1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Major System Test — Air Conditioners

One of the problems I had when I launched the boat in June of 2023 was a very slight leak from the original Chris Craft genset strainer/seacock I attempted to reuse. I decided to upgrade to a modern seacock, Forespar marelon (reinforced plastic), and Vetus strainer. When we transited from Deale, MD to our current home port, I kept the Forespar seacock closed but had a hose connected directly from the valve hose barb to the pump inlet just in case the valve, which is well below the waterline, was accidentally opened. Once at our home port, installing the Vetus strainer was the last step in commissioning the air conditioners.

The OEM Chris Craft strainer hose barb was just above the valve

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the  top of the Chris Craft strainer was well below the waterline. So, if I had to remove the top to clean the screen, even if I closed the valve, water in the hose, pump, manifold, and supply hoses would overflow the strainer when I removed the top. I’ll try a different approach with the new Vetus strainer.

Reconfiguring the pump inlet orientation for the Vetus strainer

I marked off the waterline on the 1″ round tube salon floor support

I welded a mounting plate to the floor support tube at the waterline

The waterline will be halfway up the Vetus strainer

With the system shut off, raw water will naturally settle to the waterline. I’ll be able to remove the cap and clean the strainer without water overflowing into the bilge.

That 90° bend in the short inlet hose puts more strain on the seacock than I like

So I replaced the straight Marelon hose barb at the valve with a 90° one.

I’ve had very good results using caulk to seal Marelon seacock threads

Seacocks use straight pipe threads, not self-sealing tapered ones

So thread sealant is absolutely necessary

Nice!

Zero stress connections

I was all giddy when I opened the seacock. Raw water came up to the waterline on the strainer, then filled the hose to the pump, just as I’d hoped. This was in mid-July, 2023, and it was 90° in the salon. The thermostats were set to 78°F. One by one, I slid the thermostat switches from OFF to COOL.

The raw water pump came on! Cold air started blowing from each of the AC units! Within 20 minutes, the V-berth AC unit shut off, having reached the set temp! The aft stateroom shut off after 20 minutes, and the salon hit 78° after 30 minutes! The AC unit and raw water pump shut off!

Success!!!

I should also mention that having the raw water exit below the waterline via the OEM toilet outlet standpipes makes it very quiet.

So that’s a major system that’s pretty much done. Booyah.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Aft Deck Window Moldings

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Installing Raw Water Intake Valves and Strainers

With the main engine raw water intakes installed, I was ready to install the strainers, valves, and hoses.

This day has been a long time coming

I’ve mentioned many times before that the only areas inside the hull where we found substantial corrosion were pits in the aluminum near copper fuel and waterlines or bronze bolts and valves. The entire hull is now epoxy barrier coated, but I made the decision to also de-copper the boat to the extent possible.

So for the main propulsion engines, instead of bronze seacocks, I went with 2″ Forespar Marelon. Instead of bronze hose barbs and elbows, I went with 304 stainless.

Starboard seacocks installed without difficulty

Forespar recommends teflon tape or paste thread sealant for all of their Marelon valves and fittings, which use National Pipe Straight threads instead of Tapered. I used generous dollops of Gasoila JC-30 High-Fill to coat all of the threads that didn’t get epoxy barrier coated.

The port side was less cooperative

Can’t rotate the seacock because the handle hits the frame

Fortunately, the handle comes off easily.

Port seacocks are installed

The seacock inboard of the Marelon one is original to the boat. It fed raw water to the original Kohler genset. It’s in fine condition, and I barrier coated the body along with the hull after I had the interior hull sandblasted to keep green copper oxide from sloughing off. The only problem with it was the outlet was a 1-1/4″ hose barb. That became a bigger problem when I tried to remove the barb with a pipe wrench and it twisted off, leaving the threaded portion in the strainer body.

So I bought a really big drill bit

Then I threaded the hole with a 1″ NPT tap

1″ nylon hose barb will do the trick

I had a tube of Anchor sealant handy, so I used that on the gasket sealing surfaces

Same sealant for the strainer base

The air conditioner raw water strainer is installed with new gaskets and sight glass

Next I installed the main engine strainers.

To ease future maintenance, I put TefGel on the stainless strainer mouting screws

The main engine strainers are 2″ Buck Algonquin 70RWS200 in stainless steel. I bought these back in 2016. They’ve been sitting on a shelf in their boxes until just now.

Gasoila on the clean-out port threads will also help with future maintenance

The strainer drain port points directly facing the engine stringer, which isn’t optimal

Access to the bolt for the drain will be much better if I rotate the plastic sight glass a bit.

The threads were dry…I used TefGel when I put it back together

Reoriented sight glass is back in place

Hose barbs and elbows are fitted and pointing in the right directions

I made strainer mounts from aluminum plate left over from the aft deck enclosure build

As with everywhere else, the aluminum strainer mounts are coated with Bar Rust 235 epoxy.

Perfect!

Ready for the test fit

Nice!

I removed the strainer and started installing the hoses when I found a small problem.

See the slice in the brand new hose?

I just bought this hose at West Marine. Somebody carelessly cut the hose with a razor right in the middle of the length I bought. Fortunately, there was 6″ of this 48″ hose that I won’t need, and I was able to cut the four lengths I need and toss the damaged section.

It was extremely difficult to put the hoses on these stainless hose barbs

Pushing 2″ wire-reinforced hose onto barbs measuring 2-1/8″ across was a real bear, but I finally got them installed. Hose clamps will be mere decorations.

Boom…starboard side is done

Repeat the process on the port side

Uh…Houston…

…we have a…

…problem

All of the screws on both strainers were very tight, and there was no thread lubricant, so there was a POP sound when they broke free. But when I loosened these three cap screws, there was something off about the sound. On closer inspection, I saw that there were cracks in the acrylic near these screw holes.

These strainers were sitting in their original boxes since I bought them

It seems the problem was caused by no thread lubricant, the screws were torqued very tight, and the fact that the holes drilled in the plastic are slightly too small. The holes aren’t threaded, but the screws don’t pull out of the plastic once they clear the stainless they’re threaded into. I had to unscrew them all the way out. I suspect something akin to stainless galling (a kind of cold weld) happened. Twisting the screws broke the galling free and fractured the acrylic in the process.

I went online and discovered that not only is this model of strainer discontinued, Buck Algonquin no longer exists! It’s been bought out by some company I’ve never heard of (Hydrasearch), which has yet to respond to my inquiry asking if they have a solution for me.

Magical modern sealant to the rescue!(?)

I recently heard very good reviews of this Lexel sealant product, including some long-time users reporting that it stays stuck even after 5+ years of outdoor direct sun and weather exposure. So I’m trying it out in a bunch of different areas, and I figured I might as well try it out on this strainer. The sight glasses are obviously somewhat compromised, but I’m not keen on throwing out brand new, expensive strainers if I can MacGyver this manufacturing defect. A previous boat of mine had much more dire looking cracks in the sight glasses, but it never leaked a drop in the seven years we owned the boat.

Hopefully, a dab of Lexel will prevent the cracks from leaking or growing

Port strainer dry test fit

Hoses are installed!

I still have to install the hose clamps, but that’s a trivial detail compared to finally getting the last of the holes under the waterline buttoned up and the main engine raw water circuits basically done. If the boat had to splash tomorrow…it could! But first, I have to drill two new holes in the bottom.

BUT before I get into that, I want to clear up some space on my camera memory card by posting articles of things I got done over the last couple years but never got around to posting.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: The V-berth Door

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Main Raw Water Inlets

With the exhaust system almost done (the high temp resin finally arrived for the insulation hard shell), I’ve started doing the prep work to replace the original 1-1/2″ raw water inlets with 2″ inlets that my Cummins 6CTAs require.

Starboard engine raw water standpipe

Chris Craft used dielectric unions to separate the bronze fittings they used on the inside of the metal (steel and aluminum) Roamer boats from the raw water standpipes that are welded to the hull. I was able to remove the dielectric on the starboard side with a pipe wrench but not the one on the port side. Fortunately, the new standpipes require a hole big enough for the dielectric to slide right out.

Port side standpipe and dielectric, with the genset raw water seacock below

New raw water standpipes have been waiting around since 2014

Hole saw for the new pipe is big enough to fit over the dielectric

First, knock off the strainer, then knock in a block of wood

Center the pilot drill on the wood and pull the trigger

Hull breach

Standpipe with dielectric

New port standpipe test fit

Repeat on the starboard side

OE standpipe and strainer

Lotsa gunk packed into the strainer

Bad design

The back side of the original strainers, which appear to be a Groco product, can’t be epoxy coated after they were welded in, and the hull in this area was bare aluminum, too. Add a bunch of dirt packed into the lee side of the strainer, and it’s a recipe for corrosion. Fortunately, there was only one deep pit on each side, and I positioned the hole saw to cut through it. My new strainers are also from Groco, but they’re hinged. Once they’re welded in, I’ll open the hinges and put an epoxy barrier coat on them inside and out. Plus, when I periodically haul the boat for bottom paint I’ll be able to clean out any accumulated gunk.

Interesting comparison

On the left we have the welded area where Chris Craft joined 5052 aluminum hull plating to 6061 aluminum pipe. Even though there was no barrier coat here and the boat ran for a while in salt water, there’s very little corrosion in this area in spite of the different alloys. On the right, we have badly corroded pipe where the steel part of the dielectric threaded on. The green suggests that copper from the bronze fitting attached to the other end of the dielectric was playing havoc with the aluminum. I’m glad I decided on Marelon seacocks for the refit!

The view from inside

Port side raw water component test fit

I’m still deciding where to place everything. I want to maintain ease of access to the outboard side of each engine, but the inside strainers need to also be accessible for maintenance. I think this arrangement is a pretty good compromise.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: My Life Is An Old-School Country Western Song.

1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: New Bits & Pieces Back From the Fabricator

Winter is slowly loosening its grip on the Mid-Atlantic region, so I went and picked up some bits and pieces I’d dropped off with the fabricator before the last snowstorm. This is all part of a grand plan to launch the boat in the fall of 2014. To get ‘er done, a lot of bits and pieces have to be ready to go when it’s their turn to be installed.

WOOT!

The original helm wheel

Of course, they make new steering wheels I could have used. But I like the original stuff. And since the steering will not be power-assisted, a big helm wheel will make for lighter steering.

Original bronze wheel-to-steering gear adapter

Back when we first got the boat, the helm wheel wouldn’t move. We eventually realized that the rudders were completely locked in place–the plain steel rudders running through an aluminum rudder log with a bronze gland nut on top had turned the whole assembly into unimetal, with various kinds of metal oxidize holding everything very firmly in place. When the boat was towed south in the 1980s to Purgatory Row in a southern Maryland boatyard, the guys who towed her tried to force the rudders to move. All they ended up doing was snapping the bronze screws on the adapter (you can still see the screws in the small holes in the wheel hub). But then they pushed even harder and broke the steering gear.

New Vetus hydraulic helm pump will replace the OE steering gear

I sized the pump so the ratio will be about the same as the original: 3.7 turns lock-to-lock.

New helm wheel-to-hydraulic pump adapter

The fabricator welded a stainless tapered adapter into the helm wheel hub

Honkin’ huge stainless bolt head welded to a metric bolt to fit the Vetus pump

Nice, snug fit between the bolt and wheel hub

I’ll use Tefgel on that bolt when I finally install it.

Good looking assembly…ready for install

Rudder tie rod and tiller arms are all fitted with pins and ready for fit up

New 2″ Marelon raw water intake valves and Schedule 80 threaded pipe

The Marelon valves use National Pipe Straight thread rather than the more common tapered (NPT) thread. So the fabricator had to chuck the pipe up in his lathe and cut the threads. Once I relocate the engines, I’ll cut off the old standpipes and we’ll weld in the new ones.

Marelon valves and fittings to point the hoses toward the strainers

Groco hinged clamshell strainers in aluminum

These Groco slotted strainers should keep grass, plastic and other flotsam out of the main intakes. I like the fact that they can be opened, not only for cleaning blockages but also for barrier coating after the welding is done. They can be attached to the hull with fasteners, but since the Miller Trailblazer 280 will already be running when we put in the standpipes, the strainers will get welded on, too.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Setting Up Shop.