Like fuel hose (three sizes), hose clamps, copper pipe, plastic pipe, fish tape, fittings, holes in the transom (gasp!) among others.
Today started with errands; a stop at Valley Paint for more filters for the mask, Western Auto for pad eyes and bolts for holding the porta-potty in place, Home Depot for a 1-1/4" elbow and a 3/4" drill bit, Don Abel for hose clamps and The Outboard Shop to borrow their transom hole pattern jig, then off to the shed.
First up was the jig. For about thirty years now the pattern for the mounting holes for outboard motors has been standardized. The jig that I borrowed is made out of steel with guides for the centerline and welded pipe over the holes in the steel.
Now the holes in the jig are 1/2", but when working with a wood boat the proper way to do it is to drill the holes larger that the actual holes, fill them with epoxy and then drill them the correct size. This over-drilling and epoxy protects the wood from the water that will inevitably get in around the fitting.
So I used a 1/2" bit to just start the holes and finished them with a 3/4" bit.
Holes in my new paint job! Ouch!
I then taped over the holes on the outside, partially taped over the holes on the inside creating pockets to inject the epoxy into, made epoxy and using a syringe, injected it into the holes. Tomorrow I'll pull the tape, sand the epoxy bump in the inside smooth and redrill the holes with the 1/2" drill bit.
Then I decided to do something a bit different, plumbing the fuel system. The 1-1/2" fill hoses were first. These things are heavy duty specialty hose, designed to be flexible (sorta, you have to He Man them into place) and after screwing up a knife blade I discovered they have two spiral steel wires imbedded in them.
I started with the center fuel tank. Originally I was going to use the flexible hose to make the ninety degree bend from the vertical on the tank to the horizontal feed over to the side, but there was no way I could bend it nearly far enough without putting a huge amount of stress on the tank fitting. The solution, imperfect though it is, was to install a ninety degree copper pipe fitting. I may change this out for bronze in the future, but I needed something to get things moving. The biggest issue with using a ninety degree bend like this is that it will slow down the filling of the tank. You'd think that with a 1-1/4" inside diameter that it wouldn't make a difference, but it will.
Every fitting that isn't a barb fitting has two hose clamps for security and redundancy.
The port side tank was done next.
Then the starboard side.
5/8" vent hoses were next.
Hmmm... fuzzy picture, sorry. The vent hoses weren't hooked up to the vents as the vents haven't been installed yet, as I haven't painted the outside of the rear cabin wall. That will soon be remedied.
The fuel feed lines were next. See that little square shiny piece of metal in the picture above? That's the fitting for the fuel feed lines. It rotates, which is very handy as it give you a lot of flexibility in running the lines.
Here's the starboard side.
Well that was easy!
Now here's the hose layout at the center tank.
Huh. Getting a little more complicated. The hose at the bottom that runs from left to right in the picture is the starboard line.
The blue stuff in the pictures is left over strap from the tank mounting straps. There's several places where the fuel lines have the potential to rub either on boat structure or on fittings, so where that's a concern I wrapped the hose, or the fittings, twice with the strapping and then zip-tied the strap in place.
Now onto the port side.
Holy cow Batman! What the heck!
Ok, calm down, here's what's going on. On the left-center side of the picture is a T fitting. The fuel hoses from the port and starboard tanks come together here so that fuel is drawn from both tank simultaneously. In the upper-center of the picture is a valve that selects from either the combined tanks (left) or the center tank (right), and the fuel exits straight down. You'll note the left and right hose fittings are a different color. Those fittings are anti-siphon fittings in case of a fuel hose rupture or break. Eventually that valve will be permanently mounted on the rear wall and then I'll see if anything else needs to be secured. The hoses are pretty stiff as you can see.
What's missing from that picture? The fuel vent hose for the port tank. I ended up three inches short. DDD!
Using the fish tape, (a fish tape is a length of stiff, but springy, flat metal, typically coiled up inside a reel used to push through conduit and around corners to pull a wire or string back through that conduit), I pulled fuel line in the conduit from the port side cabin to the port side battery bay.
The primer bulb is in place, but I have yet to mount the fuel filter as that's waiting on its block of wood to be painted and mounted.
Now, lest you think I was a total slacker today, I did do some fillet work and some painting.
The divider between the storage space and the fuel area was peanut buttered into place.
And the rear cabin wall was primered. I was waiting to paint this as I still have to install the top and bottom channels for the sliding door, but I'm still trying to find some special plastic called UHMW (ultra high molecular wieght) locally. UHMW is very slippery all on its own so you don't have to "lube" the door to make it slide. So painting has commenced.
I ran out of primer tonight so another trip to Home Depot is in order. The question is; how much more do I need?
9 Hours