Replacing Seacocks tomorrow...

Firefly625 said:
Absolutely, I find it almost disgraceful that anyone would even stock brass fittings.

But dzr brass seacocks are the ones required. http://www.paulstevenssurveys.com/upload/Seacocks.pdf
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true, but after lots of headscratching (ppl even tried to persuade me that ss skin fittings are perfect for sea!) and not being able to get one shop to persuade me they know the difference and are actually stocking dzr, I opted for reinforced plastic fittings (truedesign in my case straight from NZ)

V.
 
If you haven't already got them and are shopping at Aquafax consider the Marelon ones they stock. I ended up replacing mine with those and now have no concerns about electrolytic sinking incidents.

Apart of course from the large aluminium outdrive bolted on the back that is!
 
Scarron said:
If you haven't already got them and are shopping at Aquafax consider the Marelon ones they stock. I ended up replacing mine with those and now have no concerns about electrolytic sinking incidents.

Apart of course from the large aluminium outdrive bolted on the back that is!
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Thanks for that, may well do. Or bronze...
 
Best of luck!

When poking around in the cupboard under the heads sink for a spare loo roll over the weekend, I was horrified to see a sea cock I know nothing about hidden up between the hull and the shower cubicle - replacing that will be a terrible job!
 
Well today did not go quite as planned. I think everyone knew it wouldn't.

Well, firstly it was raining ! Secondly Hamble covers services had decided this week would be great to remove seabirds cockpit cover and do a couple of mods I had asked for.. Anyway, tonight's a bit if an anniversary for swmbo and me, so will post more tomorrow, however here is the finished result...

IMAGE_1194.jpg
 
Firefly625 said:
Well today did not go quite as planned. I think everyone knew it wouldn't.

Well, firstly it was raining ! Secondly Hamble covers services had decided this week would be great to remove seabirds cockpit cover and do a couple of mods I had asked for.. Anyway, tonight's a bit if an anniversary for swmbo and me, so will post more tomorrow, however here is the finished result...

IMAGE_1194.jpg
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Wots that green wire for :disgust: & no backing pad either
 
prv said:
Oo-err, bonding wires on seacocks.

I hope you know what you're doing...

Pete
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Firefly, nice job. Bronze :-) Now for 20 questions...

1. Looks like you painted the bilge in fresh grey paint too, right? Or is it just a re-used washer?
2. Re-used the old jubilee clips - ok imho so long as they checked out ok
3. And re-used the (excellent) old handle - good going!
4. As a matter of interest, what thread sealant do you use? I'm using that Loctite squirt stuff for last few years, orangy colour, and finding it ok
5. Personally I wouldn't bother with backing pad either in this scenario. They're an over rated concept imho
6. I'm 100% with you on bonding wire. Wouldn't have it any other way. I'd use thicker green wire though, but no big deal
 
jfm said:
Firefly, nice job. Bronze :-) Now for 20 questions...

1. Looks like you painted the bilge in fresh grey paint too, right? Or is it just a re-used washer?
2. Re-used the old jubilee clips - ok imho so long as they checked out ok
3. And re-used the (excellent) old handle - good going!
4. As a matter of interest, what thread sealant do you use? I'm using that Loctite squirt stuff for last few years, orangy colour, and finding it ok
5. Personally I wouldn't bother with backing pad either in this scenario. They're an over rated concept imho
6. I'm 100% with you on bonding wire. Wouldn't have it any other way. I'd use thicker green wire though, but no big deal
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I have just removed mine and will replace at weekend, can't re-use handles as they were gate valves, I agree about the pads and would only use if was concerned about hull thickness, I have them now but don't think I need them. Biggest problem is no most seacocks are not far from a stringer and its important to make sure the inner and outer surfaces are parallel, should be ok when replacing but when fitting new will need checking, I have made up a tool for this using a grinding disc with the hole cut out to locate in the hole and fits into an electric drill. It's surprising how much you can take off to get level.

Do Fairline fit bonding wires in factory? every surveyor I have spoken to has allways advised against bonding.
 
I'm not keen on seacock bonding , especially if there are any hoses on board which are reinforced with wire .
the hose is very difficult to hack through and you usually end up with a sharp wire that bonds to the seacock.
The other end will bond to what ever it is fastened to, engine,aircon,generator. In effect you have bonded eveything together including some 240v earthed systems. You risk engine pencil anodes acting as hull anodes and *eventually your DZR seacock is your anode for your props/shafts/rudders.

* ( I m not 100% sure of the electrical properties of DZR, modern prop shafts and bronze props share almost identical electrical properties, I think DZR is an older bronze which doesnt share the same electrical properties , need input from VicS to be sure)
 
Hi James

Are you going to replace the seacock on the water feed to the sterntube? On Phoebe I can get at all of the seacocks and they are all free except that one which is solid and dxmn near impossible to get to. You have me worried overall as I have never considered replacing the seacocks on her. BTW on both my Hardy's all the seacocks were bonded from new - but I think there are lots of debates on that one.
 
jfm said:
Firefly, nice job. Bronze :-) Now for 20 questions...

1. Looks like you painted the bilge in fresh grey paint too, right? Or is it just a re-used washer?
2. Re-used the old jubilee clips - ok imho so long as they checked out ok
3. And re-used the (excellent) old handle - good going!
4. As a matter of interest, what thread sealant do you use? I'm using that Loctite squirt stuff for last few years, orangy colour, and finding it ok
5. Personally I wouldn't bother with backing pad either in this scenario. They're an over rated concept imho
6. I'm 100% with you on bonding wire. Wouldn't have it any other way. I'd use thicker green wire though, but no big deal
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John, thanks for you comments. Nice job... well TBH I feel a fraud!

Story goes like this; Late leaving home, due to having to pick up passengers who wanted a ride down to Hamble to check their boat out,.... OK fine, but then they wanted to pop into Mercury, then drop a Christmas gift to a friend in Hamble village... then it started raining. Arrived at Seabird and no cockpit cover. When you have a small boat and you plan to do a job that will entail all your tools and engine cover etc being in the cockpit it kind of throws you! So being a couple of hours further on in the day then I had planned just wanted to get on with the job. So decided to clean up outside seacock exit, make sure no antifoul build up was going to hold onto the through hull fitting and stop it coming out easily. So having cleaned area and fitting up with a wire brush and a sander, all started to look good as new, then started to inspect the internals with a torch... and looked perfect. But I had come down to remove the thing and it was the inside parts that looked pretty tired, so since Hamble Cover services had happened to return with my cover, I started drying out the cockpit and then got on with attacking the seacock fitting from the inside, now here you see a pic of just where it is and just how awkward it is to get to. Seacock in question is bottom left of shot, under exhaust

IMAGE_1183.jpg


IMAGE_1184.jpg


Ok, so excuses are coming out... I bought 2 specific tools, a large spanner and a large wrench that I knew would get the seacock off... however I just misjudged how little room there was and when I got the spanner on there was no room to get any movement on it, the thing was not budging! I tried to get the pipe off, again having removed the jubilee clips the thing was seized solid on the seacock...with great effort I started twisting it, but it would not move even 1mm off the taper. Ok I thought... I would leave that bit for a minute and get a smaller wrench on the seacock and see if we have get any movement. Decided I wanted to clean up around the base nut first so I could see what I was doing and got a wire brush on the seacock to clean it up.... once I had started doing this, the results were looking good, so I continued & I realised that after inspecting the entire thing with a mirror and a torch clearly there was nothing wrong with it!

IMAGE_1196.jpg


I did re-fit the old jubilee clips, they looked perfect and tightened up solid. If I could have removed the thing I would not have re-fitted with a backing pad. I do sign up for boning wires, quality boat builders use them for a reason. And I did have a tube of loclite thread sealer... which is now unused... & yes, I did paint the bilges, first coat so looking a little thin in places, will get a second coat next week. Best bit of the day.

Sorry all, this post did NOT go to plan!
 
Haha - yep the old one looks very ok Firefly! The valve is marked DN32 bronze, which is high quality stuff as you'd expect from Messrs Hardy of course.

I disagree 1000% with Daka on seacock bonding but we did that to death ages ago so let's not recount all the arguments here. All my seacocks are bonded to the anodes and I wouldn't have it any other way (it was Fairline standard spec in any case). I'm not aware of any serious boatbuilders who don't do this as standard spec (but would be interested to hear if there are any)
 
jfm said:
Haha - yep the old one looks very ok Firefly! The valve is marked DN32 bronze, which is high quality stuff as you'd expect from Messrs Hardy of course.

I disagree 1000% with Daka on seacock bonding but we did that to death ages ago so let's not recount all the arguments here. All my seacocks are bonded to the anodes and I wouldn't have it any other way (it was Fairline standard spec in any case). I'm not aware of any serious boatbuilders who don't do this as standard spec (but would be interested to hear if there are any)
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Thanks jfm, indeed not getting involved in the bond or not to bond discussion again..
 
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