I familiarized myself with a new set of gear and gadgets Sunday, when I changed the oil in my outboard. The weather was great, and I had online and telephone help from my friends the C-Brats.
If you’re interested in the details, the discussion there is pretty interesting. Otherwise, just enjoy these fine, fine pictures.
Here we are, warming up the old oil so it will flow out of the engine more easily.
Sometimes, the best gadgets are the gadgets you make yourself. This is a little bit of duct tape beneath the oil drain fitting.
And here’s what it’s for:
In addition to the C-Brats, I had some live, in-person help, as well.
And what’s this? Another home-made gadget. Sure, you can buy a funnel for this purpose, but why bother? The threads on the water bottle actually engage (imperfectly, but adequately) with the threads on the oil fill opening, holding the makeshift funnel in place.
We also replaced the gear oil, seen draining into a separate bucket.
And we pumped new fluid in, from the bottom up, as specified in the manual. I think Kiera was getting bored with this process.
All went well, except for the zerk (grease gun) fitting I managed to break off! Details are in that C-Brats discussion thread. Here’s the grease gun coupler, with the remains of a zerk fitting poking out the end. You can see the little ball-bearing that’s normally captured inside the zerk.
And here’s the rest of the zerk, with the spring poking out the hole. Ain’t much left to grab onto, is there? Today I’ll use a special extractor bit to try to get that thing out. Wish me luck.
And a quick note for regular readers: Yes, I’ve got lots of material from the Pacific Marine Expo. I’ll dole it out a little at a time over the next couple of weeks, so as not to overwhelm you.
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Tim it looks like your problem is that you pushed the grease gun to far on to the head. it looks as thu you pushed the head over the wrench part of the zerk and jammed it into the grease gun.
Jobs like this are always so much easier when you have a pretty helper AND the “handiman’s secret weapon – - – DUCT TAPE”
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