A few updates. It is going slow as I am also reworking a classic 1980's Sisu 26, so my time is split. Not such a bad thing as the timing / serpentine belts were backordered and just came in the 1st week of May.
Cleaning was days and days and days. Just filthy.
Compost toilet is in. I have used these for years in my Canadian cottages and they work well. Best of all, they don't stink like a typical marine head / holding tank. Yes, a little more effort on occasion but longer intervals between servicing. Since the boat had no Wallas stove in it, the vent through hull became a nice short run simple replacement vent for the compost toilet. I will pick up the holding tank space aft. Perfect for fenders, lines etc. once I remove the tank.
I have yet to replace the starboard trim tab plate and piston, but this week likely. Not an expensive repair parts wise.
The engine just clicked over the last tenth to 500 hours. It appears it had the original fuel filter based on the white overspray on it from when the engine was painted. Pretty sad...
The oil and filter certainly looked original, but no way to tell. It'll take a few consecutive changes to get most of that truly replaced.
Given what I have seen so far, it might be the original impeller? Regardless, swapped it out for new.
For some reason the alternator was wired (badly) to the "house" battery bank, not the starting battery bank. Given the ACR relays are cascaded from the starting battery to the house batteries to the thruster battery- that made no sense? The ACR shows an in and out side, maybe they don't care if wired in reverse? I don't know? Regardless, the alternator cable was under-sized and literally fell out of the crimp connector holding it to the alternator output. Very shoddy....
Along with that there was no direct ground between the engine and the start battery (or any other battery). It grounded (sort of), but the starter was intermittent. There is not much "pressure" electrically speaking with a 12v system. (Hopefully 12v vehicle electrics will go away some day soon.) I dug out the starter and had my local starter / alternator shop go over them. The motors identity seems to be very top secret, but the solenoid is a Delco. The guy is an old hand at his job and it was no problem other than he could find no cross reference for the motor. Very rare not to be able to find out the original source. Back installed with nice new clean grounds (always clean the grounds on your vehicles) and she spins a little better and works well now.
There were also some insane wiring jobs done elsewhere on the vessel up to and including live, unfused wires laying in the bilge, insanely wired shower sump and on and on. I even found an old used undone coat hangar lying in the space above the fuel tank quietly rusting away. A "drag" used to pull in the unfused wires I found in the bilge no doubt. It's a wonder the boat did not burn down? Maybe we adopted 12v systems to keep us safe from amateur electricians?
The hull is not remedied yet but a few samples showed it cleaning up without sanding. Whether that effort (when completed) will last is TBD, but for this year she remains red and will hopefully last the season before a redo is required.
I reworked the battery / house supplies. She has a single AGM start battery and dual AGM thruster batteries. They work via the combine switch, so it should never be w/o enough juice to crank. It is overkill but the batteries were brand new, so what the hell. I also run other small loads (like the compost toilet fan, stereo off of the dual thruster battery setup). These banks are now wired correctly to work separate or together (for starting issues) and have the ACR relay device that ties them together when the engine is running to keep them charged via the alternator. In addition- I put in a 230ah lithium "House" battery. It runs the house (or hotel) loads, and runs a 1.6kw Victron inverter to run my electric Cuisinart cast iron hot plate. It has a 40amp Victron DC to DC charger which is tied to the oversized thruster battery bank and when the engine starts, so does it, which tells me the ACR / Victron alternator charging system is working fine. Lithium batteries will eat a conventional alternator system for lunch. The DC to DC charger keeps everybody playing nice. A 75/15 12v Victron solar charge controller ties the Lithium house battery to the 200 watts of rooftop solar. I can run my hot plate or my replacement 4 gallon electric water heater (yes, the original water heater did leak I discoverd after fixing the other leaks in the system). That's an either / or situation, I cannot run both together, which is worth the trouble from my perspective. All of the electrical system is fused carefully from end to end (excluding the starter motor circuit). The house bank may yet grow, but I'll let time and experience with it determine that.
Owner mischief, neglect and lack of hygiene aside, there is hope. Her lack of use and covered shed dock has saved her some aging. There are a number of other niggling, weird fixes and alterations that need undoing or redoing. She will never be 100% stock, but with 500 hours on her engine and 80-120hrs. of my time, she should turn out to be a decent platform for some summer explorations. Once she is cleaned up I'll post some pictures.
Overall I would not describe the process as fun. Parts of it are. It takes a lot of time to learn a new boat and its systems, even more to undo owner meddling. This boat is a pain in the ass to work on / in as it is large "liner" interior which requires lots of careful cutting into to attain access to all of the hidden plumbing, wiring and other systems. All crammed into a road legal narrow beam vessel. In short, 10 pounds of **** in a 9 pound bag. But now at least, it doesn't smell like it.
