" wrote in
ups.com:

I'm pretty sure the better half would leave somewhere between deck and
galley removal and take all her stuff) I could install some 4-108's
where my little 2gm20's are. This would solve the hunting problem...
Thanks for the thoughts Larry,



The old boat, now called "Stray Dog", has a 2GM20 in it. When I took
that one over it kept loosing the closed loop coolant. The Japanese
geniuses hooked the recovery hose to the CAP of the recovery jug, a
separate plastic jug mounted on the bulkhead by the engine. Noone ever
looked inside the heat exchanger. They saw the level in the jug and
everything was fine...WRONG. Stupid design. The pickup hose INSIDE the
jug from the bottom of the tank to the cap had fallen off...allowing the
poor engine to suck AIR not coolant every time it cooled off! The heat
exchanger was nearly dry!

I dumped the stupid design and bought a universal replacement bottle with
the hose properly located out the BOTTOM of the jug from Autozone (geez,
don't tell anyone at the yacht club bar!) and that solved the coolant
leakage problem. I suppose it's cheaper to put the recovery hose in the
cheap plastic cap than have to mold the jug with a built in pipe coming
out the bottom....What WERE they thinking?!

Only other problem it had was caused by the stupid mounting of the 2-
cylinder freon pump for the cold plate in the ice box. It was on a
bracket welded to the baseplate, not the block. So, every time this big
compressor kicks in, it jerks the belt and pulls the engine sideways
against the poor mounting bushings, which were screwed when I got it.
New engine mounts were OK, but I never like to have belts pulling against
rubber mounts misaligning the engine with the shaft as it ages.

Got room in there for the 4-108? It would never have fit in the
Endeavour 35 behind the steps into the cockpit. Would have been fine if
noone complained about the front cylinder and belt-driven stuff sticking
into the galley, though...(c;

The Amel Sharki's engine room is plenty large, but the hatch, the deck of
the cockpit, doesn't extend forward enough to service the front of the
engine where the fragile impeller and belts are located. You have to
climb down into this neck-high trunk in the port lazerette, then bend in
half to get through the little hatch into the port side of the
engineroom. The hot water heater was in the way, so we moved it deep
into the lazarette. I don't see how anyone tightened the belts where it
was...which probably explains why they were all loose and cracked and
burned when we got the boat home from Florida. The steps in the galley
don't come off with a handy hatch dead right in front of the engine like
the old boat. It's not one of the watertight bulkheads, of which the
Amel has 3, so there was no reason not to make one there except you'd
have to keep the down-sliding hatch up to use it. The emergency hand
bilge pump is built into the step so it can be operated from the galley
or cockpit, but I'd rather have the engine room hatch....go figure.

Check that hose in the coolant recovery bottle....often. There's no
indication it has no coolant in the heat exchanger until something bad
happens...as it overheats.