While I was having an extensive email conversation about our imploded turbo with our long time subscriber Norman Boyes, I felt a bit depressed as I read each new email that dropped into my inbox.
Norman is a marine engineer of 40 years experience and he often gives out sound advice on various maintenance jobs we're doing on A B Sea and it's always appreciated. However this time Norman was the bearer of (potential) bad news and whilst a part of me knew that what he was saying made absolute sense, another part of me wanted to shoot the messenger because I didn't like what I was hearing and how the implications of following his advice would be time consuming, costly and a steep learning curve. The option of not following the advice could be catastrophic.
After our mechanic Aydin performed a turboectomy and the engine of A B Sea ran perfectly after surgery, what Norman was telling me scared the daylights out of me. When the turbo imploded it was quite possible that very small pieces of metal could have been sucked into the engine and were silently and slowly destroying the cylinder walls, piston rings, fuel injectors and anything else they came into contact with. In the long run, if left unchecked, the engine would die and need replacing. A very expensive proposition.
The fix
To find out if there were (or were not) metal fragments inside the engine would require major surgery. Literally the complete top half of the engine would need to be removed, inspected, cleaned, serviced and replaced. And just for extra fun we'd need to get the turboectomy reversed using the services of a turbo specialist in Istanbul. I felt sick to my stomach the morning the job was to start.
On the plus side I did have an ace up my sleeve in the shape of our mate Kev. Fortunately in one of his previous lives he used to build and tweak car engines, so he knows a thing or two about taking them apart and putting them back together again.
The whole job was to be broken down into specific stages. Stage one, remove the air intake manifold, remove the exhaust manifold, remove the rocker cover, valve assembly and cylinder head. Inspect everything and clean everything. Get the turbo to Aydin so he could send it to Istanbul as soon as possible. Once all that was done we ordered the multitude of replacement gaskets and while we waited for the nod from Aydin that he had all the parts it was time to clean the engine, remove the oil filter and oil and then clean the engine bay. That lot took close to 12 hours collectively.
It seems we caught a lucky break as there were no visible metal fragments, the cylinder walls were smooth and the fuel injectors looked perfect. In future blogs I'll tell you all about the next stages and how much it all cost.
Republic Day 2020
October 29th is the day that Turkey celebrates the founding of the Turkish republic after the collapse of the Ottoman empire. Mustapha Kemal Ataturk is the man that made it all happen and is still very much a revered man in Turkey even though he died in 1938.
Celebrations began with a fleet of 58 yachts departing Kaş marina decked out with massively oversized Turkish flags and equally big flags featuring the face of Ataturk himself. As A B Sea was grounded with engine issues we were invited to join Jim and Suzzie on Acheron. Unfortunately Thursday is a big morning for Aannsha with her hosting an online meditation group followed by an online Turkish lesson neither of which she felt she could postpone. So armed with our cameras I became crew on Acheron and you can see where we went and what we did in this week's YouTube video.
We were back at the marina for midday leaving plenty of time to prepare for the evening celebrations in Kaş town. A group of us marina dwellers had booked a table for dinner at Smiley's restaurant and as always we enjoyed great food and conversation.
After dinner we headed to the main square where there was live music on a temporary stage and even with Covid rules and restrictions there was still a huge turnout of people enjoying the celebrations. After the square we went to a small bar locally known as Sadik's place for some late night drinks before heading back to the marina and collapsing into bed.
To watch the video that accompanies this blog click here.