Dunstaffnage to Ardfern, then damper time

Guess what, it rained again to help us say farewell to Dunstaffnage. Hardly a surprise but at least the wind had abated a bit - we only had 30 knot gusts on the trip. Departing at around 8am to take advantage of the tides there was not much other activity. The plan was a trip down to Ardfern where we hoped to get the long overdue main engine damper swap completed. As for a route - we wanted to go inside Kerrera for two reasons. One was to wave to Keith and Ingrid on their yacht and the second was because it offered shelter from the waves that the persistently strong SW'ly winds had picked up. The route looks like:

only if you are an avid AIS stalker you would have noticed a little diversion heading inside the island towards Oban. Basically we hit the nautical rush hour for ferries and ugly trip boats so we stooged around behind the little island you can see below until they had  all cleared the narrow channel: 

Things looked suitably "dramatic":

whilst the south of  England had wall to wall sunshine and no need for the thick tops that we were sporting. At least the pilothouse was warm and dry, this was not going to be a flybridge trip from end to end, admiring the beautiful hills and islands on the way......

Passing down the eastern side of Kerrera we spotted what must be the smallest CalMac ferry going:

Two Honda outboards indeed...... 

Things did start to improve weather-wise though as we got further south with a hint of blue about:

and by the time we had entered Loch Craignish, we were up top, enjoying the views but maybe not the still keen breeze as we approached Ardfern:

Once again, we had to wait a few minutes for our berth - they needed to move a yacht from it. We are quite used to that when pitching up here! This time Princess Anne's yacht was on a buoy mooring and looking very shiny indeed:

and the lovely old Silver motor boat was in residence too:

There are some seriously nice boats around Ardfern.

Maintenance news:

Upon arrival with a nice warm main engine it was treated to an oil and filter change. It wasn't due according to the Deere specifications but the old oil had been in there for nearly 9 months so it came out. (Normally we would change every 6 months whereas Deere say every 250 hours or once a year, whichever comes first).  The adage of "oil is cheap, engines are not" doesn't fit as well as it used to with current pricing but......

The proper "old school"  engineer from Ardfern, Stephen came on board to check out the new damper and see how he could fix his hydraulic puller to it. So rare to get someone who thinks through a job first rather than just getting out the tools and then getting into a muddle. After a chat he went to fabricate a chunky metal bracket that could be used for this and future damper swaps to make life easier.

In preparation for the work, we stripped the front covers and drive belts etc off the engine and cleaned up the belt dust that had accumulated inside them:

The coolant hose that runs across the front of the engine from the oil cooler is a real pain. It makes getting the covers off an exercise in wriggling and angles. A real pity that it was not led down the other side of the engine to the keel cooler - there is just not enough space to do that easily within the engine tray moulding. 

It also makes access to the damper itself harder too, especially as you need to heat the thing up to release it. This "wonderful" design uses a big torque to yield bolt that has to be wound up to 375 lb/ft  (or for the metric folks, 508 Newton metre. In other words - lots!!! It also has some special Loctite glue that needs heating quite a lot to persuade it to let go. Wonderful indeed. Luckily it is a once every 5 years job. Or 7 this time for us for various reasons.

The new damper comes "bare" so it had been painted ready for assembly otherwise over time it likes adding rust to the belt dust that accumulates inside the covers.

Stephen the rather good engineer duly arrived (on a Sunday too) with the fabricated tools - we forgave him for spraying them Volvo green, not Deere green. The bar helped in undoing the big bolt and then torqueing up the new one properly too:

and the puller fitting was ideal for removing the recalcitrant damper, together with a little oxy-propane torch:

After he fitted the new damper with the special Loctite "glue" and a huge torque wrench, we rebuilt the front of the engine, fitting new drive belts as it seemed like a good idea and is so much easier with the belt guards removed. 

Happy to have that bit of preventative maintenance done and we now have a couple of tools that will make it way easier in future too. I think we will be lending them out to other Deere 6068 owners (subject to a huge deposit payment of course, against safe return!)