Updated on 8/30/98
WHATTA BARGAIN !(continued)
I installed the carburetors on Friday evening and we made plans to head for the lake on Saturday morning.
"Barrroooom, BurrrBurrrBurrrBurrr." I was testing the motor out in the driveway Saturday morning ( much to my late-sleeping neighbors' dismay) just prior for our departure for the lake. To an untrained ear, everything sounded fine, but I could tell something was wrong. The motor was only firing on two cylinders. I fiddled and fumbled. I decided that I had not been thorough in my carburetor cleaning. We did not go out in the boat.
My father in-law heard of my woes while talking to Gail. He shared a story about his troubles with carburetor cleaning. He mentioned how he cleaned out some clogged jets that were too stubborn for the standard soaking and spraying methods of cleaning. This story triggered a thought. I went out to the garage and took apart the carburetors. I found the problem. Deep in a hole in the carburetor body was a tiny jet that I had missed. I pulled the jet from each carburetor to find that one of the carburetors had a completely clogged jet. I was joyous. I cleaned, reassembled and reinstalled the carburetors. I marched into the house and proudly announced to Gail that I had fixed the problem and that we would be going out in the boat Friday night. I was very excited. I fired the motor up in the driveway, all systems go! A successful boating trip was just a few days away.
Gail eased the boat trailer into the water until I gave her the "stop" signal. It was after work on Friday. We were going boating! The sun was low enough in the sky that it cast a yellow-orange reflection off the waves. The temperature had dropped a bit, so it would be a comfortable evening trip. I trimmed the motor down into the water. Every nerve was tingling with excitement. I squeezed the priming bulb to make sure the carbs had plenty of fuel. I twisted the ignition key, "Click." The engine did not turn over. "Click, Click, Click." The engine still did not turn over. The clicking of the solenoid was the only reaction I got from twisting the ignition key. A rush of anxiety coursed through my body. "The battery is dead!" I thought. "I left something on, and ran down the battery, that's what happened!" My mind was racing through all possibilities. I was furious, humiliated, perplexed and sad all at once. I was totally engulfed in a mind scrambling, blood pressure raising emotional experience. I frantically checked connections, banged on the starter and continued to "click" the ignition switch. Nothing worked, I was defeated. The motor wouldn't start and somehow it was all my fault. I drove Gail, Corey and our non-functional boat back home. "God doesn't want me to go boating," I thought in my defeated, frustrated, self-pitying frame of mind.
Small blobs of white, semi-congealed crud were mixed in with the grease and dirt mixture inside the bottom of the starter motor. I had never seen this kind of accumulation inside a sealed motor. The crud had piled so high that it was clustered around the area where the motor brushes contact the commutator. This is an important electrical connection inside a motor. The crud build-up was so bad that electricity could not flow through the motor windings. I cleaned out the crud and put the starter motor back together. With the starter braced on my work bench, I used jumper cables to connect the starter terminals to a car battery. "Waaazzzzzingg!" The starter was back in action! I had new hope and confidence. I bolted everything back on to the boat motor. "Barooommm, BrappBrappBrappBrapp." The motor was back in action! I was back in action! It wasn't my fault that the starter motor quit working that day on the ramp! Feelings of adequacy returned.
We had been fortunate that the starter didn't wait until we were out in the middle of the lake to break down. Since it was a Friday evening, very few people were on the lake. There would have been even fewer people on the lake by the time we would have decided to return to shore. If the starter motor had gone "click" in the middle of the lake late that evening we may not have found anyone to tow us back to the ramp. "It wasn't that God didn't want us to go out in the boat," I thought, "he just didn't think we'd enjoy being stuck in the lake all night."
On Father's day the Chaparral had it's first fully successful sea trial. We roared out of the "no wake" zone and headed away from the ramp. The motor was singing at wide open throttle. "The motor sounds great to me!" Gail hollered out to me. The boat clipped along at just under 35 knots, which feels very fast in a 16 foot long boat. I tried out different throttle positions, trim positions and maneuvered the boat around to test its handling. I was satisfied. "It is a good boat," I thought to myself, "it is a great boat."
I brought the boat to a stop and turned off the motor so we could float around and relax for awhile. Corey looked over at me with a proud, very contented smile and said, "daddy I like this boat, its faster than the other boats, its good, you fixed it good."
It was a happy Father's day.
NEW-Chaparral Restoration Photos!-NEW