As promised, the results of last night's work on my genset: Success!! However, as is usually the case with boats, it was a good news/bad news situation. One has to realize that this genset is well forward in the hull, under the salon/saloon floor, with about four inches of clearance between the flame arrestor and the floor above. This requires the fix-it person to crawl forward, drape over the genset, and make all repairs primarily by feel. Good news - as pointed out by a number of Listees who responded, the problem was indeed the impeller. Bad news - What should have been a simple case of removing three screws, the end plate of the pump, the mangled impeller and all the broken pieces, then replacing same, became a physically demanding and mental exasperating process. This was caused by a poor design on Onan's part that put the carb, choke assembly and fuel line all about 1/4" in front of the end plate. Removing the end plate first involved an attempt to move the carb out of the way - no gold stars for us there, since the fuel line was quite inaccessible. The next (and ultimately successful) approach was for my mechanic (who is 6'3" and about 275 lb.) to crawl on his side around the battery boxes, the water heater, the bilge pumps, the rectifier, and the AquaMuffler to gain access to the genset from the side and behind. Eventually, he removed the entire pump and then had "easy" access to the end plate. At that point, replacing the impeller took no more than 5 minutes. The mechanic spent the rest of the second hour replacing all of the various parts and extricating himself from behind all the "stuff". The problem? An impeller that was down to one blade. Hard to get proper cooling water flow with that!! So, after a two hour process to accomplish what should have taken 10-15 minutes, all is well in my genset world. The exhaust/cooling water flow is better than it has ever been since I bought the boat last year. I'm now excited about being able to be out on the hook all of the long weekend, with a first mate who is happy because she has all the electrical comforts of home at her fingertips. Isn't life grand? For the future? I will be cutting an access hatch in the salon/saloon floor right above the genset so that future repairs/impeller replacements can be done from above. Again, thanks to all the Listees who helped. Cheers, John Garrison JKG97@prodigy.net "Just Keel-ing Time" Lake Norman, NC

JKG97@prodigy.net writes: >For the future? I will be cutting an access hatch in the >salon/saloon floor >right above the genset so that future repairs/impeller replacements >can be >done from above. And I thought sailboats were tight for space.... Mine is so bad, that I have to hire a 3 ft contortionist midget with superior mechanical ability and no fear of claustrophobia to lubricate my shaft bearing and or tighten the stuffing box. Since there is a shortage of said contortionist midgets around here and I am too big to get my creaking body through the lazaret opening, standing on my head or otherwise, I too have decided to mangle my floorboard to cut an access hole for the stuffing box. Since said access will have to be through the cockpit floor, I have an additional quest: to make the new hatch cover waterproof - but that's another story and part of the coming winter-projects. My water pump incidentially is located right in front of the Diesel and I can fiddle with it sitting crosslegged on the saloon floor (carpeted and padded with comfortable cushions) with beverage next to me and friendly jazz emanating from the surround-sound music machine. Just thought I had to throw this in ;-) ;-) ;-) George of Scaramouche, presently mastless and pretending to be a troller/trawler (not quite to WTP standards -more winter-projects to come).

The good news about raw water cooling is that the impeller blades went out the exhaust rather than clogging up the heat exchanger! Hal ----- Original Message ----- From: "John & Kathleen" <JKG97@prodigy.net> Subject: TWL: Onan generator > As promised, the results of last night's work on my genset: Success!! > >