Literally....
We spent Saturday on the lake all day, 7 people surfing and wakeboarding. Everything was great, and it seemed like the last lake trip of the year was going to be a great send-off. Sunday started off as well as Saturday ended, my cousin surfed on the regular side and her 8 yr old daughter took 8 or so tries to get up on a surfboard. We turned off he boat and pumped over to the goofy side for everyone else. I started the boat and it sounded like gravel in the engine.... Oh s#!t was the first thing through my mind. I shut off the engine and checked the oil, level was fine. I had my wife start the boat and we heard the noise coming from the forward part of the engine. We assumed the bendix was sticking so we tried the usual hitting with a hammer to no avail. We removed the starter out on the lake using an adjustable wrench and a Gerber multi-tool.
We found the bronze bushing in the nose of the housing was worn into an egg shape and deduced that this was allowing the shaft the stick because it was getting out of alignment. We attempted to fix it by cutting leather off the finger of a glove and soaking it in oil, then stuffed it in the bushing to keep it aligned. Unfortunately why we took the starter apart we broke one of the housing main bolts.... We put it together and tried to secure to broken side but were unable to get the starter to turn properly and only got a worse result.
After 20 minutes of swimming the boat toward the marina we got a tow and put the boat on the trailer just in time to meet up with 4 additional family members that had just driven in from Oklahoma to spend Sunday and Monday with us. With the closest city being Phoenix 45 minutes away we started calling marine stores and auto parts stores to no avail (Sunday of Labor Day weekend). We assumed our weekend and lake season were over but were not ready to give up. My brother and I looked around the mechanic shack at the lake, they had about 8 or so used starters but none that would work on my boat. We took a main bolt to replace the one that broke and went back to camp.
We sat and thought about what we could do, we decided that we needed a better option for the bushing than leather.... Enter a Coors Light can. We cut a strip of aluminum and fashioned a "sleeve" for lack of a better term with an additional .03 of an inch or so on one side to make up for the worn out area. We took off the c-clip, retiainer and thrust washer. Put it all back together and it fires up with no issues, the gravel/grinding sound was gone. We put the boat back together and had some celebratory beverages.
We hit the water Monday morning and only shut the boat off 3 times all day and had a great last day on the water.
Just another reason to love beer!
The trip home was an entirely different story that included a night in a parking lot in the toyhauler for our supposed 3 hour drive home but that will be a separate post at a later date.
We spent Saturday on the lake all day, 7 people surfing and wakeboarding. Everything was great, and it seemed like the last lake trip of the year was going to be a great send-off. Sunday started off as well as Saturday ended, my cousin surfed on the regular side and her 8 yr old daughter took 8 or so tries to get up on a surfboard. We turned off he boat and pumped over to the goofy side for everyone else. I started the boat and it sounded like gravel in the engine.... Oh s#!t was the first thing through my mind. I shut off the engine and checked the oil, level was fine. I had my wife start the boat and we heard the noise coming from the forward part of the engine. We assumed the bendix was sticking so we tried the usual hitting with a hammer to no avail. We removed the starter out on the lake using an adjustable wrench and a Gerber multi-tool.
We found the bronze bushing in the nose of the housing was worn into an egg shape and deduced that this was allowing the shaft the stick because it was getting out of alignment. We attempted to fix it by cutting leather off the finger of a glove and soaking it in oil, then stuffed it in the bushing to keep it aligned. Unfortunately why we took the starter apart we broke one of the housing main bolts.... We put it together and tried to secure to broken side but were unable to get the starter to turn properly and only got a worse result.
After 20 minutes of swimming the boat toward the marina we got a tow and put the boat on the trailer just in time to meet up with 4 additional family members that had just driven in from Oklahoma to spend Sunday and Monday with us. With the closest city being Phoenix 45 minutes away we started calling marine stores and auto parts stores to no avail (Sunday of Labor Day weekend). We assumed our weekend and lake season were over but were not ready to give up. My brother and I looked around the mechanic shack at the lake, they had about 8 or so used starters but none that would work on my boat. We took a main bolt to replace the one that broke and went back to camp.
We sat and thought about what we could do, we decided that we needed a better option for the bushing than leather.... Enter a Coors Light can. We cut a strip of aluminum and fashioned a "sleeve" for lack of a better term with an additional .03 of an inch or so on one side to make up for the worn out area. We took off the c-clip, retiainer and thrust washer. Put it all back together and it fires up with no issues, the gravel/grinding sound was gone. We put the boat back together and had some celebratory beverages.
We hit the water Monday morning and only shut the boat off 3 times all day and had a great last day on the water.
Just another reason to love beer!
The trip home was an entirely different story that included a night in a parking lot in the toyhauler for our supposed 3 hour drive home but that will be a separate post at a later date.
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