This is my post for #freeewriters Saturday prompt tired days hosted by @mariannewest
This coming Tuesday I can order all of the parts that I need to put my boat motor back together. The picture is of the bracket that holds it onto the boat and the swivel bracket, the tube that went into the swivel bracket is what broke.
Since I have to wait for Tuesday I decided that I should go ahead and remove the tilt tube and replace it, too. I have been fighting with this tube freezing up for the past 3 years. I had to keep heating it with a torch and pouring oil on it, but what kept happening is, that I would not use it for a few days and it would freeze up again. It took me 3 days to get one side off of it.
This was the easy side.
The other side was harder, I could not get it to budge. I drilled a hole in it and put this bolt in the hole. I hit the bolt with a hammer trying to get it to move. I broke the bolt. I held two torches, one on each side of it. As soon as I took the torch off, I sprayed it with blaster. Blaster is a spray that is supposed to help loosen bolts by eating away corrosion. I spent several hours doing this and finally gave up for the night.
I woke this morning thinking about it and had an AH-Ha moment. It is a pipe so why can't I use a pipe wrench on it? So I put the pipe wrench with a 2-foot-long piece of pipe on the handle and with all my skinny ass had in me, I pulled down on the pipe, it moved, just a little but it moved. After more heat, blaster, and oil it started getting easier. I still could not move it without the pipe wrench but when I hit the end of the pipe with the hammer, I got it to move through the pipe. Since it will now move in that direction and I dinged up the pipe with the wrench so now it will not go through the hole without grinding it down, I cut it off.
My husband had gone to pull the crab traps and when he came home I told him that I got it to move. He said that we could use a socket one size smaller than the pipe and place it on the cut off pipe that was still in the bracket and hammer it through. He put an extension on the socket so he would have some way to hold onto it and used a small sledgehammer. It took several whacks before it started to move but it did come out, ya success, we did it!!!
No more tired days, no more dirty hands, and no more dirty boots.
I guess I work on my motor as I paint, when I paint I wear it, when I work on my motor, I wear the grease.
All photos are mine
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