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: Installing the Panda Genset Waterlift Muffler and Siphon Break

With the Fischer Panda Mini 12 genset installed in its permanent home on new vibration-isolated mounts, I next installed the Vetus siphon break for the generator’s raw water supply and the waterlift muffler.

Fischer Panda Mini 12 in its permanent new home

Panda gensets come from the factory ready for a siphon break

The in/out hose loop in the pic above ties together the two factory fittings in the raw water system that you (optionally) use for a siphon break. As I described in the Fischer Panda Marine 12 Mini DP Genset article, I’m doing every single optional thing that Panda recommends to ensure nothing unfortunate happens to this expensive piece of hardware.

I’m using Shields 250-series 3/4″ exhaust/water hose for the siphon break

90° barb fittings bring the hoses as close to the enclosure as possible

In the pic above, you can see the new aluminum salon floor support I made to replace the OEM mahogany stick. I’ll permanently install it, including cleaning up the aluminum oxide and applying Barr Rust 235 high solid epoxy on the engine stringer later. It’s not a priority for splashing the boat in October 2022.

Hoses installed from the Panda to the Vetus siphon break

The siphon break installation is complete

Next up: the waterlift muffler.

I removed the genset exhaust hose and fitting that exits the sound enclosure

When I took possession of this 200-hour used Panda, the hose fitting that exited the sound enclosure was horizontal. Meaning, it wasn’t installed the way Fischer Panda recommends, which is that the exhaust hose should only slope down on its way to the water lift muffler…no flat spots…no uphill sections.

Exhaust fitting in the as-received orientation

This wouldn’t work for my boat

The FP manual is explicit about the exhaust dropping into a waterlift muffler that must be immediately under the genset. Not only was this fitting horizontal, it’s also pointing in toward the sound enclosure because the stainless steel flange is bent. If I just put a wrench on the elbow and pointed the fitting down at a 45° angle, the hose would run into the new white-painted mount I just made.

So I made some aluminum spacers and a backing plate

By the way, metal cutting jigsaw blades are useless on 3/16″ aluminum. The teeth almost immediately fill with hot aluminum. I find that 14TPI jigsaw blades are best for cutting small holes in this aluminum plate.

One hole down, two to go

The fitting fits the hole and I straightened out the flange so the hose fitting and hose will be parallel to the enclosure

Barr Rust 235 High-Solids epoxy primer coats the aluminum spacer and backing plate

The backing plate will go inside the fiberglass enclosure; the spacers will be outside

The previous installer used the super long 8-32 stainless machine screws to attach the fitting flange to the fiberglass enclosure with only tiny washers to spread the load on the fiberglass. Needless to say, that caused some minor cracks in the fiberglass enclosure. My approach with an aluminum backing plate will spread the clamping load from the four screws over a much larger area. The fitting will be held firmly in place without tweaking the enclosure.

That’s just about perfect

I coated the bronze elbow with some grey zinc chromate I had laying around. But I didn’t mix up enough of the Barr Rust 235 to top coat it and make it pretty. Since my priority is getting the boat in the water next month, this is good enough.

I’m using Shields 200-series 1-1/2″ hose for the exhaust

It’s a bit unintuitive (to me anyway) but the 200-series no-wire hose is more rigid than the 250-series hose that has wire-reinforced walls. The 200-series wall is thicker, and in my experience this stuff remains supple and resists cracking for a very long time. The fact that it’s more rigid will be advantageous in the long run from the muffler on the starboard side to the OEM exhaust outlet on the port side.

Back at the workshop, I cut more scrap aluminum to make a base for the muffler

Muffler base parts are clamped in place and tacked on each end

I use 3/8″x6″x4″ aluminum angle left over from the Cummins engine beds, which works great for clamping parts in preparation for welding at 90° angles. The angle is thick and makes a great heat sink. And unlike the relatively thin 3/16″ plate I’m welding, the 3/8″ thick angle doesn’t warp even when it’s clamped to hot things.

My aluminum TIG welding does not look like a stack o’ dimes…

…more like a pile of nickels, dimes, and a quarter or two. I don’t weld enough to develop the muscle memory required to consistently lay down a stack ‘o dimes. By the end of each TIG session, my welds are looking better and better. But then I don’t use that skill for a long while and it goes away.

That said, for the intended use here, these welds are fine. There’s good penetration and the puddle stayed nice and wet all across. If only I could be more robot-like with my torch travel speed and filler rod dab rate…

Opposite side set up and ready to TIG

That’s a good enough pile o’ nickels, dimes, and quarters

The muffler base looks good

Back at the boat, I marked off where to drill and started making holes

Yup…that’s what I had in mind

I was careful to install the muffler base a few inches back from the forward bulkhead (the white wall on the opposite side of the muffler in the pic above). That way, there’s good access to the limber holes at the base of each stringer where they’re welded to the bulkhead. Stuff can clog limber holes over time, which prevents water from flowing into the bottom of the bilge where it can be pumped overboard. Leaving some space will make future limber hole cleaning simple.

Back at the workshop, I drilled bolt holes for the muffler in the muffler base

With all of the welding, test fitting, and hole drilling done, I sanded the muffler base and coated it with Barr Rust 235.

1/4-20 stainless fasteners and neoprene rubber isolators will hold the muffler to the base

Tef-Gel is on the fasteners, and this assembly is ready for installation

Nice!

Exhaust hose drops 45° out of the sound enclosure, with minimum 1/4″ clearance all around

Waterlift muffler is directly under the Panda, as per the manual

Boom

Exhaust goes up from the waterlift muffler to the Vetus gas/water separator, and from there the water will drop out and go off the boat with one hose while the exhaust gases cross over via hose to the OEM exhaust outlet.

This is great progress toward splashing the boat in October 2022. I’m waiting for some parts to come in so I can finish the Panda, so I’ll shift gears to another priority.

Next up in our 1969 Chris Craft Roamer 46 Refit: Making the Chris Craft Cable Drive Tachometers Work with Cummins 6-CTAs