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Digger
03-06-2004, 05:24 AM
for those of you familiar with the mechanical nightmares I have endured the last year or so, just wanted to let you know that Freedom is back in service as of yesterday, 2:30 pm. Put the first hour of engine break-in time on her romping around the bay, which was quite lively with a decent swell and wind chop. She ran great. No issues. Difficult for me to explain how good it felt to be at helm pushing the loud handles again...

Many many thanks to all of you who provided guidance, suggestions, and support.

see you in Kentucky... Lake Winni... Ches Bay... 1,000 islands... and ?

Cuda
03-06-2004, 07:12 AM
Congratulations! You gotta love it! :)

Fish boy
03-06-2004, 07:58 AM
Glad you are back in the saddle again Digger; just in time for boating season!!!

Fish

Brad Lyon
03-06-2004, 09:41 AM
That's great news! You will have to fill us all in on what you did to resolve your problems.

Brad

Looking forward to warm weather and Kentucky!

ToonaFish
03-06-2004, 11:20 PM
You will have to fill us all in on what you did to resolve your problems.

I think it had something to do with him joining the Navy... :boat:

CONGRATULATIONS Digger!

This does not suck... well, maybe it does to the rest of the winterized world... ;)

Bunches,

Celene 'high and dry'

Digger
03-07-2004, 05:49 AM
thx all-

Brad, here is the readers digest version. Towards the end of summer, 2002, I decided to have the engines rebuilt to spec, in other words, bone stock. Oil consumption was going up, obtaining proper rpm at WOT became an issue, there was a leak here and there. I also had always been wary since I didn't know well how the boat had been treated before I owned her. I am the fourth owner... the first owner was foreclosed on, he couldn't keep up the payments. (amazing what you find out through the vessel documentation process) Given all this, I thought it would be prudent to have the motors pulled and freshened up.

I used a mech who I have known for some time in NH. He rebuilt both engines to original spec, (they had 230 hrs on them, btw) and took half of forever to do it. (I delivered the boat to him in July 2002, with the agreement that he would not start on it right away, but that he would have it ready for the 2003 boating season. I got it back in September 2003) He is very talented when it comes to carbuerated engines and is very good with the mechanical aspects. (he balanced my crank assemblys to within a gnats ass, for instance) He did all the work in his shop, to include dyno runs at the end on his own setup. Here is the important takeaway/lesson learned: He does not have diagnostics for for an EFI machine, no way of knowing if the ECM is dropping a code. I did not know this at the time. When I told the mech what had happened, he offered that I not pay him the rest of what I owed him, which was a significant sum. I took him up on that.

(btw, for you armchair quarterbacks out there, if at this point you want to add a post that says "well I would have done blah blah", or "you should have done yada yada" save it. I don't want or need to hear it)

The boat ran great for 4-5 engine hours. The motors ran smooth as a Rolex. Then after coming off plane after hearing a bit of a "pop" there was oil in the bilge with a corresponding low oil pressure alarm on the no. 1 engine. No earlier indications of anything amiss. Bryan Tuvell and I limped her back home. I thought I was going to be sick.

Number four piston had burned through. There was a malfunction in the EFI (don't remember the exact code at the moment) which included a short to ground which caused that injector to malfunction. The injector itself was OK. Jim (Buizilla) tested all eight injectors at his shop and they were all well within limits (thx again Jim).

The motor was rebuilt by Jasper to original spec. It has an 18 month warranty. Beach Marine, at Marina Shores, Lynnhaven in VA Beach did the r/r on the engine and related work. They are an excellent crew and treated me right, I would recommend them to anyone.

Thats the skinny on what happened. I now own the full DIACOM Rinda Tech software that loads onto a laptop. Plugs into ECM and gives real time paramaters, every possible item you could think of, including all possible codes, and stores it for later playback.

"and thats all I've got to say about that"

Rootsy
03-07-2004, 11:10 AM
good to hear you have her back together and running man... that would have made me ill also, very ill... actually i've been ill once or twice but i was very lucky and nothing was injured... watching oil pressure drop is a truly sickening feeling...

look forward to seeing you both in Kentucky eh

JR

Sam
03-07-2004, 02:13 PM
Cha Ching !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! good news. Looking forward to seeing you at Cumberland.

Sam

Bryan Tuvell 33ZX
03-07-2004, 07:57 PM
You know were happy for ya man.
I remember that day so well....

Here is to us both have a good boating season....
Bryan

Brad Lyon
03-07-2004, 09:01 PM
What an ordeal! Glad your back in business. I bet the nice ride put a smile on your face. You won’t get any Monday morning quarterback suggestions from me. I am no motor head, when I was a lot younger I used to do a lot of that kind of stuff. I figured if I got myself in to deep there was always someone smarter than me that I could hire to put everything back together correctly, but those guys have gotten too damn expensive!

Brad