LIKE-NEW LISTER ENGINE
Bahía de Caraquéz, Ecuador, Tuesday, September 25, 2007

It is a pretty depressing prospect. Our 35-year-old Lister 3-cylinder, air-cooled, 19½ hp, 2,000 rpm diesel engine looks a mess. There’s no apparent rust, but the paint is blistering and in some places has already disappeared. The exhaust manifold, left as bare metal right from the beginning because of the intense heat it develops, is shedding layers and dropping flakes of metal, large and small, onto the large starter motor just below it. I realize, of course, that something needs to be done. But when you are a novice in engine matters, just trying to figure out the proper steps and the right materials and the appropriate chemicals is somewhat daunting. My naïve questioning of other, more experienced cruisers, only makes public how pathetic my knowledge and skill sets actually are. I know it myself, of course, but I am not eager to expose myself to ridicule and smirks any more than necessary.

Enter Washington Moreira! I have gotten to know him because he operates his speedboat business out of the Bahía Yacht Club where our mast was laid out for repairs this past summer. Without the Quiteños down for beach vacations, there is not that much for him to do. He’s about 40, strongly built, and friendly without being pushy. He drives around town in a small and very distinctive blue stake truck of Russian manufacture. Apparently these Russian trucks were quite common in Ecuador when he was a kid. Anyway, it’s the same age he is and he has restored it. It does look somewhat bizarre – like the body and the chassis don’t actually quite belong together. But it functions just fine. He is practicing his English and I am working on my Spanish. He helps me with one or two little technical problems and has been a great source of local information and contacts to workshops around the area and even as far away as Manta. As it turns out he is by trade actually a motor mechanic, something he learned from his father. So you can see where this is going.

Since his work is sporadic, I ask him if he would like to help me check over the engine and clean it up. Sure! When you are dealing with Ecuadorian craftsmen it is very difficult to get a quote or even to narrow the job down to specifics. Once aboard, Washington is inside the engine room like a monkey and has things sussed out quickly. It needs more than just cleaning; the whole engine should be painted or otherwise we are going to have increasing problems. I think he means painting the engine with a paint brush. But no; he mans spray-painting it. Now this was beyond anything I could have imagined even possible given that the Lister sits inside an enclosed engine room aboard a sailboat at anchor in the Rio Chone.

But over the next few days all the housings and cowlings around the air-cooled engine are removed to be worked on ashore and the basic engine block is exposed down to the valves on top. I am surprised at how small the actual engine block really is. It’s the claddings that make it look so large. He does some testing and poking around. Everything looks good. Very clean inside too. It’s the outside that is the problem.

But, a few days later, we have a gleaming, like-new Lister diesel engine in a smashing dark coffee colour. The work started with a wash-down with diesel fuel and with plenty of elbow grease with a bronze wire brush and scrapers. Then, a wipe down with rags. With the dinghy dangerously low in the water, the next day I row Washington out to Vilisar along with an electric-driven air compressor and a portable gasoline generator borrowed for the day from a friend of Washington’s. We have already been to the paint shop for materials. I am sceptical but Washington is pumped up. Even the day before when he was wedged in behind the engine block and covered in grease, diesel fuel and stained black up to the elbows, he said he loves doing this kind of stuff. He is great about explaining what he is doing and, unlike every other electrician and mechanic that has ever been on the boat, he does not block my view with his derriere. I get to see what is going on too so that I can learn.

After setting up the machinery on deck, he is back inside the enclosed engine room and spraying the block with paint thinner to degrease it and then dry it. He does wear a paper dust mask. But the atmosphere is pretty grim. No problema, nada! After a brief break we are mixing paint and thinner into the spray-painting cup. Back in he goes and starts the actual spray-painting. As before, he is all around the engine, getting at it from every side and angle. There are clouds emitting from the engine room and rising up through the companionway hatch.

A few hours later, looking rather coffee-coloured ourselves, we are rowing the machinery and ourselves back to the dock at the Bahía Yacht Club and loading things into the Russian stake truck. Before driving off, however, Washington gets to work in the club yard to clean up all the metal items that he could remove from the engine. Soon they are painted and laid out to dry.

The final step before re-assembling the engine is a flying trip to Manta in the “Mother Russia” to get new gaskets made. Having grown up in the area as the son of a mechanic, Washington knows where to go straight away. So, we make a beeline for the gasket-maker: nobody carries gaskets for an old Lister although everyone seems to remember these engines with fondness. The man at Columbiano de Empaques near the bus station makes new asbestos gaskets (empaques) using the old rubber ones as models. Altogether he has about a dozen to make, some of them quite small like washers.

Meanwhile we are off to a number of other businesses. We need some hose for the electrical bilge pumps (the old plastic ones were laid too close to the exhaust pipe and of course melted). We also need a series of replacement stainless-steel nuts and bolts to put the bits and pieces back on the engine. We also drop by El Bruho’s (Sñr. Jaime’s) machine shop. This is the biggest such workshop I have seen so far locally. Very clean with lots of advanced Chinese-built lathes and planing and milling machinery. (I have noticed that machine shops are usually tidy and reasonably clean, but welding shops are dirty and cluttered. Why is that?) I need to have a stainless-steel threaded eyebolt cut down into a ring and a 5/16th-inch stainless bolt welded to it so it can be the female eyebolt for the male that I already have. I can’t get what I need in Ecuador and importing it from the USA of Europe way too expensive. Half an hour later I have what I need. The total cost is $3! El Bruho (he is called “The Witch” because he seems to be able to do so many impossible tasks. He does a lot of work for the large tuna-fishing fleet in Manta.)

I have also been looking for petroleum-absorbent pads and bilge cleaner for the boat. Whenever I ask for them and even show pictures of them from the West Marine catalogue, all I get is blank looks all around. Washington swings by Zurito Hardware. Lo, and behold! They have a huge roll of the stuff, 50 metres at least and lying right there in plain view. They almost sell to me the lot for $7.68. that seems pretty cheap to me but I say nothing. Unfortunately, they realise that the price should be $7.68 per metre. But it’s still way under the West Marine price (smaller individual sheets there at about $12 each). A gallon of bilge cleaner costs me under $9. I am already getting back the $10 of gasoline I bought for the trip in “Mother Russia”. Washington even knows a place to each lunch that serves generous portions of good food, is nice to sit in and costs only a dollar each for almuerzos (set lunch). And when we go back to pick up the gaskets before rocketing back to Bahía on the rough and serpentine country roads, they cost me altogether only $10. I am sure that the fact that Washington was with me saved me days of searching and a lot of money. He knows what the prices are and he is not likely to get ripped off like a gringo. Today he spends till lunchtime re-assembling the engine. Man, it looks great!

We have already agreed that he should pull out the old, bronze, Jabsco engine-driven pump and make sure that it works. It seems to be frozen up for lack of use; I normally use the big hand pump mounted in the engine room. Washington promises to take it with him to El Bruho the next time he goes to Manta and he will also pick up the proper tubing for the bilge pumps as well. I installed the automatic electric bilge pumps back in Long Beach. I was worried about leaving the boat unattended when I left for Chicago. Our hull is pretty tight. But you never know and I did not want the hassle of having Vilisar sink at the dock. That happened to two other boats at Shoreline Village Marina while I lived there. The cost to raise the boats again was astronomical! And I don’t mean just high! Astromonical! The big hand pump works fine. But you have to be on board. The same applies to the high-capacity engine-driven bilge pump. They are going to be fine when we are at sea.

A day later Wacho (this is his local nickname; he now refers to me as Mi Gringito which I guess means he has more or less adopted me) is waiting at the dock when I take Kathleen ashore to go to the cyber-café. He decided to inspect the jabsco pump rather than take it to El Bruho in Manta. The impeller is like new (it was, too, six years ago) but the central stainless steel shaft is badly pitted. He tells me to get into Mother Russia and off we go. We catch up with Joselito in Leonidas Plaza, the suburb of Bahía, where he is eating desayunos (big breakfast) as a sidewalk eatery. Yes, he will be along in a few minutes on his bike: he can do the job for $40. We wind our way into unpaved back streets until we come through a back lane to a house surrounded by fruit trees (bananas, nona, mango and maraacuya) and a yard enclosed behind the standard split-bamboo fence. We sit down on the standard white plastic armchairs and wait. The family lives upstairs (traditional housing on the coast is a raised platform on p8nded-in wooden beams with lumber or, more commonly, split-bamboo siding. There was a shady area beneath the house for hammocks, workshops, animals, etc. Now the houses are frequently built on rammed-in concrete posts and concrete platforms with brick or concrete block walls. But people still live upstairs and use the space for something else down below. Under this house was Joselito’s machine shop. As usual, this machine shop is clean and tidy. Nothing lying loose on the floor to trip you up, the floor itself swept clean, the tools neatly arranged within working reach of the old Rumanian-built metal lathe. Nearby stands a Chinese drill press. That’s it for machinery.

Joselito arrives and starts to set things up. He doesn’t have a machine that can cut the slots in the stainless steel shaft. But he can makeshift it using the lather and some drill bits. While he works he alternately chats with us or sings to himself. He is very fastidious about his work, working with the tips of his long fingers and measuring each step carefully several times before starting. Clearly Joselito likes the precision aspects of his work with metals. Exactly what one looks for in machinists and brain surgeons, I should think. Ninety minutes later we have all caught up with the latest local gossip, discussed the upcoming elections on Sunday for the constitutional assembly (both these guys are definitely going to vote for PAIS, Raphael Correa’s new-deal party, no doubt about it) and the new stainless steel shaft is lying in my hand.

Wacho asks how much to free up the hand-cranking armature from the Lister. $8. Do it. We sit down again. This is not so much precision work as hammering and loosening the shaft from within its metal sleeve. Joselito calls his teenage son to come and help. This is tough. Probably hasn’t been lubricated in years. Eventually they use the blow torch to heat the shaft and finally get it all apart. Two hours later we are leaving with our two projects. It’s lunchtime and we drop into Wacho’s favourite restaurant for a huge lunch that costs a dollar each. Over the meal he says that work would have costs $150 at El Bruho’s in Manta and we have also saved ourselves the trip.

The textile “chimney” that carries the heat from the engine to the deck has been repaired so many times now with whipping twine that it is looking rather strange. We drive around to various seamstresses to see if one of them can make a new one. Maybe by Friday if they can find the material at the market.
Otherwise we shall just put the old one back in place.

So now we have this fantastic new engine aboard Vilisar. I keep shining a bright light over the engine room just to enjoy the sight of this glistening coffee-coloured beauty. The engine even sounds better!

If you ever come to Bahía de Caráquez and need engine work, get in touch with Washington Moreira. He’s not much on email but he does have a yahoo account (fourwinds1@yahoo.com). Better to call him on his cellphone at (09) …… Or, if you see him driving around in “Mother Russia”, the blue stake truck, just flag him down.