Captain's Blog

Sooooo…  I thought that moving the boat out of the water and onto dry land would give me some peace and time to work on the boat.  There was an expression by George Will, it went something like this…  “Aren’t you glad you’re not getting as much government as you’re paying for”…  At this point I feel that I’m getting far more government than I have paid for…  One of the neighbors complained to the zoning board.  And everything in the yard got evicted…  including me…

Soooo…  I’m now in Saint Augustine.  Hopefully this town will be better.  I’m in a corner of a very secluded yard of my friend.  And…  I’m a half hour closer to Panama.  The ocean-going barge didn’t make it.  I had no place to put her and absolutely no money in her.  I cut my loses…  literally…  Now I have $50 in her through sawzall blades and she is in dumpster sized pieces…  I’ll find another along the way.  I really need to focus on getting the dive boat ready.  It’s so easy to get distracted.

I’ve been working on the dive boat and making good progress.  Hopefully, I can have her back in the water in a couple of months.  Just in time for hurricane season.  I’ve been documenting this conversion project from being a Dodge pickup truck motor to a dive boat motor.

This website is documenting all of the necessary changes and the method for converting a pickup truck cummins 6bt to a marine engine.  Also, I have links for parts, and have actually found some manufacturers that will sell to me directly, that I can remarket through the site…

We’ll see how this goes…  Oh… by the way, this process also applies to the Cummins 6ct and the Cummins 4bt.

Capn Scott

Finally got the engine and transmission bolted together.

I removed all of the items that aren’t necessary, pressure washed the motor and taped up the spots that I didn’t want painted.  Then bolted up everything and painted the whole thing assembled.

Progress is slow…  but it is moving forward…

Capn Scott

More progress on the new dive boat…

I have the engine and transmission over at the transmission shop.

We have the transmission torn down into all of it’s pieces.  We’ve checked the bearings…

And, we’ve changed the gearing ratio from being a 2 to 1 to a 1.5 to 1.  This will give me better power and a more reasonable propellor pitch.

We found 2 plates that needed to be replaced, but everything else was in pretty good shape.

Doesn’t look like much, when you break it down into it’s little pieces.  But a good transmission is as important as a good diesel.  This is a commercial grade Twin Disc 502-1.

Though, there are alot of tiny pieces involved inside of the box.

The engine is a Cummins 6BT.  I’m reconditioning it and marinizing it.  More on it later. Time to button up the transmission and finish painting it…

Capn Scott