This is what it looks like after I got it up to my shop. I neglected to get pictures of it before removing it from its home in the engine room, but the "After" pictures will be almost the same.
Kudos to my friend Len who took it out of the boat for me. It is mounted on a bulkhead just forward of the port engine, and you have to have the body of a 10 year old boy to squeeze in there to work on it in place. Len is a diesel mechanic who works on all sorts of loaders, excavators, man lifts and the like and seems to be able to bend in places that I cannot. Thanks Len!
I had two primary reasons for wanting to take it out of the boat. First and foremost, it had started to stink pretty badly of diesel fumes when it fired up. I knew that if I could smell it, then wife Lisa would really notice it. It had not been cleaned after almost 6 years of use and so I knew it had to have some soot built up in it. Secondly, the glow plug had been replaced in mid summer 2010, and since the unit was going to be out of the boat it would be much easier to replace the glow plug and screen in the shop rather than in the boat.
Here's the glow plug that I took out. It's not in that bad shape and surely would have worked another season or two. But you can see it was starting to deform down near the end.
This is the screen that I took out. The little ring on the top actually separated from the main part of the screen while I was working it out. The glow plug comes out easy, but the screen, not so much.
This is the end of the fan where most of the soot build up was. There was some around the threads of the glow plug too, but more here. I thought I could blow it off with canned air - no chance. I had to use Q-tips, lots of them, to wipe it off.
I'm hoping this was the primary source of the diesel smell when it fired up. I sure hope it doesn't smell the same after I get it back in place!
This is the original exhaust hose back in the shop. I didn't intend to swap out the hose, but it broke right at the through hull fitting and then we could see it was badly corroded and really needed to be replaced. Since it was covered with 3 layers of insulation I could not see how bad a shape it was in.
The exhaust hose connects to a 90 degree elbow that connects to the exhaust port on the furnace itself. This was my undoing when I ordered the replacement exhaust hose. The furnace manual clearly states that it has a 24 mm exhaust port, so I ordered 24 mm exhaust hose. You can't see it in this picture because of the insulation, but the output side of the 90 degree elbow is actually 30 mm, as is the through hull fitting. So the exhaust hose I ordered was too small, which caused delay in the project. My fault for not being precise enough. Len would have caught this.
This is the old exhaust hose with most of the insulation removed. For some as yet unknown reason there was a small section in the middle, about 18" I suppose, that was encased in what appears to be a ceramic type collar. None of the replacement hoses that I could find had anything like this, so I am ignoring it for now.
Some time passed because I ordered the wrong size replacement hose, and had to re-order, but eventually I got all the parts and pieces that I needed. I also ordered new insulation, of a slightly different type, and some clamps to secure the hose on both ends. I got some SS hose clamps locally to secure the insulation to the hose.
Thanks again to my friend Len who came down and put the new exhaust hose in place. It went smoothly enough I guess, especially since he did all the work and I just fetched tools. The new hose doesn't lay (lie?) exactly like the old one did, and it obscures the furnace in the following pictures. But you can see the furnace up against the bulkhead, and the new exhaust hose, and through-hull exhaust port.
We fired it up and it started up just fine. There was some smoke curling up around the base of the unit which disturbed me greatly, but Len did not seem concerned. He said brand new exhaust hose usually has som oil on it. The oil on the inside of the hose could just blast out of the boat, but the oil on the outside would be trapped and the smoke would probably be forced down through the insulation. So we hope this was just a temporary issue and that it will go away with use. I will keep an eye on it.
Hopefully this project is finished!
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