Maintenance Log for Syzygy

We overheated the engine on the way back into the marina a week ago–the gauge pegged out at 230 and we had to run it in that state for a few minutes until we were safely in the slip.  I was mad at myself when we discovered that the cause was low coolant.  On saturday morning Jon and I put some coolant in and traced the leak to the gasket under the thermostat housing.  A pretty significant leak.  So we pulled it off to replace the gasket, and while we were at it we replaced a hose and flushed the coolant system really well (used a commercial coolant system cleaner also).  It was gunky and nasty, so getting it clean and fresh was satisfying.

While we were at it we replaced the thermostat.  We tested the old and new side by side in a pot of water (heated it till they opened) and noted that the new one reacted much more quickly than the old one.  They both seemed to open/close in the same range of ~165 degrees F, though it was interesting to see the range over which they opened more or less, etc.

We used a gasket from Perkins (didn’t make out own) and put Permatex sealant (the purple stuff) on both metal surfaces before installing it

We decided to use propylene glycol instead of ethylene glycol.  Ethylene is the normal stuff that everyone uses (same thing in cars), but it happens to be extremely poisonous and bad for the environment.  The propylene glycol in comparison is super safe, and can even be discarded safely into the ocean (it is neither toxic nor harmful to marine life).  It has similar performance, but I believe it is slightly more expensive.  It’s not hard to find–we got ours at Kragen (marketed for RV camping safe-for-children applications).

So far our seal hasn’t leaked, and the engine seems to be running at acceptable temperatures.

This was a hell of a job. First I’ll describe the original state of the panel.  The panel was set back 4 inches in the space, behind a 3 inch vertical piece of trim.  The panel was hinged at the bottom, so that when it folds down it hits the piece of trim, preventing it from opening less than halfway.  Inside the panel, all of the negative wiring was piled up on a single stud, with over 16 terminals stacked on top of each other, all corroding.  A handful of wires had pulled out of the terminals and were hanging loose in the compartment, only a few inches away from the hot stud.  It was unorganized, impossible to access and work on it, and a serious fire hazard. I took out the old panel and cut out the trim so that the new panel could be mounted at the face of the compartment (rather than 4" recessed).  I constructed a new panel out of plexiglass from TAP plastics, laboriously drilling all the holes to accomodate the circuit breakers.  I put a piece of hardwood trip around the outside (coated with penetrating epoxy) and used a long piano hinge to mount it.  I used all of the old breakers from the old panel.  To make the common, hot side of the circuit breakers, I bought a strip of solid copper from McmasterCarr, and drilled out holes to match the location of the circuit breakers.  I bought tiny little screws from bowline and screwed the common hot side of each breaker flat against the copper bus bar.  I ran 0 gauge hot and negative cables to the compartment, mounting all the negative to the right and all the hot to the left.  The 0 gauge hot supply runs to a stud, and 3-4 gauge jumper cables connect from this stud to each of the copper bus bars on the back of the panel (there are three rows of breakers).  I mounted three terminal blocks on the left side of the compartment, to mirror the three rows of circuit breakers.  I used short jumpers of 12 gauge wire in as many different colors as I could find to make the connections from the circuit breakers to the terminal blocks.  These short jumpers are bundled into spiral wrap to tame them.  All of the negative wiring runs to a dedicated spot (very few stacked terminals) on two ample sized negative bus bars. The wiring remains loose in the compartment behind the panel, and looks completely disorganized.  But there’s plenty of space and it is simple to trace wiring.  I am concerned that if I bundle the wiring all up to make it look pretty, it will only make it more difficult to trace wiring.

We have about 6 120V outlets on the boat, that are powered either by shore power (when we are plugged in at the dock) or by our inverter running off the boat batteries (when we’re not).

GFCI outlets are the ones with a “test” and “reset” button in between the two plugs.  GFCI stands for “ground fault current interrupt”.  Here’s an extremely abbreviated explanation of what it does: it measures the current in and the current out, and if they don’t match, it trips.  If you stick your finger in the outlet, some of the “current in” doesn’t make it to the “current out”, rather it takes a route through your body to get back to ground.  The GFCI senses that current is going elsewhere, and trips.

GFCIs do not completely eliminate the risk of electrocution: they do not trip instantaneously (though they do operate very fast) and so during the millisecond that it takes for the GFCI to trip, you may have got enough of a dose to kill you.  They do, however, significantly increase the protection and safety.

You can get them from home depot–I think they’re about $7 apiece (not including the box to mount them in and the plate to cover the front).

The GFCI outlets were bulkier than the old outlets, so I had to cut out the mounting hole a little bit on every one (wouldn’t expect any less frustration from a boat project).