Water tight doors

While waiting for parts for the steering system I decided to install the water tight doors in the engine room. As my son would say, " everything tight doors" is really a better description.

The doors have been laying around the shop ever since I bought them at the start of the build. I welded the frames in to the bulkheads, then forgot about the doors. The door leading into the engine room from our cabin is a six dog quick acting door with a port light. Since I don't need the aluminum dead light that came with the door, I took it off. The port light glass in this door is 1/2" thick tempered, and the door itself is 1/4" thick. This door is what I would call severe duty, and is both water tight and fire tight. When this door shuts, things are pretty much final, and no air or water is getting past it.

The door leading from the engine room to the lazarette is a four dog door that is not quick acting. It too, has a port light and is also 1/4" thick. Since this door has no adjustments, the new gasket and dogs are still tight, and I have to use a rubber dead blow mallet to close the dogs. I don't have to hit the dogs to hard, but the mallet works better than my hand. I'll end up buying a dedicated mallet, and hang it on a hook next to the door.

Both doors have a bronze port light in them, and we decide to polish the port light. I had some stainless steel pickling paste in the shop, and brushing some of that on the bronze took the tarnish right off. It was almost too easy and looked like one of those Billy Mays commercials except for the fact that pickling paste is nasty stuff and will give one a good burning if you're not careful. After the acid treatment, I gave them a good scrubbing in cold water, the put a paste wax finish on them to try to keep the tarnish at bay. We'll see how this works out.

Both the AC and DC light switch for the engine room is in our cabin so I can see in to the engine room through the port light without opening the door. I felt like this was important in case something was going on in that room I wanted to see and still maintain the integrity of water and fire tight. It also makes it easy to do a quick check without letting the noise and heat in to the cabin. The light switch for the lazarette is outside the lazarette, in the engine room, for the same purpose of being able to look in without opening the door.

I think I'm going to fit some mineral wool insulation in the quick acting door from our cabin. The engine room is heavily insulated, and the door is really the weak link in the insulating chain. I'd guess an inch of insulation will knock the noise that will be hitting the door down by 80%.

An update on the fuel system is also needed. I had to re think the priming pump as the chevy pump I had on my shelf was not up to the lift out of the day tank. I found a new Walbro pump on Ebay for not much money, and got it installed. Walbro is a top of the line pump and with just three moving parts, this pump should last the life of the boat. I'll only use this pump to prime either the generator or main engine after I service the filters or for an emergency such as an engine loosing prime, or one of the engines loosing it's factory mounted lift pump. This pump is rated at continuous duty, so if one of the factory mounted lift pumps fail, I can always rely upon he Walbro as a good back up. Once I got the pump installed and fired up, it quickly picked up the fuel and filled my filter. I opened the valve leading to the generator, and got fuel flowing to the fuel pump. Just for kicks, I cracked one of the injectors, and had fuel spitting out of the injector. That engine is primed and ready to fire. I might use some street 90's for connecting the pump to the valves, and do away with the loops you see and make things more streamlined.

I'm still putting pieces together for the steering system, and should be working on that within a week or so.