Day 53: Filters and Pumps oh my

SARASOTA, FL USA

The owner granted me a day to sleep in and besides waking up at 0800 I took advantage and laid in bed for awhile.  The morning was spent doing research online, ordering some parts, and working on my tax expenses.  The afternoon however was different.  The mechanic showed up, who I have become pretty good friends with, and we got the master suite air conditioning back online.  The trigger system for the water pump went bad and the sequencing was off so the system would not stay on.  We replaced the trigger in the electrical box and everything worked great.  While the mechanic did the dirty work on the trigger I managed to sneak away and change all four secondary fuel filters in the engine room.  They were due, and while you can not do a visual inspection like the primaries, it had been well over 200 hours.  After I got the secondaries changed I noticed the mechanic was still down in the generator room.  I managed to change and clean all of the air intake filters while I waited for him to be done.  After he was done we decided to change out the starboard engine fuel lift pump as we had reason to believe it had a leak in it.  The racors on the starboard side emptied out after about 14 hours.  They would not completely drain though, which indicated that the feed was still feeding...for lack of a better explanation that takes up two pages.  I crawled back in to the deepest corner of the engine room and proceeded to disconnect all four fuel connections, the base screws, and the electrical systems.  The mechanic slapped on some loc tight and handed me the new pump.  Sweating, thirsty and a little bit hungry I did everything all over again, but in reverse.  I stripped new wires, crimped, set, aligned, connected and got the new lift pump in place.  We had to fire the starboard engine to get the pump to prime itself but everything seems to be working.  Hopefully that is the problem and tomorrow I will do an engine room walk around and find the starboard racors full and healthy, if not, tomorrow will not be a good day to talk to me.
The owner took me out for a burger and all in all it was a very productive day.
Tomorrow I will be running the 40' Sea Ray for the owners father as well as the owner with some guests for a lunch cruise.  It should be a relaxing afternoon.

Sound Waves Out