Restoration Pages

Can anybody tell me if the Roamer light at the bow in the center of the bow rail has glass covering the bulb??

I think ours has been stolen but can't remember if there was one for sure.

Ditto. Mine's not quite purple, but it's closer to purple than white! But it also has a short, so sometimes it's not on at all ..... but sounds like that's OK!!!

I use West System Epoxy by Gougeon Brothers (Google em) for everything. Filling, fairing, repairing, bonding, laminating.....They have great user manuals, that only cost like three bucks, etc on repairing fiberglass, written for the layman. You can buy their stuff at any Boat US or West Marine store or even your friendly neighborhood marina should be able to get a hold of the stuff for you. Its pretty fool proof and the results are grand.

Oh, and any marine topside paint can be made non-skid with the addition of non-skid additive such as is available from International Paints, better known as Interlux. (Google again)... Just did my decks with it and it is better than other devices (such as plain old sand) because the grains are more uniform and are easier to clean. Can even shoot them through a paint sprayer.

100 gallons of fuel in the bilge

Someone commented on not knowing what 100 gallons of fuel in the bilge would be like. I Know! Two years ago we set off from Corpus Christi on a trip to Cuba. Just as we approached the jetties my wife came up from below and said, "I smell gas down ther." My response was, "You cant, this is a diesel powered boat." But she insisted I go below. I smelled Deisel immediately. A quick look into the engine room revealed that my starboart tank, 100 gallons exactly, had drained into the bilge. There eas a hole rusted in the bottom og the tank. We turned around and that was the end of the trip. It took forever to get all that diesel out of the boat. BUT, thank god I didnt have an automatic bilge pump or I would be sitting in EPA prison for the rest of my life.

Diesel engine HP ratings

I ran across this on the web. Nothing to do with anything but here it is.


I've found this thread to be especially interesting, especially the parts of it that deal with the power ratings of the engines. I'm much more familiar with diesel engines than with gasoline ones, (such that I can quote the spec's of some of the more common ones without having to look them up). So, the examples that I will site pertain directly to diesel engines, but the exact same principles apply to gasoline engines. In fact, I?ll use the CAT 3208 as an example, since it is a V-8 diesel very similar to a large gasoline engine. (636 cid)

The harder you run an engine, the faster you will wear it out. It really is as simple as that. Every engine therefore has many different power ratings, depending upon how hard you plan to run it and how long you want it to last. If I were to tell CAT that I was going to put the engine into a small commercial fishing trawler that was going to run 3500 hours pre year, for example; then they would tell me that the 3208 was good for 150 hp. They would derate the engine so that I could not get more than that much power out of it. If you were then to ask them for an engine for a high performance recreational boat that was not going to be used more than 300 hours per year, then they would tell you that the same engine was good for
435 hp.

What?s the difference between these two identical engines, that they would have such a different rated power? Chiefly this: In both cases CAT wants for the engine to last at least as long as the warranty. Since I?m going to put a whole lot more hours onto my hypothetical boat than you are, they will derate mine in order to achieve that objective. In another example, I was once going to put a CAT 3412 into an air boat. My customer wanted the most power for the weight and the cost, but was happy with an engine life of at least 1800 hours. This is a very unique case, in which CAT was willing to rate the engine at 1000 hp. On the other hand, a friend of mine maintains a fleet of work boats with this same engine in them. He runs them at about 500 hp and gets 50,000 hours between overhauls.

CAT has five different power ratings published for each engine. (If you present them with a special case, you will learn that they actually have more ratings than that.) These ratings go from "A" for continuous duty to "E" for highly intermittent duty. In this example, the A rating for a 3208 is 150 hp; whereas the E rating is 435 hp. Gasoline engines have a similar ratings system, except that the DIN and ISO standards for "automotive power" ratings will give you a slightly higher number than most "highly intermittent" ratings. In other words, it is the peak power you might use if you were passing uphill. It is certainly not the amount of power that you can expect the engine to put out for any significant period of time.

We are currently building two boats, both commercial fishing work boats; and are about to buy an engine for one of them. It will most likely be a Cummins B5.9 in one of its many versions. This is the same engine Ford used to offer in their pickup trucks, and Dodge currently offers. Cummins is telling me that they will rate it for
150 hp in our boat, but it is rated at 220-250 in its various automotive applications, and it is offered in a 300 hp version for recreational marine uses that do not exceed 300 hours per year. To put this into perspective, a pickup truck running flat and level at 75 mph without a trailer will require about 50 hp. The same truck with perhaps a 10,000 lb. gross load would require most of the 220 hp. The same engine in a 25 foot sport fishing boat would probably cruise at about 200-230 hp.

There is a difference between the way commercial truck engines and car engines are rated. (A pickup truck is a car for the purposes of this discussion.) In the case of a diesel truck engine, they are rated pretty much at the power they are operated at. In a gasoline car engine, however; they are rated much higher than you would ordinarily ever use them. I know of another example that illustrates that point nicely. They are two almost identical 35 foot sport fishing boats that typically run over a 100 miles off shore together, where they troll for deep water fish. One has twin Cummins 6B5.9 engines salvaged out of pickup trucks and converted to marine use. The other has twin 454?s, also salvaged out of automotive service and converted. All four of these engine are rated at 250 hp, or within five percent of it. These boats normally stick close together all weekend, until it is time to run home; at which time the diesel boat will beat the gasoline boat home by about six hours. The difference is that Cummins recommends that the diesel boat back off of maximum rpm by only 200; whereas no one is going to run a gasoline engine that hard for that long. That captain backs off about a thousand from maximum rpm. To exceed that speed for long periods of time causes cooling problems. This is very consistent with the way the engines were designed to operated during their first lives as automotive engines.

To sum it all up, an automotive engine will typically run at 20-40 percent of its rated power. (In this case, I?m using "automotive power ratings.") It will only exceed these limits under highly unusual circumstances. If you put the same engine into a recreational boat, it will typically run at 60-80 percent of its rated power. A commercial diesel truck engine typically runs at about 60 percent of its rated power. (Flat, level, 75 mph, maximum legal gross load.) That same diesel engine installed into a recreational boat will often run at up to 95 percent of its rated load, with bursts perhaps as high as 105 percent. If these same engines are installed into commercial work boats, then their service lives would be more similar to the truck or the car. It is all a matter of how long you expect to run your engine before replacing it or overhauling it.

All the numbers I quoted in this article are from my memory. If I were at work, where I have all my reference books, I would have checked them more carefully. They should be fairly accurate, and are certainly good enough for the comparison purposes for which they were intended. Since the same engine is sold in so many different versions, you would certainly want to check the OEM specifications on your particular engine before making any critical decisions based upon these numbers.

From: Rick Morel The above really says it all. I'm more familiar with auto engines used in aircraft, but this is very much like marine use. Except it's a lot easier to drop the hook and look for a tow than start looking for a possible landing site! Know what the prop on an airplane is for? To keep the pilot cool -- turn it off and watch him sweat!

Aircraft engines are much derated for reliability. The old Continental
65HP was used in racers at about 120HP, for a life of a couple hundred hours instead of a couple thousand.

VW engines have been used a lot. In the car, they're rated at about
60HP for the 1,600cc. In planes, if they're derated to 40-45HP, they seem to last forever. If used at 60HP a few hundred hours. Then there are the "high HP" conversions, claiming 85 and more. The life of these seem to be in minutes!

My brother used to build dragsters years ago. He'd get 1,800HP out of Chevy 454.... for three drags. About 30 seconds.

I think someone mentioned a Subaru engine in this thread. The
4-cylinder and 6 have been used on gyroplanes with good results. I forget the spec HP rating for the 4, but used at about 50HP makes for a very reliable and long-lived engine.

To maybe put things in some perpective, the VW is rated at 5,200 RPM, if I recall right, but is set up in aircraft for 3,800 RPM take-off and about 3,600 RPM cruise. The Subaru 4 has I think the same spec RPM, but is used at 4,000 and 3,800.

One more question I remember was how much HP does an average sedan take for 60 MPH? Now, getting to my EV (Electric Vehicle) period. My Electric Ford Escort Wagon took 12.5 HP for 55 MPH. A Ford Ranger pick-up requires 19.2 HP for 55 MPH. Less than we would think. The big difference in HP required (and gas/electron milage) is due almost all to aerodynamics