begin...oh well better a $17 mistake than $70...

Next came the lower unit fluid. I was a little concerned about this because I didn't quite remember the condition of the lower unit after all this time. I knew my Dad had the seals replaced 10 or so years ago, but wasn't sure of anything else. I guess technically, I should have started worrying about 7 winters ago, but anyway.... Fortunately, I unscrewed the plug and nice black oil came out...no water...no milk... So it full of fresh oil now...

Lastly, the control box. A couple of screw later and it was done. Still need to be moved up a little as the lever hits the bimini track going into reverse. Don't need much throttle in reverse most of the time, but I don't want to not have it there if I ever do need it to get out of trouble...

So, now that the three remaining tasks were done, I could hit the water. Finally got around to registering it and took it to the lake Friday at lunch. Only made one quick loop around the lake, but was pleasantly surprised by the performance... It cranked up fairly nicely. I checked it was watering out the exhaust relief ports as I idled through the No Wake zone. It came up on plane fairly quickly...just a touch of prop ventilation as it's planing. That and the fact I'm getting no bow rise makes me think I should try to lower the motor a hole, but I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble or not. It went 35mph(gps) at 5200 rpm. So it's close enough to call good... I have a couple of kinks to work out...little hard turning one direction at speed and gets hung on something turned all the way one direction...but other than that, it's in good shape.

At this point, it time to rub and polish and replace carpet and seats. Then, after getting a couple of trolling motor batts, I'll be ready to actually fish out of the thing...or sell it.

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