Up normal time, maybe a bit late. Breakfast, the net and bible reading. Then Renee’ went into town to check out a store to see what she was going to want to bring back from the states in the fall.
While she was gone, I worked on the generator replacing the control panel. It actually went fairly well, the effort I put into understanding what I was doing paid off, and the drawing I made as well.
Unfortunately that was not the problem. The new panel has the advantage of having an LCD display for things like generator output in voltage current and frequency. Those all read 0 when the generator was running for 10 seconds or so. I was on the support line the 2nd time this happened and was directed to remove the voltage regulator and disconnect two wires and measure the resistance. It was supposed to read 60 ohms, and it only read 25 ohms. This means that the exciter coil is bad. This means the generator has to be rebuilt, and I don’t think we can get this done in Mexico.
So, what are the options?
- Well if we can get it to the factory in Florida it will cost about $2,500 to rebuild the generator.
- IF we can find someone here to do the work, we might get it done here. The support guy said that it could not be done on the boat. Which means the generator has to be taken off the boat just to see if someone here thinks that they can do the work. This means taking the boat to a boat yard, and removing the generator, about as much work as removing the engine from a car. Remember this is a case of IF we can find someone who can do the work.
- Another option is to make sure that our water maker (our biggest AC load) can be run off of a Honda 2200 watt generator. We have one in the states, and would have to figure out how to get it down here. These generators cost about $1,100 in the US, and about $2,500 here in Mexico. If it can be run off the smaller generator, then we would have to store the smaller one on board and set it up once in awhile to run the water maker.
I don’t know what we will do yet, still investigating options.
After dinner we made some phone calls, and then at 8:30 we went over to Mike & Jennifer’s boat (an IP380) and then down to the show at the resort. A fire show, that was very impressive. As it turns out, they have a 2200 watt Honda Generator that I can borrow to see if it will handle the start of our water maker.
Then back to the boat, and showers.
