A Season of Sloth

 

Shakedown Cruise, June 24, 2023

It rained like hell the first part of the day, and I thought I probably wouldn’t go out. Then the sun came out and I started getting ready. I had two batteries and a trolling motor, so if the 1971 Evinrude failed, the outgoing tide and the trolling motor would get me back.

I got it launched and tied up to the dock without too much effort. Leaving the dock, It seemed to be low on power, but maybe that was the difference between a 25 and an 18. I ran straight out, then upstream for a while before slowing down and seeing if I could get it to idle a little. Results were not terrible, so I headed upstream to fish a little. It was then that the motor significantly lost power. After a minute or so, I guessed that it might be running on only one cylinder. I turned it off, dropped the trolling motor and did a little fishing.

Using a trolling motor is a new thing for me. This one has a rocker pedal to steer, with a mini pedal in the top right of the rocker. A knob on the side is the speed control. Five was a little too much. Three or four worked pretty well for maneuvering around near the shoals and islands. It will take some getting used to.

After a while, I decided to head back in. I made it back on just one cylinder. Tomorrow I will test the compression, which I’m pretty sure will be all right. Then I’ll test the coils, one of which will almost certainly have failed.

June 25, 2023

The day is over. It was Sunday. It was hot. I am lazy. Therefore I didn’t get to the motor until the sun was going down. There was good news and bad news. The good is that the compression tested to 125 lbs./cu.in. on the top and 110lbs/cu.in. on the bottom cylinder. The bad news is that the bottom plug had the ground strap touching the electrode. I set the gap and replaced the plug, hit the starter, and removed the plug again only to see the same thing: zero gap. The only reason I can come up with for this is an imminent rod failure, allowing the piston to go higher in the cylinder. I put an extra gasket on the plug and that seems to have fixed it. I will test run it in the yard tomorrow.

A peculiar thing happened on the top Cylinder. As I removed the plug, it just felt wrong. When I got it out, the threaded part was too big!  The steel insert had come out of the head.     This cannot be an unheard-of occurrence. I just had never seen it, though. See figure 45.

Figure 45 

June 26, 2023

Tested it in the yard today. Never actually got it to running temp, but turned it all the way up to screaming meemies. Took the suspect plug out and it was fine. May go fishing soon.

 

June 29, 2023

Against my better judgement, I took another shakedown cruise, this time with intentions to do some slightly more serious fishing. It lost one cylinder while still at the dock. Out of cussedness, I went ahead anyway. Hell, I had a trolling motor, after all. I fished for a while and returned to the dock.

July 1, 2023

I finally got around to checking the plugs again. This time, there was nothing visibly wrong with the lower plug. The top one fired all right. I tried it in the bottom plug cap, and it fired all right there, too, telling me that my coils are all right. It was just a failed plug. I haven’t had a plug fail outright in decades. Literally, decades.

I compared the failed plug to another, similar plug and found that the failed one also had a threaded portion about a mm longer than the other. This is passing strange. I found another plug about the same heat range and compared them for length: problem solved. Probably the plug failure was the result of shock from the piston hitting it. 

July 6, 2023

Is every cruise going to be a shakedown cruise? Today I left the dock, the motor running better than it has yet. Then I gave it full throttle and a pin sheared. The trolling motor got me back to the dock, where I replaced said pin. I took off and had the same result. The trolling motor got me back to the dock and I loaded up and went home. When I took the prop off, I found the shear pin intact.(!) The motor could have popped out of gear, I guess. I thought I had checked that. I was unable to create a false neutral in the back yard.

I ultimately bought a piece of 3/16” steel rod and made five more shear pins. I will try again tomorrow.

 

July 8, 2023

Instead of fishing on the seventh, I replaced the heating element in the dryer. It is fine now.

Today, I went fishing. Got one strike. The motor ran fine. The boat didn’t sink. I am happy.

 

END