October 20, 2007
Ohh it was a nice weekend. We started the morning by seeing Vic Copeland on Oconee off on his BIG adventure. Vic has finally gone cruising. Left this morning (at 7:05 am!! not on island time yet), hopes to be back in the spring of 2008. Now that's a plan.
We had chores planned for the weekend. I started the morning by investigating the battery chargers. They just don't seem to be fully charging the batteries. I have a pair of ProMariner ProTech 4s -- model 1240. They start off charging fine but then after a few hours they just float the batteries at around 12.50 volts or about a 70% charge. I followed the troubleshooting section and the batteries passed 2 of 3 steps but failed the float step. Hard to believe 2 identical battery chargers would have the same fault but they do... Now the troubleshooting guide had a great guidance in it. If the batteries fail the test -- replace an internal fuse -- I'm paraphrasing now -- if the fuse is fine then the circuit board is defective and we don't repair them. Contact customer service for geat deal on a new charger... Ohhh boy -- gosh they are just $380 chargers EACH!!
Well onto the fresh water problem -- A G A I N. The Forward tank had worked just fine until empty but the Aft tank would not work acceptably. When the pump came on it would lose the prime. If you let it run for a minute or two with the spigot open it finally pump up.
I pumped the tank out and then Blew air by mouth into the hose until the air flowed freely. I partially filled the tank and it worked fine. I filled both tanks and they both worked ok -- go figure. Nothing positively identified or fixed so -- it'll be back.
Ohh my favorte reading fluorescent lamp would not work last night -- Main Salon Port side near forward bulkehead. I took the cover off to troubleshoot -- hmmm looking for some bare connections to test for power I noticed a silver cylinder near the on off switch. Gosh (not the word actually used) that is aluminum foil and it looks like the imprint of a fuse under it -- nooo can't be!! Sure enough was!! See picture.
Well thank you previous owner. You just made the next component down the line the new fuse and it is NOT replaceable. Grrrr.
The last job of the day was to properly replace a broken vent screw in the fuel filter housing for the generator. This is a Racor 220 filter that originally came with a plastic vent screw. Well the previous owner had overtightened it and broken the head off of the screw. Then it looks like some clear glue had been poured over it to seal it. Well it didn't seal too well and that is why the generator needs to be bled so often. I drilled a small hole in the plastic screw shank and tried and "Easy out". The material was too soft and it just bit in deeper. I then drove a screw driver blade in it and just made it wider. I then picked off the glue and the remains of an O-ring and drove an even wider screw driver blade into it and that allowed me to unscrew it. I replaced with a new proper fitting metal screw from Racor and it is working fine now.
That was enough for one day. Ity was Heinekin 30 and time to sit back and enjoy a few beers and humice and visit with the Thompson's.
All in all a pretty productive day but now a week to sit with the catalogs to decide what to do about the battery chargers and fluorescent lamp fixture or maybe fixtures -- the other 3 fluorescent lamps seem finicky in their operation. They turn off by themselves and you have to "rap" them to make them come back on. I think I'll just bite the bullet and replace all 4.
