So the engine fiasco continues. I have said before that fate looks out for me, just not always in the way I wanted. Of course you know I thought I was just going to drop crankshaft out the bottom of engine and have it ground. Replace with new bearings, etc. Well.............Something along those lines. It turns out I have fought pulling rusted and corroded bolts for days now. This morning I was finally able to get rest of oil pan bolts out with vise grips. I let them soak with penetrating oil most of yesterday and all last night.

These are all 10 mm bolt heads and the few I could pound the box end of the wrench onto I had to use a 9mm wrench. Picture does not really tell the story. 
  
So a couple days ago I met Rich. Rich is the computer guy for one of the cruise ships down south. Nice guy. He fits in with what I am learning about the people in the boating world.( It seems hard to find bad people)  So Rich has run me for tools, etc. I showed him Bacon Sails. Last night after deciding we ought to be able to build our own crab traps for less than they sell the better ones for. We bought some chicken wire and bailing wire. Around 11 pm we had two box looking things that really could look like beat up crab traps.

Before we started.

Before run to walmart last night for bait. We will pull them tonight and see how we did. Whether they work or not we had a good time trying and I had a bit of comic relief from the engine messing up my home.

Richard owns Harmony. A 21 ft. bayliner cabin cruiser. He is 46. two years younger than I. He decided a while back that instead of laying around doing nothing when on vacation from cruise ship, he would start doing the things he always wanted to. The Bayliner is one of them. He lives in Florida and wanted to buy a boat and travel south on the intracoastal waterway. He should be leaving in a few days. The company has been good. Once again I will watch a friend leave before I get to.

Front cover took 3 days. It is aluminum and with bolts corroded solid in 3 of the holes it took time. You cannot force aluminum. It breaks if you do and this piece could cost as much as $400-500 dollars if you can even find one. But finally it realized I was serious and having no other recourse, it came off.

I was pleased with what I found here.

I knew what I would find here. I just didn't realize until I got here that head will have to come off in order to slip crank out. I did have a spun rod bearing just like I thought when it went.

  The high side to all this is I will really know the boat inside and out by the time I get moving with it and with all the traveling I am wanting to do, This engine needed brought up to snuff with the rest of the boat. As much as I didn't want to get this far into it, the engine had some neglect problems that really needed straightened out.