1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Engine Room Vent Fan

OK, so this isn’t one of the mandatory priority, gotta-do so I can splash the boat things, but it IS one of the things that kept getting in my way AND it turned out really nicely.

Plus…there’s another Easter egg. And I do love my Easter eggs. Any chance to re-purpose OEM or cool, old parts from the boat as part of this refit just makes me happy for some reason. Let the captain who is without quirks throw the first stone…

That is one busted up 1969 era OEM Jabsco engine room vent fan

The thing is, this boat had pretty low hours on it, and it was on the hard and unloved from ~1985 to 2007, when I bought it for one crisp US dollar bill (worst investment ever, btw). So the fan motor was in great shape. You can see that the mounting flange was a mess, but that’s because Chris Craft provided zero direct support for the motor. The plastic flange was not only holding the fan outlet to the thru-hull outlet, it was also supporting all that motor weight that was suspended several inches outboard. Eventually, the flange just broke off.

This is kind of par for the course for Chris Craft vent hoses

There are many good things to be said about 1960s-era America…Chris Craft using dryer hose for vent lines is not one of them.

OK, so that’s what it looked like when we were doing demolition on the boat ages ago. Fast forward to much more recently, and things are looking much better.

Industrial-grade vent hose should hold up better than dryer hose

Next, I broke out the Marine-Tex miracle epoxy repair kit and rebuilt the flange.

ShopSmith 12″ disk sander helps true the repaired flange

Repair area is thicker than OEM

Ready for some rattle can paint

The rebuilt fan and soon-to-be support upgrade

Now…for the Easter Egg.

Remember these???

Longtime readers will recall that this boat was outfitted in the early 1970s with twin turbo and intercooled Super SeaMaster engines–534ci Ford Super Duty blocks that had perhaps the most gorgeous, hot-rod marinization ever done by anybody anywhere. But it was the wild early days of turbocharging, and SeaMaster used oil-cooled (no waterjacket!) turbos drawing gas-air mix from a single carburetor over each gear, then pushing that gas-fuel mix under turbo pressure and heat into the raw water-cooled intercooler, which was mounted where the carburetor would normally go on a V-8 engine. If you haven’t read that linked article in a while, check it out and be amazed at the raw, industrial beauty of those engines.

Needless to say, keeping all 12 hose clamps on the pressurized side of those turbos torqued to spec was a life-or-death maintenance item. If a clamp broke or was loose, you’d potentially have fuel vapor and air under pressure blowing past the clamps, filling the ER of a metal boat with massive volumes of explosive fumes…potentially the world’s biggest hand grenade.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the SuperSeamaster turbo clamps were of the highest quality. Plus, the custom labels were kinda cool. You don’t see those everyday. So I kept them around thinking they might come in handy someday.

Well…today was that day. It was the perfect opportunity to re-purpose one of those fine hose clamps as a motor support for the ER fan.

Stainless strap cut to size, with nitrile rubber to isolate vibration

Bench vise brake puts a nice hook in the stainless strap

Perfect!

The ‘hook’ will grab the hose clamp and keep it from sliding off when the fan is running.

Need a bend here to bring the far end of the strap toward the overhead where it will attach

Kinda like that

This is a great Easter egg

Imagine the next guy who ends up with this boat, long after the coming zombie apocalypse. He’s going to see this clamp and will be totally stumped as to why turbo clamps are so mission critical on an ER fan…because the zombie apocalypse will take out the internet, so this photo-blog will be lost to history.

This is the greatest Roamer refit Easter egg yet!

Next up: nitrile rubber flange gasket

The flange isn’t perfectly flat. I stopped sanding with the ShopSmith sander when it started removing OEM flange material. I don’t want that to get any thinner, even with the new stainless turbo clamp strap support system. So instead, I’ll use a gasket made of nitrile and silicone gasket-maker to create a flat sealing surface for the flange.

Artisan flange gasket

Flange-to-gasket joint loaded up with silicone gasket maker

Chunk of 1/4″ aluminum plate ensures the gasket will be flat

Next day, at the boat, the ER fan goes in the starboard salon aft cabinet

New ER vent hose is installed in the OEM vent hose hole in the floor

This is going to work great!

Measure twice…

Literally…measure twice or maybe even three times, because you can only bend the strap so many times and have it look pretty

After one more trip through the vise brake, the strap and everything else are done

Final connections…ready to test

I pulled the ER fan switch at the helm and…for the first time in decades the fan started humming away…quietly, because it’s isolated by nitrile rather than being firmly bolted to the hull. Success! On to the next.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Fuel Filters