Wrangling with the devil of a motor problem leads
Tom along the path to enlightenment
ILLUSTRATION CLAUDIA MYATT
ENGINE TROUBLE
TOM CUNLIFFE
W
orking with traditional boats can be
a journey from hope to despair and
back again. You can’t beat rigging
for satisfaction. Galvanised wire,
three-strand splices, seizings, palm-and-needle
whippings, tackles rove to advantage or disadvantage
- they cheer me up no end. Painting a wooden boat
isn’t my favourite afternoon out, but I’ve come to
terms with it. And nearer to the bottom of life’s barrel,
there’s not a lot of fun in chopping out rot. But it’s
engines that can really remove my will to live.
I like machines. I maintain my own 70-year-old car.
The pleasure is immense as the last nut on the gearbox is torqued
into place at nine o’clock on a winter’s evening. Throw in my pal
bringing tea out to the shed door, and us chatting into the night
as the steam drifts up towards Polaris, and the result is pure
happiness. Yet on boats it somehow seems different. As a sailor
grovelling in the depths of an impossible hole to reach a hexagon
burred beyond hope years ago by Captain Grauncher, I envy
owners of vintage motor craft still powered by their original
units. Individual, sometimes quirky, and often of unexpected
beauty, these motors are generally accessibly installed and, by
now, restored and maintained as they deserve. Sailing boats
with engines shoehorned in long before boats were built around
reliable modern diesels tell a different story.
A case in point was the Volvo Penta MD3B in my Colin Archer
pilot cutter in the 1970s. This unit had plenty of power for the
tonnage and, on paper, should have been a source of continuing
satisfaction, but it suffered from villainies not of its own making
that dated from the first year I had it. One morning I turned
the key, full of confidence as usual. It fired up but the exhaust
didn’t sound right, so I peered over the elegantly pointed stern.
No water. The strainer was clear, so I shut the seacock and
disconnected its hose. A quick flick of the valve saw the river
pouring into the bilge. The Volvo was raw-water cooled, so
no blockage there. Next up was an examination of the impeller
in the Jabsco-type pump. Reaching this was not difficult, but
the expected result of mangled rubber was denied me. The
vanes were all in perfect condition, so back it went.
Up in the cockpit scratching my head, I was running out of
ideas when the elderly yard foreman shambled by. Recognising
the yacht owner’s well-known body language
of despair, he asked about the problem.
“Sounds like you’ve got an airlock, boy,”
he said, sucking at his pipe. “Find the highest
union of any cooling hose and crack it open.
Ten to one it’ll splutter a bit, then water will
come gushing out. Stuff it all together, dry things
up and off you jolly well go.”
As luck had it, a plastic pipe with an easy jubilee clip
was in plain view near the rocker box, so, after plucking up
courage, I flashed up the engine and set to with my big yellow
screwdriver. What followed was exactly as advertised. A few
seconds of air and water spurting in varied proportions were
followed by the cooling flow. I offered the hose up, it went on
after a struggle against the pressure, I tightened the clip and
Fanny, as the foreman would have said, was my aunt.
Over the months, the airlock made a number of appearances
and was now summarily dealt with according to instructions.
It was towards the end of the season when I noticed that, like
so many miraculous cures, this one came with some nasty side
effects. First, the alternator packed up.
At this point I should probably admit that despite my love
of various old cars and a long series of motorcycles, I am not
a natural mechanic. I grew up in a household where even “plugs
and points” were a mystery left to the garage, but at sea there
is no AA and needs must as the Devil drives. A “can-do” attitude
is a prime requirement for any seaman, so, armed with this and
a willingness to listen to my betters, I have learned on the job.
Removal of the alternator involved bleeding knuckles and
much cursing, but once it lay in my hands, inspection revealed
a good deal of corrosion in the terminals and an ominous rusting
of the ferrous part of the casing. The immediate problem seemed
to be the field-wire spade, which fell off in my hand. I cleaned up
the wire, crimped on a new spade, reassembled and off we went
again, but this time success was even shorter-lived.
The next day, when I turned the ever-trustworthy Swedish key,
instead of the welcome whirring and roar of power, I was met
with a dull click. My neighbour showed me how to use a
multimeter to check the voltage. I bought one for good measure,
poked in the probes with pride, and read off “12.7’. No problem
there, so the starter motor had to come off. Now my troubles