2008 Week 46 in Review
November 9 to November 15, 2008
We took the rest of the main bearings out of the Catalyst this week. Bill and I rolled them out two at a time to look at them, clean them really well, measure them, and take pictures:
Then we'd roll them back in and roll out another two. We were careful to not roll out adjacent pairs, since it's important that the crankshaft stay supported even with a couple of bearings out. Now that I've said that, I'll say that there was one exception: we rolled out both six and seven at the same time, because one of them is a small bearing beside the air compressor bay, so it's not quite as important.
We also found that number six and number seven are bad, which makes three bad main bearings to be re-babbitted. One of them is ripple-y, like it got hot (maybe it was changed out and not scraped in, which would have caused it to heat up) and two of them are cracked very badly:
One of the cracked ones was definitely from badly-poured babbitt (which I described back in Week 44), so the other one was probably bad babbitt as well, since they were probably done at the same time. It's hard to tell, though, and we don't really know when the babbitt on the mains was poured. It could well be the original 1932 babbitt! Maybe I'll look it up in the log book to pass some time while underway next summer.
By the end of the day, we'd rolled out all of the main bearings except for number one. This one carries the weight of the flywheel, which we didn't want to deal with on this job. We're going to assume that it's okay for the time being, since the flywheel is a consistent load - it just goes around and around. The pounding of cylinders firing is the thing that's really hard on the main bearings, so neither Dan nor I were that worried about number one. We'll look at number one in the future, but this winter's job is big enough already.
Later in the week, Bill and I took them up to Everett Engineering for estimates. We also stopped in by Striegel Supply to visit Steve and to pick up a piston ring from a DMM Enterprise. The DMM models have an 8" bore, so we think that one of those rings might work for the 8" Washington. It's thinner, but we took it anyway and hopefully I'll get it to work.
I introduced Bill to Steve, and we all chatted about how everyone owes us money. Striegel doesn't really carry Washington stuff, but Steve's a good guy to know - especially if you ever need Enterprise stuff.
An update on the Island Champion
While we were in Everett, I took Bill by the Island Champion. We went aboard to see some of the work that Hilbert's been doing and he showed us the new floors he's laid in the salon and galley, which look very nice. I would rather have seen the old floors refinished, since I'm old-school like that, but they do look good. Hilbert's been doing a lot of other work on the boat and it's looking great. He and Bill and I were joking about how it could work as a charter boat, but we weren't really serious... or were we?
Being aboard reinforced the fact that we need to tie the boat up to a strong pier and run the engine for a few days, since it hasn't been run since the last year's swamping (I told that sad story back in Week 22). A few days after it was brought up, we flushed the engine really well, flushed the oil lines, and bailed out the crank pit. Then we changed the oil a couple of times, rotated the engine by hand, took all the reed valves apart, cleaned them, and put them back together. We also drained the Manzells and flushed them, then cranked tons of oil through them. With all that, the engine should be fine, but hasn't been run since so can't sign off on it yet-plus the engine should be run as often as possible, anyway. Hopefully, we'll manage that over the winter, once my other jobs are done.
Speaking for Old Engines
I gave a talk for the Society of Port Engineers of Puget Sound, on Veterans Day. They have a speaker at their monthly meetings, and they were interested in hearing about the big old diesels. I don't think of myself as much of a speaker, but this is the second time I've been asked.
Last year, I gave a talk for the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society, and while I think that the guests might have learned something about the antique diesel engines, I wasn't very animated. I ended up reading a lot of my talk from a script that I wrote beforehand, but other people say it was fine, so maybe I'm just oversensitive.
This year's talk for the Port Engineers went a lot better. I started by telling some of my funny engineer stories, and then just talking about engines. Instead of preparing a Presentation, I put up pictures of engines and boats that I wanted to talk about and just talked about them. I got some good questions, and a bunch of people were nodding as I talked, so I think it went pretty well.
I want to thank the Society for the invite - I met a lot of interesting maritime folks. I look forward to visiting again.
A buyer for the Lake Superior?
Bob from the American Victory Mariners Memorial and Museum Ship called me the other day; he and his people are interested in maybe buying the Lake Superior. He wanted to know if there were parts and technical support available for maintaining a Q Enterprise. They apparently want to use it occasionally to move things around, but mostly as a museum ship. I told him that there were plenty of resources out there in the community and to keep me in the loop - and to call me for the cruise from Duluth to Tampa.
Later, I did some research on the internet and found an article at the Great Lakes & Seaway Shipping News Archives about the Lake Superior. Apparently, the Army Corps of Engineers gave it to the City of Duluth when they retired it in 1995, and the City tried to make a museum out of it by their convention center. I guess folks weren't that interested in an old Army tug at the dock, since so few people took the tour that they actually cut a hole into the side of the hole to make an ice cream parlor. That didn't work either, and they sold the tug to a private company last year.
I think it's good that the city was able to move on and sell the tug when they saw that it wasn't working as a museum boat, rather than getting completely stuck trying to convince the world that another old rust bucket was interesting. I'm all for preserving the old boats (they help keep the old engines dry), but museums and cities have to be realistic when they're trying to operate a workboat as a museum. Sometimes it's just not doable because people aren't that interested. I think it's better to sell the boat and move on than resort to gimmicks. I mean, an ice cream parlor? Are you kidding?
It looks like the folks in Tampa might be able to make a go of it - it sounds like they have lots of activity and know how to keep big old boats (like their flagship, American Victory) interesting and working.
