It Lives !!!!!!

So today I set out to do some more preperation for starting my engine.  Last week I did a temporary fuel system, and before I knew it I was ready to try starting it.  Luckily it occured to me to check the oil as it had basically none, so a quick trip to repco fixed that.

I dragged the engine outside and set it up sitting on a pallet, and the engine crane tehering it from above, but not taking any weight, it was just to stop it tipping over.

Then I hooked up the electrics, stole the battery from my car and with no fuel turned it over a couple of times to at least attempt to get some oil circulation.

I then hooked up the fuel,  to be honest I didn't expect it to start,  I thought if I was luckily it might cough and splutter a bit, but it roared into life no problems at all,  with the fuel on, it took only about 3 seconds to start.

It wont idle, but there are plenty of reasons for that,  no fly wheel, no MAF sensor to name just two.

It made my day, I can now confidently carry on buying parts to marinise it. It also proved that the decision to send the ECU to Russia to have the security bypassed was a very good move.

http://youtu.be/POdcFvgkR04

Expoxy and painting

So I have finished the 3 coats of epoxy.  Like most of these tasks, I got much better towards the end.  It endedup fairly bumpy, and when I tried to sand it down I got down to the glass in places.  In hind sight I should have put another coat of epoxy on and tried to get it smoother.  To be fair I thought I had it fairly smooth, but as painting would later show I was miles off.

Paint, so I settled on a sandable two part epoxy undercoat.  This product comes from Altex Paints.  I watched thier instructional video on applying it and so recruited my brother to give me a hand.  So he took the job of rolling it on, and I was doing the tipping off.  What we discovered fairly quickly was it was hard to get a thick even layer.  But as we progressed we got better at it, and by the end it was going on well, but the start was terrible. 

The paint was a two part epoxy, and by the time we got to the end we had only used half, but had mixed the whole tin.  This is despite the fact that a single tim should have only covered about 2/3rd at most of the boat, so it was obviously on way to thin.

So I did some more thinking and the following weekend applied a second coat, just by roller only, and this time I got the whole tin on.  From there it was sanding, and this is where I really discovered the bottom wasn't nearly as smooth as I thought.  After sanding in some places i was back down to the epoxy, and so have had to apply a third coat, hopefully this will be the last.

The pink is a guide coat I put on to aid in sanding, its just some old enamel paint mixture with a lot of thinners to make a very runny paint.

I have also purchased some "Pacific Teal" as the final
bottom coat.