2009 Week 39 in review

We spent this week puttering in the shop, reviewing Lightship notes, and gossiping under the roll-up door – an important process for transferring important information – and playing the antique player pianos coming into the shop these days.  Here’s Dan playing one of the many lined up by the office:

An update from Indian Grave Pumphouse

I got from the Indian Grave Pumphouse, saying if they leave engine #3 shut down for a few days, then they have to go and bleed all the fuel lines to make it go again. From here, it seems like the things that could be causing it are: leaky injectors, leaky pumps, or leaky fuel lines. More on that when we hear more from Illinois.

A visit to Forks

On Friday, Brian the shipwright and Shannon the VP of Northwest Seaport and I drove out to Forks to inspect the lumber cut for the Lightship #83′s new deck. We arrived at McClanahan Lumber just before noon and checked out the two beautiful piles of milled fir cut to order for the Seaport:

The ends were waxed to keep them from drying too fast and cracking, the few knots are on the lower side so the caulking won’t touch it, and the planks were cut to leave minimum sap wood – the outside few inches of the tree that gets included on a few planks; it looks lighter when viewed on the end:

We got some good news, too: the sawyer said that there’s no need to rotate the planks as they’re drying. Shipwrights, stay tuned for more about the Lightship deck project in the coming months. Finally, thanks to the McClanahans for lunch and amazing blackberry pie.

2009 Week 29 in Review

News from Alaska

I’m onboard the Catalyst again and I’m meeting boat friends everywhere: the crew from the Liseron, former crewmates Chuck and Nissa from the Mist Cove, and the crew from the Catalyst, who are all being relieved today by a whole new crew. Captain Steve, chef Lisa, deckhand Lia, and I will be running the boat together for the next few weeks.

Lia and I flew in on Saturday and after some last-minute chores and drinks at the Alaskan hotel, we picked up our passengers on Sunday and headed out to Endicott Arm.

This week’s cruise was from Juneau to Petersburg, stopping at Sanford Cove, Fords Terror, West Brother, Sheldon Cove, West Brother, and Scenery Cove along the way

We kayaked through Fords Terror, picked up a bunch of Dungeness crabs at Wood Spit, made a campfire on West Brother in Frederic Sound, and watched some bears in Sheldon cove.

We got to Sheldon cove early, so I pulled four valves to clean and swap. I exchange intake for exhaust valves every so often so that they wear evenly and we get more life out of them. Washingtons are hard on their valves for some reason.

We liked West Brother so much that we stopped there again and this time we had Norio Matsumoto over for dinner. He’s a great wilderness photographer and he showed a slide show of his work. On the way to Thomas Bay we watched some whales, then anchored in Scenery Cove and went for a walk to Baird Glacier.

Once we got to Petersburg, the whole crew was anxious to connect with the world we all had a cell phone attached to one ear while cleaning the boat, provisioning, and doing other chores.

This week was so nice. Getting aboard Catalyst was like coming home and I ran into each room to revisit great memories and see that everything is still where I left it. Frederick Sound is also some of the best cruising in the world – especially with the great weather we’re having. I have never seen so much sun up here. It made the glacier a beautiful sparkling blue, and it was so warm I could wear shorts and a t-shirt while on our hike there.

Engineer’s Log

Valves from 1 and 2 pulled, cleaned, and swapped in for out
Ex-valve for #3 reinstalled after Eric pulled it
Wiggled cord for the shaft tachometer; no improvement, still reading really low or not at all
Re-soldered wire to stateroom five port forward reading light
Cleaned and flushed bilge

We also did the numbers for this trip, the 11th of the 2009 season:

hours underway: 52:45
hours on main: 53.8
hours on the generator: 35:.6
hours on the water maker: 17:45
miles traveled: 231
gallons of fuel used: 179
gallons of water made: 1,035
gallons of gas used: 8.8
gallons of propane: 4.5
gallons of lube oil: 4
qts of half and half: used 6 (unusually high)

And finally, here’s a tasty recipe from the Catalyst‘s galley:

Crab
drop crab pots in 40 feet of water in top secret location with herring bait caught from just off the Taku fishery pier.
soak for one to two days, pull
return small ones and females
pull all legs of each crab, bracing the center of the body on the boat rail; legs and body meat should come right out of shell
scrape off gills
boil for 11 minutes
shell and eat

Kitchen notes: Crab-eaters of the world are divided into two groups: pilers and gobblers. Gobblers eat each piece of crab as they pull it out of the shell, while pilers pile up their pieces on their plate. Pilers beware, for the gobblers are happy to steal your pile.

Finally, crab-crackers are for newbies.

Waving to the Heavy-Duties

On the way into Petersburg, I saw the Katahdin, the Barron Islands, and the Cape Cross, each powered by a heavy-duty. It’s great to see the old workboat yachts out there.

More scraping at Indian Graves

In news beyond Alaska, I heard that the Indian Grave engine #3 ran for an hour and then the #2 main bearing got hot, so they scraped it down some more. This isn’t unusual – even with a good pattern on the bearing and the engine turning by hand really smooth, more scraping is often required after actually running the engine the first few times. Sounds like it’s going well.

Sexy sailor women

Diana the OTM Inc museologist had pictures taken for the 2010 Sexy Women of Maritime Calendar produced by Jack Tar Magazine this week. Apparently, the photos turned out great, but you’ll have to buy the calendar to see them because she isn’t sharing.

Social Networking

Old Tacoma Marine Inc. joined TheBoaters.com, which is like Facebook for boat trash. Check us out!

New owner for the Sound

I heard that Anthony bought the Sound. Poor sucker – he already owns the Chief. I love Enterprises, but there is such thing as too much of a good thing.

2009 Week 28 in Review

Early Sunday morning, I picked up all the remaining tools from the Arthur Foss, put the yacht back in the driveway, cleaned up my desk, and got back on a plane to Quincy, Illinois.

Back to Quincy

I went back to the Indian Grave Pumpouse despite the bad news that only two sets of piston rings had arrived, so I spent the week setting up the remaining rod bearings as close as I could without the pistons. I used a spare rod dangled from above to allow me to tighten the rod bearing bolts and get a more accurate bearing running clearance. Then, I used an old technique Dan told me from a while back: how to set bearing clearances without using dials.

I adjust the shims until they’re really close, then continue to adjust them one thousandth by one thousandth until the bearing just starts to drag on the journal when I move it side to side. When it starts to drag, that means it’s basically at 0, so I add shims one by one until I get about .004 worth of clearance.

I really needed this method because without the piston to center the bearing, it was too squirrelly to bump without a dial. Once the pistons are installed all the clearances will be set precisely, but I did this initial setup to make the final bump faster.

I also made some special tools to fit in place of rod bearing shims, allowing the piston height to be easily set, since I accidentally destroyed some valuable shims using a big stack of them to set piston height earlier. I only got to use the tool two times this trip, but I also got to show it off to the Fabius River Drainage District commissioners and the operator.

All the roustabouts and pump guys have been working four ten-hour days, so they all get Friday off. I chose this day to invite the Fabius guys to the Indian Graves Pumphouse to discuss maintaining their Fairbanks-Morse (6)32E14s. The meeting went great! I had all the tools and Nathan’s help to show how easy it is to repair and maintain big heavy-duties like Fairbanks. As a demonstration, we pulled a rod bearing, looked at it, and then put it back and checked the piston height. All of them were impressed and Nathan and I felt like we may have saved two amazing engines from the scrapper.

Road Trippin’

Right after the meeting, I wrapped everything at Indian Graves up to go back to the airport, so that I could get to Seattle and immediately turn around and fly to Alaska to ship out on Catalyst.

Well, things just got ridiculous. I got a flat tire on the rented Prius. Damn. Oh, well. I put on the spare tire, then made one more trip down to the levy to drop off an engine manual, and then I’ll be damned – I got another flat and picked up a nail in a different tire.

With the flight leaving in 3 ½ hours, I was able to look up the closest tire repair shop on my phone. “Ron’s Tire Shop” sent a truck right away. I reported the incident to the rental company over the phone, and arranged to have someone drop me off immediately once I got to the rental office in the off chance that I got there in time. Then, I arranged new flights in case I missed this one, and reserved a hotel room across the highway from the airport, and began re-scheduling the flight to Alaska (currently set for 10:30 AM pacific time).

While on the phone, the tire repair guy was carrying on with the mechanic. He had to drive back to the shop and get two new tires. I’ll take the time to file a claim later. Finally, the tires were installed and the one with the nail patched, then I hit the road. The drive from Quincy to St. Louis (which I’m getting really familiar with) usually takes two hours; this time, I made it in one and a half and made the flight with seconds to spare. Wow! Once I got my boarding pass and went through the security check-in, I heard the elevator music movie scene from the Blues Brothers where they are in the elevator after the best car chase ever.

The Ready hauled-out

We heard that the tug Ready was hauled out and looks great. Sounds like the new owners are making progress – I hope they get the engine running again soon!

A new Portolan is out!

I just got a newsletter from Nortwest Seaport with all the non-engine news from the organization. They included a feature article on the YMTA Engineer for a Day field trip that I ran for them last February. They’ve put up a .pdf version on their website if you haven’t gotten yours by mail, so go check it out.

It looks like they’re doing really good things these days. I might even renew my membership.

Hand-fitting versus precision parts

Whenever I’m scraping bearings in, I get a lot of grief from spectators who see all my fuss over each engine part and how I seem “overly concerned” about fit and how the method is slow. Fitting bearings does take a long time, but it’s not a process that you can take shortcuts on. I rarely use power tools on parts that must fit precisely, because the margin for error is just too great. Scraping in a bearing is a time-consuming process that requires patience and seems to be seen as a dying art.

New engines use all precision parts that you can just bolt on and go. This is desirable because labor rates are higher than the cost of parts and parts can now be machined with fairly close tolerances. The same holds true for a lot of things these days: engines, furniture, trains, buildings, jewelry, or martinis. Houses can be assembled without using a saw, trains are delivered in a box, and I even drank a mixed drink from a can while I was on the airplane. However, I know I’m not alone in my belief that finding a mechanic who can hand-fit bearings is like finding a bartender who can make that perfect cocktail the old-fashioned way: it may take longer and it may be more expensive, but it’s totally worth it at the end of the day.

I do regret that the fitting take so much time and believe me when I say there is progress – though it may be hard to see behind the ever-mounding pile of emery bits. Most of all, be patient!

Off to Alaska

On Saturday, OTM Inc’s lead mechanic took off to Alaska again to work on the Catalyst until September 1.

2009 Week 26 in Review

20Work continues on the Arthur Foss

This week, I continued to work on the Arthur Foss‘s Washington, working with OTM’s mechanic Crystal. We started the week with two big challenges to work on 1) make a tool to drive out the very stuck air-start valve, and 2) put the very heavy cylinder head back onto the engine.

I had to make a tool to get the air-start valve out. Back in 2005, during the very first session of Diesel Engine Theory, we pulled all the intake and exhaust valve cages out of the Arthur‘s engine. I wanted to pull all the air start valves in the head at that time, too, but they were really, really stuck. I decided that it would be best to take them out when we had the heads off, but I’ve been really antsy to start getting them out.

The day to get them out came on Thursday of this week, when I got to South Lake Union with the tool I’d made. It’s basically a cylindrical steel punch that I put up against the air start valve on the underside of the cylinder, and then wailed on with a ten-pound sledge hammer. It didn’t budge for a while – long enough that I thought “crap, I’m going to have to cut this [censored] out in pieces,” which I had to do with one of the exhaust valves back in 2005. But then I hit it some more and it finally came loose and popped out of the head, and I brought it back to the shop to clean it up. Whew.

Later in the week, we used a borrowed three-ton come-along to winch the piston back up into the cylinder, then set the head back on the cylinder. The come-along was a really great tool – I want one. I’ll have to put it on the Arthur Foss‘s wish-list, too.

I picked up a bunch more supplies, including water grommet material in two thicknesses. Then, I had to make a lot of calls and fuss over the head gasket because the manufacturer didn’t have the right material, but I finally got it.

There was also a lot of cleaning and painting all the individual parts. We painted the rockers and valve parts the usual Arthur white and painted the exhaust manifold with high-temperature paint. The TAP guys helped out a bunch this week with the painting – thanks, guys!

With all that accomplished, we were all ready for the next class on Saturday! But first…

South Lake Union party

The Friday Lake Union Park Working Group is still doing great things. On Thursday, they had a big party to “roll out” a new planning document that they all worked on. Lots of people showed up to see representatives from every group (like 20!) speak and everyone was really excited. I’m excited too – ten years ago, none of the different boat factions would even have been in the same room together, and now applauding for each other and finding ways to work together. Way to go, everyone!

Atlas-Imperials are not dead

The Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society just published an article in their quarterly rag the Sea Chest titled “The Atlas Imperial Diesel Engine, an Innovative Engine Built in the 1920s”. While this article gives the Atlas-Imperial diesels credit for being innovating and durable machines, the overarching theme suggests that the engines are gone for good.

I disagree.

Old Tacoma Marine Inc is here to show the next generation that heavy-duty diesels like the Atlas-Imperials are alive and well and still working as they were designed to do almost a century ago. The 500 or so heavy-duties from the four manufactures that I like the most are near-evenly grouped into four active categories by use: commercial, pleasure with a purpose, museums, and collectors. In all categories, the engines must function to fulfill specific duties, and these keep a small but diligent group of mechanics, engineers, operators, parts suppliers, curators, grant writers, museum program managers, and grey-haired guys who know everything all gainfully employed year-round. We’re a tight bunch who meet often and share stories and get their own tables at the tugboat parties or tractor shows.

This network of support and the great need for the engines to run is the reason this article is premature in writing of the death of these innovative engines, built to last from the 1920s and far into the future.

Underwater Surveys surveys the Lightship #83

A diver from Underwater Surveys did an underwater video survey of the Lightship #83 this week. He found that the hull is in about the condition we expected, with lots of aquatic growth – so much that it looks like a coral reef. I can’t wait to haul it out and clean all that off.

If anyone needs an underwater survey of their boat, let us through and we’ll patch you through to Underwater Surveys.

Indian Grave #3 running!

This week, I also got word that the Indian Grave Drainage District’s engine #3 successfully ran for about five minutes. I can’t wait to see them all working!

Diesel Engine Theory Session Four

Saturday morning, we all met on the Arthur for part four of the Diesel Engine Theory class. The first task was to move all the parts from my truck back onto the boat. We brought them all to the back deck to sort them out:

We did some more painting and cleaning and sanding, and cut grommets for the exhaust manifold:

We also did some old Diesel Engine Theory standbys, such as the Washington Valve Dance (putting spring retainers on the valve stem), the Kerplunk Test (fitting the valve cages into the cylinder head; a “kerplunk!” sound is good, a “squish…” sound means more sanding), and annealing copper gaskets with heat and then cold water:

Then we had another amazing lunch cooked in the Arthur‘s frying hot galley with the fabulous Chef Kim, who made cheese sandwiches, tomato soup, and cayenne brownies. She also baked lots more of the amazing bread she made last week, and we all had tons of it.

After lunch, we did some more cleaning, then got the rod bearing back in. This was an excruciating job because the rod bearing is two big heavy pieces of metal that fit around the crankshaft. It’s tricky because you have to suspend the lower half while you get the upper half in place and the bolts through. I rigged up some braces to keep the pieces in place, then got into the crankpit while all the students maneuvered the pieces into place.

It was hard work (especially since the boat was hot and the crankpit full of solvent), but we got it done just a little after five. Next week is the last week of Diesel Engine Theory 2009; let’s hope we get it all back together in time!

Seattle Power Tool Races

The power-tool races were Saturday evening. I wish I could have attended. Hopefully next year.

2009 Week 25 in Review

This June is a very busy month for Old Tacoma Marine Inc. Right after last week’s great Diesel Engine Theory class, I got back on an airplane for Illinois.

Back to Quincy

I got back in to Quincy and the Indian Grave Pumphouse to pick up where I left off two weeks ago: setting up the rod bearings on engine three. As always, I spent some time at the beginning cleaning and finding a workspace in all the piles of parts and tools. Once we actually started putting pistons in, though, we got into a good rhythm. I cleaned the bearing, fit the felt and felt springs, and put it onto the journal. Then Keith and Nathan put the piston in on the piston holder tools, then bolted down the head. Then I set the piston height by stacking about ¾ of an inch of shims between the bearing halves and pistons, using a jack to push the piston into the bottom of the head while measuring its travel with a dial indicator. The Fairbanks-Morse manual calls for .125 to .188 of an inch piston-to-head clearance. Using the above method, I could easily set them all at exactly .125.

After that, I set the rod bearing clearance. I pulled out the big stack of shims and guessed at the required shim pack, then I bumped the bearings and adjusted them. The manual calls for zero clearance and good fore-and-aft motion. This is much tighter than on pressure-lubricated bearings like those on Washingtons. The bearings on these Fairbanks only receive a few drips per minute while running, so the bearing needs to be much tighter to create the hydraulic wedge action necessary for it to work.

Now, with this in mind, I did set up the bearings much tighter than the pressure-lubricated rule-of-thumb, but I was afraid to set it all the way to zero. I know that when the book states “zero clearance” they mean “zero with a good film of oil” and probably not with a heavy-duty hydraulic jack pushing up on the bearing and maybe not using a dial indicator measuring to within ten thousandths of an inch.

So, I set everything at .004 of an inch. I see this as fair and might go to .003 if I could be there for the first 100 hours of running.

Once all the rod bearings were finished, we set up the turning tool again to see how smoothly the crank turns. It turns great! Then, we started shooting soda bottles out of the injector holes.

Also, on Wednesday, I had a nice dinner with Indian Graves Drainage District Commissioner Duke and his family. Duke really likes these old engines; he’s telling the folks at Fabius River Drainage District to keep their two 32E14 (6)s. I’m going to keep badgering them as well, and I hope to get a grant to go down and refurbish them, rather than replacing them with new high-speed diesels.

I’m scheduling another trip for July 5th to finish the next two engines.

Diesel Engine Theory Session Three

On Friday night, I flew back to Seattle just in time for the third session of Diesel Engine Theory aboard the Arthur Foss. The next morning, I got up even before the chickens – which is really impressive because Saturday was the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.

I stopped by the shop to get it ready for the class, then got coffee, then went to the Arthur to start up the diesel stove for Chef Kim. Then, I went back to the shop just in time. Everyone but Sterling and the three TAP guys (who canceled) were there waiting. We spent the morning cleaning more parts, testing and setting the spring pressure in the injector, and lapping the intake and exhaust valves to their seats.

Just as we were getting ready to head out, 200 naked bicycle riders went screaming by the Shop down Leary. For those of you not from Seattle, the naked bicyclists are a nationally-known tradition that opens the Fremont Solstice Parade (you should Google it). Of course, Diana the museologist and class photographer was in back photographing engine parts or something at the time, so we didn’t get any OTM Inc photos of the bicyclists. Maybe next year.

Just before lunch, we took the air intake manifold to the car wash. I’ve found this is an efficient way to clean large engine parts – it gets all the big chunks of stuff out of the parts, and car washes are all set up to handle diesel gunk, anyway.

With that done, we got to the boat where Kim had the galley baking hot and French onion soup, salad, fruit, and fresh bread, all made on the Arthur‘s diesel oven waiting for us.

It was great – maybe the best lunch ever because of the bread:

We spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning the piston ring grooves and measuring them, then measuring the piston ring gap. I think that many of the students would say that measuring the ring gap was a favorite part of the class because to do so one must get completely inside the crankpit. Wow. Standing in the crankpit, leaning on the crankshaft, and reaching overhead to place a ring in the liner to check the gap is an amazing task for those who do not regularly get into engines.

Then we lowered the piston into the cylinder and set it on the crank to get it ready for installing the rings. That job will need to wait for next week, though.

2009 Week 22 in Review

Still scraping bearings

This week in the Indian Grave Drainage District pumphouse, I measured the bearings for Engine One, then bounced from engine to engine lapping, scraping, lapping, scraping, lapping, scraping, and cleaning.

Lia flew out to visit and we had a real Quincy lunch with one of the pumphouse operators – a snapping turtle pulled straight out of the drainage ditch.

OTM Inc goes to Erie

Diana the Museologist went to a conference this week in Erie, Pennsylvania. The Council of American Maritime Museums is a professional group that’s been meeting for years to talk about how they’re trying to save old boats and stuff that came off of boats. This year, the themes were “Collaboration” and more importantly “How to weather the recession.”

She gave two presentations during the conference. The first was about the Lake Union Park Working Group that’s been meeting for a few years now to coordinate heritage programming at South Lake Union. Apparently, everyone in the country is really pumped up about collaboration and working together, but us Seattle folks are some of the first to really get a good idea of how to work together on a week-to-week basis. Diana said that the other people at the conference were really excited to hear about the work that we’ve been doing around here, especially the kind of teamwork that went into the Holiday Spirit event last December (back in 2008 Week 50).

Diana’s second presentation was on hauling out the Arthur Foss:

Sadly, we did that amazing project before OTM started blogging, but we’ll tell the full story soon. As a museologist, Diana wrote two huge long final reports for the haul-out (posted on Northwest Seaport’s website here, but had only twenty minutes to share it at the conference. The coordinators apparently were really interested in hearing about the “non-profit/for-profit partnership model” used during the haul-out. That basically means that Northwest Seaport, who own the Arthur, hired OTM Inc to manage the haul-out, rather than having their own volunteers and staff do it. This worked well for everyone, since NWS had experienced professional boat repair people working on the project, and OTM and the other boat repair people had a good contract on a great boat. The folks at the conference were apparently really impressed that the haul-out came out on time and under-budget – unheard of when the museum tries to negotiate with a shipyard. The “estimators” at a shipyard can smell inexperience in a project manager like sharks can smell blood in the water.

After the talks, the conference people also got to go sailing, in both smallcraft and aboard the museum’s replica brig, the Niagra. Here’s Diana and other museologists in a “dipping lugger”:

And here’s the crowd on the Niagra, a great replica of a 1913 naval brig:

One of these days, we need to send the entire OTM Inc crew to one of these conferences to show how we do it.

2009 Week 21 in Review

This week, OTM Inc is still in Illinois, fitting bearings.

Still scraping bearings

Last week, three of us started scraping the re-babbitted bearings into the Fairbanks-Morse diesels in Illinois. We got everything set up and started barring the engine over so that the lapping compound could do its trick, but it was really painful. The bearings don’t fit very well yet, so it’s really hard to turn the engine over and we were dying. Keith went home on Friday vowing to invent a turning tool that would make it easier. I took pictures of the one I saw in Oblong and sent it to him, but he apparently came up with a couple different designs over the weekend.

He brought one in on Monday and spent all morning adjusting it. I didn’t pay close attention, since I was still working on the bearings, but finally I heard the “clang, clang, clang” of the the pawls riding on the flywheel as it turns. Sweet!

It turns out that Keith used an electric motor coupled with a gear box with something like thirty-to-one reduction. It’s also a ninety-degree gear, so the output shaft is on the side. He also hooked up a board and some wheels to give it leverage, and stretched two giant V-belts over the flywheel. Brilliant! It works really well and sped things way up:

The three of us got into a good rhythm: Keith and Nathan would set in the bearings on Engine Two, then lap them while I scraped bearings for Engine Three. Then, we would switch, so that Keith and Nathan were setting in the bearings that I’d just scraped. We we cruised through alota bearings, but we’ve got a lot of fitting to do before we’re done.

More old Fairbanks-Morses

Over the weekend, I went down to St. Louis to pick up the next set of bearings. This time, I stopped at Keith’s house in Carlinville to drop off the outer “race,” or rod bushing. Unlike other heavy duties I work on, Fairbanks-Morse diesels use needle bearings between the piston and the piston pin. Lamar ordered new outer races made for Engine Three, which Keith will be installing at his shop.

While in Carlinville, we just happened to stop in during the tractor show. I got to see another Fairbanks diesel, this time a (2) 32E14 two-cylinder:

Then on Sunday, I visited the Le Sueur Pioneer Power Show grounds, where there’s a (4) 32E12 that drives a generator. Their building was closed, though, so I had to look through the window. Lame. They’ve got some small pictures of it posted on their website here, though.

Anyway, these things are everywhere out here! I love seeing all these great old diesels. We’re trying to get them all up on the website so you can see them, too. I’ll be in Illinois for a while longer, so if anyone reading knows of another heavy-duty to see, let me know.

2009 Week 20 in Review

Back to Illinois

On Monday, it was back to Illinois. I picked up the bearings with the rental car on my way to Quincy, and spent the rest of the week measuring the bearings and cautiously fitting them into the number three engine. There is no one “right” way to fit bearings: so much of it depends on the individual circumstances that it changes often.

This time, I needed to do a lot of extra measuring because the first time around the bearings were wrong (back in Week 17). Then, rather than bluing to fit, I installed each bearing and then installed the squisher tool, then lapped the bearing in a little, and then scrape down the high spots. This process insured that the bearing was the same shape it would be when running. The lapping shows the contact area much better than bluing in this case. It is a little extra work, but I’m getting great results, so I’ll continue to do it this way.

On the other hand, the rod bearings are very rigid and so bluing will work well on them.

OTM Inc on KUOW

KUOW, the local NPR station, ran a Weekday program on “field recording” the sounds of everyday life around us. They played a lot of different sound clips, including one from OTM Inc’s everyday life: old engine sounds!

The program is archived on the website here. They play the engine sounds clip at about 30 minutes into the program. Take a listen!

Thanks to David for letting us know we’re famous.

A Visit to Oblong

On Saturday, I needed to drive to St. Louis to pick up the next set of bearings. On my way, I thought “what’s another four hours of driving?” and continued on to Oblong, Illinois to see the Fairbanks-Morse (2) Y semi-diesel at the Oblong Antique Tractor & Engine Show grounds:

The engine is really neat: it was removed from the Mt Erie drainage district pump house in 1990, after 68 years in service. It has two cylinders with a 14 inch bore; it produces 100 horsepower and weighs about 12 tons. Mike met me at the grounds even though they’re not open yet to show me the engine and tell me about the Antique Tractor Association. They have about 200 members and a handful of them are very active on the grounds, acquiring and resurrecting engines and putting together working displays of how it all was done in the past.

The Oblong Antique Tractor & Engine Show formed in 1961, but was idle for a while, then in 1987 it picked back up. They partnered with the Illinois Oil Field Museum for a while, but then the Oil Field Museum got big money, grabbed up some old engines, and moved to the other side of town. Now, like bookends, the two museums display their collections: the sterile and seized-up Oil Field Museum to the west, and the open-air tractor show permanent displays to the east. Best of all is the second weekend in August: the tractor show roars to life, running all their engines and more than 200 visiting displays, while the western collection sits, rusted yet funded.

This year’s Oblong Antique Tractor & Engine Show is August 7th through the 9th at the Crawford County Fairgrounds in Oblong, Illinois.

The guys in Oblong told some great stories from the last 20 or so shows they were a part of. My favorite was the one about a huge horizontal Superior with an air-starter. Before the owner hits it, he winds a string around the governor shaft and pulls while hitting the air, so the crowed thinks it’s like the lawnmower. I love it!

I’m really glad that I made the trip out to Oblong, and I hope that I can make the big summer show someday. Thanks for the tour, Mike!

A new season for the Cape Cross

The 1941 fish packer Cape Cross (formerly the Cape Scott) with the six-cylinder G Enterprise is preparing to get underway. Dan reports that the new owners are working hard to prepare the boat for a season of fish packing and that the Enterprise runs well. This is great news and we are all very happy to hear that the new owners have the patience and boat-maneuvering skill to run the direct-reversible.

That’s saying a lot – one must be patient to wait for reverse; observe the boat’s motions; and use forethought in predicting currents, wind, and prop walk (and in shallow water, lack of prop walk). One of the best recommendations we can make for these direct-reverse captains is to count your starts or have someone else count them, then log it in the ships’ wheelhouse log book and review it occasionally. This way, the measurable goal is to come in with fewer starts as you get better at maneuvering.

2009 Week 19 in Review

Breaking down the party

I spent the first part of the week finishing the big M4 Party. Volunteers and I worked around the clock to clean up and return all the stuff, following the amazing show. Thanks to all those who helped this year!

If you want to be involved in the next M4 party, please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with the crew.

Preparing for Illinois

I talked two weeks ago about how I’d been talking with the Indian Grave Pump House in Illinois about installing re-babbitted main bearings in their Fairbanks-Morse engines. I ended Week 17 hearing “we’re waiting for the bearings to come back from the shop,” and by this week they were back to “hurry hurry hurry,” so I’m getting ready to go to Illinois again.

I picked up more lapping compound (a big 5lb bucket this time), and cleaned up the shop. This time, the trip is indefinitely long, so I had to be sure the bills are paid and the chickens have feed. It’ll probably be two or three weeks, so stay tuned for blogs from the Midwest.

Business as usual

OTM Inc got audited by the insurance company. Lame.

Elliott Bay Tugboat Races

On Saturday, OTM Inc went to the tugboat races on Elliott Bay aboard the Maris Pearl. It was a great day for racing, and we had a blast:

We also saw the Fearless out in fine form:

Tugboat Night!

We had another session of Tugboat Night aboard the Arthur Foss. The next session is June 13, so we’ll see you there!

Labor versus Capital

There’s been lots of talk about our ideas of labor changing these days, but I want to know if our ideas of efficiency will change. I think it might have to.

Let’s say we give billions to the auto industry so that they can keep people employed. We as tax payers will pay them to make cars, but then no one wants to buy them. Did it work? No but if we give billions to an auto industry that makes cars by hand, using hand tools. And turn out less cars people keep their jobs.

By the same token, if we give billions to highway improvement, it will be under the banner of creating jobs and employing people. It sounds like a good idea, but I’m worried that what will happen when the government starts awarding contracts. If the lowest bidder is the company that wants to buy a big automatic highway re-paving machine that was made in China and can be driven by one person, then did the plan work? I say that it didn’t, if the original plan was to create jobs (unless we’re counting off-shore manufacturing jobs).

I’m worried that billions will go to replace old diesels for no reason except to keep the Chinese who build Caterpillars employed for another day. Ultimately the money earmarked for a cleaner and better running fleet should be spent to have engineers and mechanics replace the rings and injectors. A billion dollars can service a lot of engines and keep people employed right here – plus it will help protect the environment by both cutting emissions and preventing new engines to be shipped around the world and old engines to be shipped to the scrappers.

Really, if we clean up the engines that are already in use, the benefits will be compounded. We’ll have cleaner air, more work with less capital investment, a better life for mid-level educated folks, and no artificially-created demand for the new products. All the equipment serviced will already be in demand due to the fact that someone owns it.

So, government folks, please stop creating meaningless capital investment and buy labor, instead. There are millions of ways to improve the world with out making anything.

2009 Week 17 in Review

OTM Inc in Illinois

I spent most of this week in the middle of an Illinois corn field, but it sure felt like the bilge. The worksite is called “the bottoms,” a huge area about ten feet below the Mississippi River. It’s part of the Indian Grave Drainage District, and is kept more-or less dry by the Indian Grave Pump House:

The pump house has three five-cylinder 32E14 stationary Fairbanks-Morse diesels that couple to a ninety degree gear to power three large pumps below. They pump water from about 100,000 acres up to the Mississippi.

Here’s some background:

Back in June, the Mississippi levee broke and the lowlands were flooded, including the pump house and the three engines. The pumps are maintained and operated by a local municipality, but due to the amount of damage sustained by the levee failure, and the fact that the levee is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Corps is footing the bill to repair the pump house. The project includes replacing the windows that were blown out, repairing the pumps that were damaged, and rebuilding the engines that were flooded.

Any Corps job is swamped with requirements, assessments, a paper trail, bids, oversight, and certifications. The Corps stipulated that the project include rebuilding the engines and that the main bearings be re-babbitted. They entire project went out to bid, and a construction company called Lamar Construction got the winning bid.

They hired a great heavy equipment mechanic named Keith to work on the engines. Keith and his crew disassembled them, sent out the bearings, and ordered rebuild kits. When it came time to fit the newly re-babbitted and machined main bearings Keith called on OTM Inc to help with the job.

I arrived in St. Louis on Tuesday and drove the 100 or so miles to Quincy, Illinois. I showed up at the worksite, but immediately met with some disapproval. To some of the guys in this field, I just look too young to be the “expert” called in to do a finicky job like fitting in main bearings, so the Corps inspector lectured at me for a while about minimum experience requirements. Fortunately, I have ample experience in doing this and lots of other old-engine jobs. More importantly, I have a phone with all the old-timers and trade professionals on speed dial.

The Corps guy eventually left me alone and I began to measure things, starting with the journals and the bearings. I installed a shell as a test and found that it was really tight, so I kept taking measurements and started getting worried. None of the shells really looked right, and the fit was terrible. I started to doubt myself and I had got all these guys breathing down my neck and I was really sweating for a few hours. Then I realized that the bearings really wouldn’t do because they were also non-concentric (by fourteen thousandths of an inch!) and undersized, and the problem was probably with the original machine-shop re-babbitting process.

I knew at this point that I couldn’t accept this kind of work, but I felt like I needed to build a case before I could just reject the bearings. The guys at the pump house were pretty skeptical; they were like “You’re here to fit the bearings; can’t you just scrape them to fit?” I had to explain that the scraping is part of a process where a perfect bearing is fit to an imperfect shaft. To attempt to scrape 14 thousandths out and then make it fit is way too much to ask.

They still weren’t convinced, so I measured the shells in a million spots, then installed a few to illustrate how bad the patterns were, then dug up a new bearing to show how they should be. The guys at the pump house eventually agreed with me, so I then drove to the machine shop to find out what process they used.

The bearing shells are straight with a 175 degree curve to them – like a pipe cut in half. The process that I’m familiar with for re-babbitting shell bearings goes like this:

Once the old babbitt is machined out and the steel shell is tinned, they chock it up and spin in a lathe while melted babbitt is poured into it. The centrifugal force helps ensure that the babbitt is seated well on the steel shell and any bubbles or impurities move to the inside surface of the shell. This shell is thin and warps after new babbitt is attached to it. Machinists hammer on the babbitt to relieve the tension, then fit the bearing into a saddle the same shape as the one in the engine. Then it gets squished in there really tight and machined to the diameter of the journal. This ensures concentricity.

In contrast, the machine shop selected for this job has never worked on shell bearing like these before. I don’t think they really knew where to start, and it showed in the “finished” bearings. They specialized in flame-spraying or “metalizing,” and they used this process to build up the babbitt, rather than pouring melted babbitt into the spinning shell, and the machining was done by holding the shell in an oversized fixture and with one bolt threaded into the back, instead of a clamp. This left the shells twisted and in some cases curled or flattened. The shells must be perfectly concentric or the shaft will be forced to one side and then the other.

Fourteen-thousands non-concentric is a lot when you’re talking about bearings — on other jobs, I’ve scraped and scraped for days and only taken off two or three thousands for all that work.  The machine shop guys said that something like “well, fourteen thousands is the best we can do.” My smart-ass reply was “look, the bearings were perfect in the 40′s and we are, I’m guessing, more technologically advanced now.”

I haven’t encountered using the flamespray process to re-babbitt a bearing shell before; I’ve only used centrifugally cast in my other jobs. I’ll do some homework over the next few weeks and report back about what I find.

For this job, though, the flamespray shop people were in way over their heads, since they’d never worked with these kind of bearings before. The whole situation could have been eliminated if some resourceful person had called a few people and asked a few questions, then a few more, since ultimately that leads back to Dan. I’ve found that the moral of any story like this is to ask yourself “What would Dan do?” and then do it.

So, at the end of the week, I sent the bearings back to be re-babbitted again and I’ll be back in Illinois soon enough.

Tour of the Anheuser-Busch Busweiser Brewery

While I was in St. Louis, I took the tour of the Anheuser-Busch Budweiser brewery and got my two free beers:

The tour was pretty good, but I was really mad that they didn’t talk about how the brewery used the first non-experimental diesel engine in America. It turns out that Mr. Adolphus Busch got the American rights to produce diesel engines in 1897 and retained Mr. Diesel himself as a consultant. The Busch-Sulzer Diesel Engine Company eventually produced both stationary and marine diesels, installing them in big ships, ferries, and public utility electricity plants. They also got lots of US Navy contracts during WWI and WWII.

The tour didn’t go into any of this, but I guess that’s fair since they were talking more about how they make beer and the brewery’s history, rather than about the awesome emerging technology at the time. They did mention that they used refridgeration, which was pretty special back then.

Aside from that, I was totally impressed by the whole production and how industrial it all is. The buildings take up many many city blocks with pipes connecting them all and trucks going in and out. If I didn’t know it was a brewery, I would have thought it was a refinery or something.

All that for beer.