Spring Cleaning Part Deux!

[Proud2BeCC]

How did you fix the depth finder? Mine is doing the same thing.

[bmh2208]

Proud....The problem with mine was that one of the conductors from the cable that goes into the faria control box had come out of the pin in the connector. I had to hack the connector apart to where I could get to the pin and then I soldered the wire directly to the pin. Not the right way to fix it but it worked and I didn't want to track down the connector manufacturer and pin.




So it rained all weekend and I didn't get anything done. Should be nice all week so I should get some progress going this week. Next up is to install the electronic ballast valves and reinstall the tanks.

[bmh2208]

I'm starting to see that this list is going to take a lot longer than I had hoped, but oh well.....

I am going to mount the valves rigidly to the ball valve and take that 4" piece of hose out of the equation so that it will be easier to service. I hate all the old hoses. It's near impossible to take off. I had to cut the 4" one off of the barb piece. I now have to find a 3/4" x 1/2" male male brass pipe fitting to adapt the ball valve to the solenoid valve.

I thought that I had a big enough wrench. Funny thing was that I needed the size between the two sizes on this open end wrench.




Had to run to HD to get a new one. I don't know how many times I've been there yet, but I'm going to say around a dozen already.




Here is the part taken out




The second one was a little harder. It started to undo the nut from the actual ball valve. I wasn't about to get another wrench down there, so I just pulled it out. I can now easily take it apart.




You can see what I'm talking about here...




Empty space for the new valves




An engineers best friend is what?
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SILICONE



Depth Finder, Done, mark it off the list




Here's a shot at the end of the solenoid. I have no idea if it's sealed in side, so what do I do?




You guessed it right, Silicone.




You'll see a small piece of heatshrink coming out of the silicone. I'm gonna put this braided sheath in the heatshrink and then shrink it down and should make for a pretty protected cable.




Here's some pictures of the pieces that I got back from the finisher. He bead blasted and sanded all the chrome plating off the pieces so I have a much better surface to start with. Only cost me $30. Definitely worth the $10 of mine since I get to split that with 3 peeps.






Not sure yet what I want to do with them and wanted some feedback. The choices are:

1) Clear Alodine (Free - 2 weeks lead)
2) Black matte powdercoat (Free - 2 weeks lead)
3) Primer and paint them. I think that I can do a few coats of primer and wetsanding and get them to look just as good as a car paint finish.

I'm leaning towards just painting them myself, but that leads to another question. What color? I kinda wanna do them gloss white and have them blend in. Or I could go black like they were from the factory (what would be the fun in that though).


Were trying to take a trip out to the lake tomorrow. Supposed to be 80 and theres not a cloud in the sky (today and tomorrow). I am hoping to get the valves and ballast tanks reinstalled before then.

Cheers!

[bmh2208]

Just got back from the local plumbing supply. I went to HD earlier and they didn't have what I needed.

I showed him my parts and told him what I wanted to do. All the while looking completely dumbfounded. I told him I needed a 1/2" male to 3/4" male, and a 1/2" male to 3/4" Female. He said they dont make that. I figured out a way to do it with 2 parts per side. When I was done he repeated it back to me, 3/4" bushing to 1/2", 1/2" threaded nipple, 3/4" to 1/2" bell reducer, 1/2" nip. I almost asked if I could come back there and help because I was like no way is this guy gonna get it right the first time. I sat there for about 5 minutes reading the latest harbor freight (second favorite store to Fry's), and he came back with this.



Exactly what I wanted. Here's all the separate pieces.




And finally the finished piece.




Gonna be a pain to install the one closest to the driveshaft. I might have to losen one of the hose clamps and twist it around to make the room for the solenoid to spin.

[Cory210]

BMH2208

I am really want to know how the values are going to work. I would love to rip those crappy values out of my boat but every value I have look at is allot of $$. I have a couple of question how much do they cost? Are they explosion proof? and if you have to neck them down to 1/2 how much slower are they going to fill the tanks?

Thanks great write up

[bmh2208]

Cory, the valve and solenoid is about $90.

Not gonna make it out to the lake today. Too bad because it's already 75F and there is no wind at all. Gonna finish putting the tanks back in and some other stuff.

Here is the part that wasn't supposed to come off of the ball valve. It gave me headaches all night long as it you cannot tighten it as tight as you can. If you go too much you can't turn the valve. I might have to take it back apart and loctite it like it was from the factory. Let's just see if it leaks any.




Had to take the valve completely apart. The solenoid stem hits the transmission, driveshaft, bottom of hull, motor mount...you name it.




I put a piece of tape over the valve so the little parts didn't fall out into the bilge when I was spinning it on. Did a test fitting. This makes it so that you know exactly how you are going to do it when you install it for the last time. Made things much smoother.




All the little pieces with teflon tape applied




This is the second valve assembly. I did the first on piece by piece and it was a pain because they would all spin just a little when you got to a point where the part was tight. I tightened the second one out where I could get two wrenches on it. Made it much easier second time around.




Valves in their final resting place. Got all the hoses put on and the clamps tightened. Not a lot of room to work down there.






Solenoid stems reinstalled. Good thing that they have a nice oring to seal as I could barely get a wrench down there to get one last tightening on them.




End of the hoses attached to the pumps. These new hoses are 100x's better than the old ones. You can actually put them on and take off without breaking a hand.




Good time to tighten the water pump belt. I got it tighter but not as tight as I would like. It's not too hard to access with everything back and I'm sure that I'll have to retighten sometime during the season.




At this point I was ready to call it a night but decided to go ahead and finish so all I had to do was put the tanks back in. Crazy how just 3 hours of work needs this many tools in the boat.




Ht Shrink and wire braid installed. You have to make sure that you have all the right pieces and in the right order before you solder. Nothing worse than having to unsolder because you forgot a piece.




Ready to solder. Had to figure out what wires were what. I had slept since then.




Ht Shrink Shrunk




Finished assembly. Should work out pretty well.







Mounted




Cabling tied up and finally complete







Gonna finish the bow tank today. Gonna have to get some different fitting because there isn't as much linear room up there.

Finally, nobody has an opinion on what color the vents should be? Gonna start primering them tonight.

Peace!

[DavidF]

Good work. Any word on whether or not the valves are explosion proof? What is the brand and model number of the valves (or did I miss that somewhere)?

Have the vents powder coated black...I am a purist.

[vr6mole]

Do you have a third pickup on the bottom of the hull for that other valve? Looks like you have 2 in the engine compartment alone.

I am a little confused as to why you need 3 but my boat only has one pickup for the ballast tanks so I imagine I really only need to get 1 electronic valve for this to work?

[bmh2208]

David, the pic at the top of this page has the info in it. Just save it to your desktop and zoom in really close. No word yet. The solenoid itself looked pretty sealed. I'd venture to guess that it is potted somehow on the inside. I'm waiting on a spec sheet.

On mine, I have the two rear tanks and the belly tanks. Each one has it's own filling pump and water intake. I guess you could just use one valve but it might take twice as long to fill up since your trying to squeeze twice as much water through the same size pipe.

Oh yeah, and I think these wont be any more of a bottle neck than the old stock ones. Those were 1/2" also.

[Cory210]

Did you wire the values to the pumps are to a switch?

[DJShannonCSTX]

Cody, Whats up, your doing a **** of a job on the boat , looks good. I have that 02 super Air, white with blue and orange. We go out to Lake Bryan all the time. Been out there three times this week. Water is a little colder than last week, since the rain probably. Feddie comes with me some. I DJ all the pool parties around town. I look on here all the time but just set up an account today.

I am fixing to replace my interior speakers, did yours used to have the factory "mesh" over them?? I see you have new ones in??? Did you just cute the vinal out biger to get the old ones out??

[AuMDLST]

Rather than painting - what about replacing those parts with carbon fiber ones? - I believe the owner from Cali (grantwest?)with all the carbon did that - you could buy the laid up sheet and cut them out. The ring around the pylon would be the most difficult.

[AuMDLST]

http://planetnautique.com/index.php?...ghlight=carbon

Sorry - It is Grant_west

[bmh2208]

Yeah carbon would look bad a$$ but would be pretty expensive and take too long. Think I'm gonna paint them white.

Cory....the valves are wired in parallel to the pumps. When the pumps turn on from the dash switch it automagically opens up the valve.

Shannon...hey, it's Brandon, not Cody. It's actually mine, the other cody and another guys boat. I'm sure I'll see you out there sometime this summer. Gotta see that W2W on the knee board you know?

[Gizmo]

Brandon,
Is there any reason why you didnt put the solenoids directly on the pump intakes? There seems to be more room in that area. At least there is in my boat.

Concerning the explosion proof solenoids, if I understand correclty they operate by electromagnetic force. I dont see how much spark could be put out by this method. But then again I slept through my EE classes.

Thanks for the detailed write ups and pics.