Elvis and his guys were fairly quick in getting the engine apart. He was sure he could get everything apart on the boat to the point where he would just leave the bare engine block on the boat, and take everything else to his shop to get prepared and rehabbed. Didn’t quite work out that way. When he tried to get the pistons out of the cylinders, it proved to be impossible.
They battled with it for hours before coming to terms with the fact that they were going to need to bring the block back to the shop and work on it there. For the good three days that this was going on, the inside of Andiamo was absolutely chaotic. There were engine parts everywhere. Grease and grime got all over the place as the parts of the engine were strewn about. After an interesting ordeal of pulling the block out of the companionway using a ratchet winch and some manpower (I didn’t think they’d do it), the engine block was off Andiamo.
Before Elvis can run off with just the block, I then asked him about all the other parts that were still onboard. He said I didn’t need to worry about those, and they can stay onboard. I told him I didn’t want that, because while we were waiting for parts, etc, I wanted the parts to be cleaned and inspected as we agreed. Elvis didn’t seem to like that demand, but I told him that the WHOLE engine was going to his shop. So all the item were loaded onto a taxi-truck and off they went.
In the meantime, we had to determine what parts we needed. It turned out that we definitely needed new pistons, rod bearings and all the usual parts needed to rebuild. I had a gasket kit onboard and thankfully that ended up saving me about $500. We had to order the other parts we needed from Barranquilla. Karen took on this responsibility and handled things for me. After some phone calls and pricing, we figured out how much everything was going to cost and how quickly we can get it. A couple days later, the parts started arriving. Unfortunately, they sent us the wrong pistons, so we had to arrange to send them back and get them replaced. That took a few more days.
In the meantime, Elvis was slowly showing up more and more to prepare the reassembly the engine. Emphasis on “slowly”. He tended to make his days short and sweet. When we finally had all the parts we needed, and the cylinder head had come back from being re-machined, I thought Elvis would go at it gangbusters. But I was wrong, he just kept working at his same pace.
So the most frustrating part of this is the time everything’s taking. Elvis is working meticulously and precisely when he is working though, which is a refreshing change for me.
Now we need to see how fast this thing’s going to get wrapped up. So far 4 weeks and counting…