Loose ends

This week I have been tying up a few more loose ends I started on Monday with replacing some sea water hose elbows on the engine, when I put the engine back together I obtained a hose connection kit from Parts 4 Engines basically a bag of short pieces of hose of the various sizes required but the engine has three hose elbows which unfortunately did not come as part of the kit so in order to get the engine running I reused the old ones. Judging from the paint remaining on them these elbows were the originals fitted to the engine when it was manufactured in 1988 and while not in tip top condition they did serve a purpose. In the meantime I had purchased some new silicone hose elbows with the intention of replacing the originals but best laid plans and all that it was not until I was looking round the engine last week that I realised that the original elbows were well past their sell by date, touch them and they left a black stain on the hands, they had perished. The new elbows just required to be cut to size and pushed on and secured with 'Jubilee' clips

Old elbows

New silicone elbows one on right cut to size

New sea water pump elbow

Gearbox cooling elbows

I spent quite a bit of time going through lockers and removing stuff that was no longer required offcuts of wood, all those short bits of cable that one tends to keep as it may be useful one day but never is and boxes that equipment arrived in that you keep in case it is necessary to return it, so things are looking a little tidier now but there is still more to do. I finished off the week by tidying the wiring in the stern locker in the aft cabin it is mostly connected to the auto pilot, it had been temporarily bundled up with cable ties for some time. I started by shortening a couple of over length cables and then bound them together with the spiral wrap.

Cables tidied and wrapped

There is still a bit to do the cables on the right which supply a 12v/usb outlet in the aft cabin need wrapping and the cables from the autopilot course computer to the actuator will probably be replaced with proper tinned cable before being wrapped the cables in the centre of the photograph are the anode bonding cables and there is not very much I can do with them