@duncan-mckenzie
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Overhaul of Neco 17DR8
NECO 17DR8 gets an overhaul in Cartagena, Colombia.
The motor’s movement was getting a bit ‘sticky’, the relays and supply all seemed fine, so we investigated the motor itself.
In case you were wondering what goes on inside one of these motors, after 49 years….
Changed the coil, the bearings, and the brushes, and the retainers. General clean up and repaint.
I haven’t had the bill, yet but am assured it is many hours work. Something to do in a country like Colombia where technicians are used to repairing things (and labour costs are relatively low).I have more images if anyone is interested, but can’t be added here.
Hi All, I am servicing my NECO 17DR8 motor here in Colombia, and wondered if anyone knows what grade of oil should go in it. The manual says Castrol Magna. The modern version of that states that “Castrol Magna lubricating oils are suitable for a variety of applications such as the lubrication of bearings, spindles and, using the heavier viscosity grades, moderately loaded gearboxes.
Therefore the modern Magna ISO 220 (their heavier grade) would be an SAE 50 in crankcase oil, or an SAE 90 in gearbox oil terms.
So am thinking go for any SAE 90 gearbox mineral oil?
Any pointers from those engineers amongst you?
Thanks so much,
Duncan
You can search under topics or keywords within any facebook page, it works reasonably well, but it won’t ever be what this forum is… a godsend!
I have an original Perkins 4108 with front end Bowmans heat exchanger on Czarina Blue.
I have just replaced my mounts since one had sheared, the one below the raw water exhaust elbow, possibly due to corrosion of the engine foot there from drips from that elbow periodically. The lower lock nut was now above the foot plate due to a rusted hole in the plate! Two of the other feet had to be repaired, re-welded and straightened, I guess the engine had started to dance around a bit. Also the mechanic noticed that the starboard engine fibreglass bed was flexing slightly so he bolted in a rigid steel plate on that side.
All this possibly aggravated by a very worn prop shaft bearing.
Thanks to Rainshadow for their blog on all this. Often useful.
For me it is perfect in so many ways. And in the ways it isn’t , I put up with it. For me the big negative is that I spend too much of my life stooped. I am 6’2″, or I was before I started living aboard! If they built this boat 15% bigger in every dimension then it would have been a really amazing boat. I can only stand up straight in the cockpit, on deck and below the saloon hatch.
eg sleeping: My feet are in the sail locker in the v berth, in the aft cabin I must sleep diagonally in the small double to be able to stretch out. So apart from it being built for medieval humans, it is perfect.. Bags of class, character, beauty and sails like a dream, rock solid.
I met a bunch of other sailors who would have loved to own one, but it was ‘too small’. But for a couple, esp a compact couple, it is great.
Just wanted to see if anyone had updates to offer this thread?
I am thinking to install a water maker for Pacific cruising and general live aboard ease. I have narrowed it down to Katadyn PowerSurvivor 40E but which seems to be a bit on the low capacity side, and the Schenker Zen30 which is latest technology, 30 litres/ hour and more expensive, around £4000 all bits included…
Has anyone found a good spot to install one other than in the converted aft heads? I do not have an aft head on my boat. But that cabin is mainly storage so in terms of noise it perhaps makes sense to have it there. However it’s a long way from my toilet /galley sink seawater inlet, but not so far from the engine raw water inlet.
Any thoughts?
Czarina Blue has two 10 mm lines running through the base of the starboard side of the windscreen, going through their individual clutches to a single small Anderson winch. The clutches are mounted offset 14 to 20 cms behind the inside screen base. and the winch right back almost touching the teak fiddle at the aft edge of the shelf. The screen-base holes are drilled so that they come out just above the interior surface of the dashboard (which the clutches sit on). On the outside of the windscreen base the bottom of the holes stop about 1 cm above the cabin roof. The person who did it has sealed in some oblique-cut grey plastic piping into the interior of the aperture for the rope to rub against. I can send photos if that helps. The use of line-feeders and stand-up blocks on the cabin top further forward may be necessary to get a good lead to the holes, depending on where your lines are fed from. I have never noticed any water ingress through the holes, but have not had green water over (!) and anyway it would likely run down the side of the sloping shelf inside and into the cockpit seat drain.
When I bought the boat the two lines running to the cockpit were the mainsail boom furler and the main halyard. However I have switched to slab reefing when renewing the sail. So now I have in the cockpit my topping lift (adjusted first and last before going forward to make a reef at the mast), and my cruising chute downhaul so I can adjust it from the cockpit (it runs forward all the way to a block at the base of the forestay, but is not permanently rigged). I do all my mainsail work at the mast now.
I copied Peter Needham of S/Y Salara’s main mast set-up (he also single-hands with a slab-reefed mainsail): two clutches on the starboard main boom near the gooseneck act as stoppers for the two mainsail reefing lines ( which I can tension on the starboard mast winch OK). A single clutch is mounted a couple of feet above the starboard mast winch for the mainsail halyard so that that single mast winch can work alternately for the reefs / halyard.
I clip on at the mast and in bouncy conditions I spread my (long) legs and jam my feet against the inside of the cabin top handrails. If I slip, I’m suspended from my harness which is clipped on to the poling out eye above me. It works well for me.
Czarina Blue has a Hydrovane. Installed it in 2019 and it worked perfectly from day 1, have used up to force 7 without missing a beat. I bought their adjustable vane (for ketch) but it doesn’t adjust low enough to avoid the mizzen boom when coming across, so have to remove it to tack with mizzen. However otherwise really impressed. On our transatlantic we had one broach in two weeks whilst it was steering, during a gust over 35 knots and reasonably large seas. Generally I’d leave it quite happily and go to bed, as Salara says above. No control lines to worry about, has its own rudder, which could be useful if you suffered damage to main rudder, and works great with a simple tiller pilot in lighter cones or motoring. Expensive I thought until I saw the heavy build and quality of the thing, now ‘worth every penny’.
It is not exactly a solid vang in the sense of a hydraulic piston, but along with my kicker tackle I have used a Barton boom strut and it works well at supporting the boom and keeping it off the cockpit roof if the topping lift fails or is forgotten. Also it is in keeping with the gold spars in the sense that its cream coloured nylon rods and anodised fittings are not grey aluminium which clashes with the gold, but that is personal aesthetics! Depends on your other spars of course. I used the largest rod kit from Barton, on my slab reefing mainsail with slightly heavy ex- Sailtainer boom. I believe their medium length rods would also suffice.
My advice is : always go bow first. Since I tried bow first, I never go in reverse ever again ( I mean not into a marina berth). Bows to everytime. Gives you more privacy too.
I notice also that the text is cut off, in Safari or Chrome, on my Mac. If anyone needs the text separately, send me your email and I’ll email it to you.
Duncan
Hi Joao!
3d designer too busy of course but he gave me an idea how to make it simply, so I made this seat based on Marilyn’s great photos and measurements of her original seat. I put her photos in Photoshop and tried to work out all the rough measurements to scale and it worked!
Then I got a steel man to make the legs and make it able to tilt back like the original which is great for semi standing/sitting to get the blood flowing around your arse and also to get the seat out of the way for winching on the port winch.
Also the photos above ARE FULL FRAME but despite making them smalller they are cut off on this page, however if you right click and DOWNLOAD THEM all you can see the whole frames, and all the measurements. Sorry not to improve the formatting.
I found that without a seat sailing on starboard tack was very tiring if there was a big sea, because nowhere to brace yourself. This seat enables you to helm for a few hours which was almost impossible before. I think it would be improved by putting a little foot rest on the vertical face below the wheel, as I think Marilyn has done. I can tuck my legs to the port side cockpit seat forwards corner on a starboard tack, less easily on a port tack when you really need a foot rest, especially if not so tall.
I made the measurement plans for the steel man and he measured in the cockpit a bit himself and took away my fabricated seat for a few days and built the legs in his worshop and came back and tweeked it slightly from the back of his van. It cost a few hundred euros for him and I spent probably 100 euros on materials for the seat part myself ( and many hours of research and work!)
It is up to you to work out the exact position of the seat in relation to your body height and arms reach, but once you have made the seat you can mock it up raised on boxes and work out the best position and then make the legs to fit that position.
I should say that in the photos of the man seated above ( me) I was trying with one leg outside the cockpit, which was OK because I am tall. But now that i have used the seat alot, at night in big seas on starboard tack, I don’t do this. It’s more comfortable to put both legs to left in port cockpit seat forwards corner. And as I said, I will build a small folding footrest in the middle of the space below the wheel, to give my legs more support straight ahead of my body.
I should say that in the photos of the man seated above ( me) I was trying with one leg outside the cockpit, which was OK because I am tall. But now that i have used the seat alot, at night in big seas on starboard tack, I don’t do this. It’s more comfortable to put both legs to left in port cockpit seat forwards corner. And as I said, I will build a small folding footrest in the middle of the space below the wheel, to give my legs more support straight ahead of my body.
Also the photos above are full frame but despite making them smalller they are cut off on this page, however if you right click download them all you can see the whole frames, and all the measurements. Sorry not to improve the formatting.
Dear Joao, You measure the cirumferences of all the windows and buy the tape by the metre. In England, which may not be helpful to you, there is also a sealant gun butyl product called Arbomast BR which is great stuff. Also Jean_Pierre at Hadlow Marine http://www.hadlowmarine.com recommends Scapa 3507 tape and also every other product you need for re-glazing and/or re-bedding, and there are information sheets on his site. I have refurbished nearly all my windows myself now with success thanks to his products and advice.
Duncan
We have the system described by Ronar M with 2 separate sheets and cam cleats and it works very well. With our set up it requires visiting the aft deck, and it requires considerable strength to break the windward sheet out of the cam cleat when the sail is full of wind, when easing off, I sometimes stamp it out with a foot. But there are many advantages as noted.
After discomfort on a starboard tack in heavy seas, I am now building a cockpit seat along the lines of the original design that Marilyn has shown, photo attached, and I am wondering how the mechanism works underneath the cushion. Can anyone with such a seat post an image of the configuration which CAN’T be seen in this photo, ie the underside of the seat. I have a friend 3D modelling a design for me (!), all rather exciting, but we are deliberating how to make this tilt forward thing work ( when you need to stand up suddenly). It is clear the wooden block’s pivot point is offset but not clear what is going on on the underside. It would be helpful to know.
Thanks, Duncan
