Logbook · 2008 Onward
The shop's history since the two bay shed, and the jobs worth writing down. Drawings are numbered as plates and entries are dated.
Written up from the bench book the week it went back in the water.
It came in two feed sacks. One held the powerhead, still bolted to its exhaust housing, with the lower unit and a tiller arm whose grip had worn through to the metal. The other held everything that had fallen off or been taken off over the years: the cowling in two pieces, a recoil starter wound up in tape, a coffee can of bolts, and a fuel line that had set hard in the shape of the tank it last ran from.
It was a twin cylinder 20 horse from the 1970s1, and it had pushed the same small skiff for forty years. The skiff had been the owner's father's. The motor had sat in a shed since the last time he ran it. Nobody asked what it would cost to replace. They asked if it would run again.
The serial plate was still on the clamp bracket and still readable, which is the first thing we look for and the only reason we could take it on at all2. We ran the diagnostic, wrote the quote, and once it was agreed the motor went onto bench two and stayed there for most of a February, worked on between storage checks and whatever else came through the door3.
The bores cleaned up without needing more than a light hone. The crankshaft was sound. The pistons came out with their rings stuck solid in carbon, and both were soaked, freed and refitted on new rings. The carburetor got a full rebuild, the water pump a new impeller, and the gearcase new seals and fresh oil, because the old oil came out of the drain screw the color of coffee with cream in it. The cowling was pinned back together where it had cracked rather than replaced, because it was the cowling that had always been on it.
It started on the third pull in the test tank. It ran its fifteen minutes at fast idle, the same as every motor does before it goes home4.
That June it went back on the skiff and ran out to the mouth of the river.
Each one changed what the shop could take in or how it looks after what it has.
After twelve years on a marina service dock, Dale opens a two bay shed outside Annapolis. Tiller motors come in one at a time, lifted off car roofs and out of pickup beds.
A second bench goes in, and a 275 gallon tote is cut down to make the test tank. Every motor still gets fifteen minutes in it at fast idle before it leaves.
The lot next door comes up. It becomes a fenced yard for boats on trailers up to 22 feet and an insulated rack room for motors on their own, and winter storage and spring recommissioning turn into half the work.
The rack room gets a dehumidifier that runs from November through March and an insulated door to keep the damp off racked motors between the twice weekly checks.
Nothing over 150 horsepower and no twin motor rigs. The benches, the hoist and the tank are sized for the motors this shop knows best, and now the line is written down so nobody has to ask.
Every annual service and every winterize drains the gearcase. The oil that comes out says more about a motor than anything else we look at.
The drain screw at the bottom comes out first and the vent screw at the top second, so the oil runs clean into the pan. Then it sits in the light for a minute while we look at it.
Written up at the end of the day, kept in the words they went down in.
A 9.9 in for spring recommission, put away the fall before with half a tank of pump gas and nothing added. Float bowl dried to varnish, idle jet shut solid. Carb off, stripped, soaked and rebuilt at $210, and it idled on the first try. Every motor we winterize gets stabilizer and a dry carburetor, because this is what happens when it does not.5
Skiff motor with a weak stream at the tell-tale and gearcase oil like a milkshake. Prop off, and behind it a ball of monofilament wound so tight it had cut into the prop shaft seal. Line out, seals replaced, case pressure tested and refilled. Pull the prop once a season and look behind it. Ten minutes, and cheaper than a lower unit.
Annual service on a 25. Impeller looked fine from the end, but flexed in the hand one vane had a crack across its root and two more had set over in the shape of the housing. Three seasons in. It would have pumped on, poorly, until the day it did not. New kit at cost, $165 labor, and the old one went home in a bag because it was asked for.
A tidy looking 15, cowling polished, bought off a trailer at a yard sale. Serial plate gone and the rivet holes filled. No diagnostic, no quote, back in the truck. We have to know where a motor came from before it goes on a bench, and a missing plate is the one thing on it we cannot fix.6