What did you do to your sailing boat today ?

This morning was a trip up to Rvergate and success! we managed to get the ram out today.
The first stage was to drop the pin out that holds the ram to the keel. This necessitated removal of a small 5mm allen key bolt with a big flat washer either side of the keel head, and that gave you access to the pin itself. Look for the circlip on one side and then simply drift punch the pin out in the opposite direction. It came out straight away , all very simple and quick.

The second part was unbolting the ram from the keelbox, which was 4 nuts either side and drop off the big s/s plates. Preceded by a fair bit of work with knife blades cutting away the generous amount of silicon binding the plates on. One neat trick I really liked, at the top and bottom of both plates a small 5mm hole had been drilled and a nut welded on. By putting any 5mm bolt in and doing it up you pulled the plate off the keelbox to break the silicon bead. It certainly helped, but there was a LOT of silicon, hence the knives.

With that out of the way, all we had left was to 'slide' the ram out. And that turned out to be a mongrel. Some lube gunk on the keel/ram mating had picked up some dirt and rubbish, enough to stop the ram head from sliding out of the keel. You know one of those jobs when you don't have the purchase to pull against? The ram is cylindrical and felt like you were wrestling a muddy pig. It would move about 1" and then get caught on something in the keel and refuse to budge. Grrr...
After an hour or so of sweating and cursing, still no success. So we applied an old mechanics trick, soaked everything we could reach in Innox, downed tools and walked away from it for 10 mins.
Came back and sure enough, a few more struggles and curses then out she popped, no problems at all.

So, tomorrow will be play "find the leak". We'll use compressed air to point us to the right spot, then get it up on the bench and start stripping it. It's heavier than I expected, it's a struggle to carry it by yourself.
I'll try and post some pics, today was too much hydraulic oil and sweat for pics. I did manage to get a few pics on the trip down, ending with this one of a cruise ship playing the tide passing us under the Gateway bridge. not much wriggle room there!



IOR hull form showing why they go to windward so sweetly. Davidson 34.


Looking comfortable with a nice lead to a hard charging T7, a Sydney 38 reaching in the 8-12 knots breeze.




Kinda hard to look all romantic with big rust streaks down the flanks, she looked a bit tired and ordinary. But little to no wake, that was good of them.

Great job shaggy and very well described.

Now that Fusion has revealed that one of her secrets to you, the next time will be a lot easier.

I am sure there will be a next time if you continue trying to chop whales in half with that 9 ft drop blade.

Nice work. What's Innox?
Hope it's something simple. Check the ram itself for any slight pitting or damage that would damage the seal as it sides in and out.

Thanks craig66. Lanolin products are difficult to find in France.

Sorry gents, that was my fat fingers. Craig picked it, I meant to write Inox. Brilliant for any cleaning or degreasing , we use for cleaning through to unseizing bearings that you would swear were toast.
My go-to squirty squirty.

The ram before disassembly..

G'day Jolene,
Yes, which I was not expecting! it was the O ring on the hydraulic cylinder end cap. ??? The inner seals, ie: the ones surrounding the ram shaft itself were all good, which is where I was expecting the problem to be. Especially if it was from hitting something, but this seal simply seals the end cap onto the cylinder.



This makes me think it was a problem when the ram was first assembled, as this o-ring can't suffer damage from keel shock from a collision or running aground. The other tell is it took about 45 mins with a drift punch to get the end cap off, and the threads were grindy all the way...oh dear.
After we got it off we could see It looked like something foreign had been in the threads when they first assembled it, and in the process of screwing the end cap on, whatever was caught up has damaged the threads and possibly the o-ring. This pic is when we first cracked it open,the black bits are bits of o-ring and the damage to the threads is just discernible, they were razor sharp, as all three of us soon found out!.



It took about 6 hours of work with thread files and small steel buff to repair both the male and female threads. Now the end cap is at a state where you can hand screw it on, except for one tight spot right at the end of the thread. I can't find any more damage and a oil filter wrench is enough to get past the tight spot, so its now good enough to assemble.
Tomorrow is take it down to the hydraulic gurus and see if I am lucky enough to get a seal kit without too much hassle. I'll do all the seals just in case, it's not like I want to do this again for a while!


I showed my wife the pics, and bless her, her only comment was "That's one of our good towels!"
Oops....

The internal thread has tool chatter. Its common in stainless because of the way it sings when you machine it. Tool geometry and rigidity along with speed, feed and depth of cut plays a big part in avoiding chatter. Often it occurs more often whilst cutting an internal thread simply because the machinist is being too careful. The tool chatter leaves tiny little barbs on the thread and these really help to start galling.
For applications where you constantly are having to assemble and disassemble a thread or bolt, often where permissible you can help by using two different grades of stainless,, eg 304 nut and a 316 bolt