S/V Ripple

The head of my Yanmar 1GM10, with my custom-fabricated valve-spring compressor fashioned for me by a local machinist, Eddy.  Worked like a charm. If you're going to rebuild an engine, it is pretty convenient that you can hold the head in your hand. Put aside the sludge factor and it would almost be cute.  Nothing this oily fits in that category, though, and when you get over that, the next emotion is awe.  This 9 horsepower engine turned turned over 110,000,000 times just on my Alaska trip.  Another 350,000 times last year... never mind all the other shorter seasons it has seen.  Half the horsepower of a John Deere lawn tractor, it has pushed a 6,000 lb boat 5,000 miles in the last couple years. Try riding your lawn tractor to New York and halfway back. Diesel engines rock, and this 20+ year old Yanmar has put in some time. So why quit now? The hour meter has clocked a mere 2500 hours since the last rebuild (I'm assuming it has been rebuilt, but I don't e...

The business end of my Yanmar 1GM10 block A week ago I set off with a friend and colleague on the beginning of a 6 week circumnavigation around Vancouver Island.  It ended the first day, with an engine failure of significant proportion, which definitively called us home.  A winter's preparation, an overhaul of paint and varnish, many fiddly projects on my part took up weeks of effort. My crew spent treasure or family time or both to arrange their lives and schedules around three two-week legs. There was no ambiguity about the sentence. Limping into Kingston for a night, then a tow back to Seattle by my sympathetic brother made the situation crystal clear. My initial efforts to find a mechanic to take on the job have not been fruitful, and the prospect of re-powering, enormously seductive as it is, is an order of magnitude more costly.  Why not try doing the job myself?  As Calder says..."this procedure is well within the capability of an amateur mechanic an...