Sep-Oct 2019: Maintenance Wrap-up

Ross & Jerry in Ghost Rider's Engine Room Working on
Installing the New Transmission Cable and the New
 ZF MicroCommander 9110 Brain Box.

We have noted before, and not without some humility and embarrassment, that experience can be a tough teacher.  And within that realm of education, that failure is the absolute best instructor.  Based just on failure frequency alone we're now thinking we should be at genius level by year end.

At 0815 on the morning of Friday, 27-September, Ross and Jerry of Classic Yacht Service showed up at the boat with a new throttle control brain box.  The ZF 9110 – the latest edition of the “MicroCommander Marine Propulsion Control System” – was identical in size and proportion to the old unit, so it dropped right in.  Jerry worked on attaching the small lead wires from each of the three throttle stations while Ross ran the new cable to the transmission.  Calibration of this unit is done with electronic programming vs. the old style dip switches, and that takes time and patience (as well as two people.)  But three hours later we were dock testing successfully.

After another inspection of the fly bridge throttle station we all agreed that it warranted a new replacement unit.  Ross’s normal supplier had a six week lead time (ZF bought Mathers years ago, thus it's mostly an overseas operation now), so Rick went hunting online and found one in Tennessee (through Marine Parts Source, LINK) and placed an order for the last one they had in stock.  The new 400 Series control head, a Mathers 453-3R, arrived via FedEx a few days later.  On Tuesday, 01-October Ross called to say he had found a sudden hole in his schedule, so that afternoon we rendezvoused at the boat, uninstalled the old fly bridge throttle, installed the new unit (with seven new crimp terminals and heat shrink sleeves), and got it all tested out. 

The New MicroCommander 9110 Brain Box.  In Addition to Upgraded Mother Board Electronics It Also Provides
an LED Digital Readout (Yellow Arrow) For Status & Error Codes.

The New Fly Bridge Throttle Control Station (Red Arrow).  It Isn't Easy to Access the Underside but We Found
Removing the Instrument Cluster Panel (Yellow Arrow) At Least Made That Possible.

Shortly thereafter Mike from Brightworks stopped by the boat to take a closer look at the port side rub rail damage.  As expected he was not very optimistic….it’s an extremely thick and heavy duty piece of stainless steel hardware; it will require special cutting tools to remove the damaged segments, and then it’s likely the replacement strips will need to be custom machined to fit.  We decided that was a job for a yard more experienced with the beefy build of the Nordhavn, so that will get deferred until we can get the boat back over to the east coast.  We'll discuss further with Yacht Tech in Palm Beach, but that will be a next year thing.  Rick spent a couple of hours each day during the first week of October sanding and polishing the deep scratches in the rub rail and was at least able to make it less ugly in the interim.

Accessing the Mid Bilge Drain is a Royal Pain,
But the Arrows Point to its General & Well
Hidden Location.

Amidst all the throttle system work we also encountered more standing water in the mid bilge area.  By this time Rick was getting thoroughly irritated.  The previous water leaks we had found and fixed were still fixed….no leaks from the new Whale fitting on the accumulator tank, ditto for the tightened water maker line on the water manifold.  But after once again tearing into that mid bilge area Rick did find an A/C condensate hose (from the pilot house unit) that was steadily dripping into that bilge cavity.  That part of the puzzle is actually normal – the issue had to be with a plugged limber hole or drain, preventing a flow back to the aft bilge (where the pumps are located.) 

It took some taxing boat yoga to locate, but eventually Rick found a plugged drain in that small bilge recess.  Fortunately and eventually we were able to snake a hose from the wet-dry shop vac down there and suck out the clogging debris.  If you look at the picture to the right, you can gain access to that drain via the removed panels noted by the yellow arrows -- from the top if you have five foot long arms, or from the backside if your arms and hands are less than two inches in diameter.

Yes, Seriously, There is a Drain Hidden in There.  How to Access It is Not At All Obvious or Easy.  Eventually We Were Able to Snake the Shop Vac Hose in There & Suck Out a Variety of Clogging Debris.

Next up is a sea trial....to test out the new throttle system components and find out if we broke anything else.  We'll cover that in the next blog.

Sep 2019: More Boat Business

The "Brain Box", a ZF/Mathers MicroCommander 585;
the Servos & Physical Cable Connections Are Behind
the Printed Circuit Board.

In the days following the electronic throttle (and gear) failure we began pursuing answers…but we weren’t finding anything definitive.  Immediately after the event Rick had tested the electronic throttle station in the pilot house and found it nonresponsive – dead, unable to take control at that location.  But by the following day (Tuesday, 17-September) ALL THREE throttle stations were operating normally once again.  He ran the engines for a few hours to heat up the engine room – wondering if the “brain box” for the electronic throttles, which is located in the engine room, might be succumbing to heat related issues.  But after retesting the throttles following the heat soak, all stations again worked normally.

The next day, Wednesday, 18-September, Rick called on Ross Lund of Classic Yacht Service to visit the boat and assess the electronic throttle system, but absent any active misbehavior that would not be an easy task.  No electrical issues were found….voltage checked out at 13.3 volts at the control box, there was no corrosion there, and all but one of the wire terminals were tight.  The bare ground wire for “station 1” looked a little ragged, so Rick removed & trimmed it, then re-attached it more securely.  Ross and his helper Jerry found one potential issue with the physical cable running from the control box servo actuator to the transmission – the cable length was about a quarter inch too long, which theoretically at least might cause the servo control to keep trying to push it further and issuing a fault when it couldn’t.  They adjusted the cable appropriately.

The more common failure in these types of electronic throttle controls is loose or corroded connections at the throttle station(s).  Given we experienced failures at both the fly bridge and pilot house stations, Rick didn’t think that was the likely cause – a fault at one station is isolated from the other stations.  But to be cautious he spent some time examining the seven wire leads on the bottom side of each throttle.  The pilot house and cockpit units checked out tight and corrosion-free; the fly bridge station looked a little weathered and will require further evaluation and possibly replacement.

The Wiring on the Underside of the Throttle

Rather than just hope this 17 year old system wouldn’t fail again we had Ross order a whole new brain box.  The estimated price tag hurt (about three BOAT units once a new cable and labor were also factored in) but we were not going to be taking chances with such a mission critical system.  Having your 80,000 pound boat ping-ponging around the marina isn’t our idea of fun.  There was a gremlin hiding somewhere in that throttle system and we were determined to exorcise it.

While waiting on those parts the next step was to coordinate repairs to the physical hull and rub rail damage Ghost Rider incurred when it crunched the concrete piling following the throttle failure.  One of the go-to folks in this area with good references for fiberglass and trim repairs is Mike Peters with Brightworks.  Mike inspected the damage and thought the first pass should be wet sanding and buffing, so now we’re just waiting on an opening in his busy schedule to see how that turns out.  We were also concerned that the boat’s bulbous bow might have made contact with the docks; but on Friday, 20-September, our diver took an underwater spin around the boat and found only a minor abrasion in the bottom paint there.  That can wait for the next bottom paint job.

The Water Accumulator Tank with a
New Whale Fitting

In the midst all of this unplanned maintenance activity we encountered yet another repair opportunity.  During his routine below-deck checks Rick discovered some standing water in the mid bilge area.  The slope of that area isn’t ideal and thus does not fully drain to the aft bilge where the pumps are located.  Regardless, water doesn’t belong there, and the “taste test” revealed it was fresh water.  Tracing such leaks back to the origin is usually a frustrating treasure hunt – the source is rarely at or even near where the stuff ends up.  But after using a shop vac to suck the mid bilge dry Rick was able to trace a slow tell-tale water flow back to the water accumulator tank on the port side of the engine room.  The Whale compression fitting at the bottom of that tank had a steady dribble – which of course turned into a wild fountain fest when Rick fiddled with it.

After scrambling to close off the water manifold valves and cutting the circuit breaker to the water pump Rick got the wild spray under control – and then toweled himself and the engine room dry.  It was then simple enough to drain the accumulator tank into a bucket and replace the 15 mm Whale fitting with one of the spares we kept on board.  Re-pressurizing the system revealed a good fix.  To be on the safe side Rick also checked the starboard side of the engine room where the fresh water manifold resides and found the water-maker feed line leaking over there; re-tightening its connecting nut resolved that.

The Arrow Points to the Cheap-Looking Water Maker Line Nut

Coincidentally we were also in the middle of cleaning and draining the FRP water storage tanks.  This is the first time we’ve had to do that, as up to this year we had been on board and turning over the water supply often enough that it couldn’t go stale.  But after several months of non-use a mild odor made it obvious that water quality had declined.  A shock treatment of chlorine, followed by draining, followed by three gallons of Camco’s Cleaner-Deodorizer and two more fill & drain cycles got the job done.  That routine took most of a week, finishing up on Monday, 23-September.  We would leave three of the four tanks mostly empty (with a little of Camco’s Freshener product added) until we began more active use of the boat in a couple of months.

The Tropics Were Still Very Active But Not in Our Immediate Vicinity

In the meantime our weather had turned and stayed stunningly good.  While the tropics were still chock full of named systems, none seemed to be threatening our area, and the same upper level air flow that was keeping them away from us had brought us dryer than normal air.  It was a tad breezy and still warm, but we were enjoying abundant sunshine and reasonable (for us) humidity levels. 

It would have been fabulous boating weather.  Alas, that will need to wait until parts are procured, and repairs have been made and sea-trialed.  Hopefully we'll have more on that in the next blog post.