One of the reasons why I want to get the engine all fixed up
is because an uncle from Texas is arriving in Sitka today. He’s staying at a local B&B, but we both
hoped to do some day trips on the boat.
Without the engine, that wouldn’t be possible.
 |
| Interesting and loud work right next to where I'm docked |
Anyway, I woke up early and started making some calls. I first called Honda Marine in Georgia. I got through to a customer service rep
quickly, but the 15 minutes I spent on the phone with them were
frustrating. First, the CSR could not
find any service bulletins regarding the thermostat on the BF90D. Second, he told me that I’d have to go
through a dealer for any help. Third, he
had no idea if the thermostat cover had indeed been reengineered out of metal,
and he had no desire to help me find out.
All in all a total waste of 15 minutes.
I have loved Honda products in the past, put 100,000+ miles on a Pilot
in college, and have had no previous problems with this Honda outboard. But the attitude of this CSR was a real turn
off. He just couldn’t wrap his head
around the idea that I couldn’t just get the part’s in question and see if they
were correct.
My next call was to EQ Marine, a terrific Honda dealer in
Oak Harbor. They’ve done a lot of work
on the boat and I trust their advice.
Kathy looked up all the service bulletins and found one regarding oil
contamination because of a thermostat problem, but nothing regarding a leaky
thermostat cover. She also hadn’t seen
problems on boats coming through her shop.
Hmmm…
Around 10:00 am Alaska Airlines called and said the part had
arrived. Since it wasn’t rainy, I set
out for the 45-minute walk to the airport and picked up the part. Alaska Airlines is great. A real human called me two times, once to
notify me of the 1 lb weight restriction and once to notify me that my package
had arrived. When I called to ask a
question, I got a person on the line with just a couple of menus and no hold
time.
A huge thank you to Randy and Bill at Twin Bridges and dad
for helping to get the parts to SeaTac.
I called SeaPower Marine and told them the part
arrived. They were too busy to install
it today, but said they’d call back with a time to install the part tomorrow
morning.
I dropped the parts off at the boat and then headed to meet
Uncle Jeff at his hotel. It’s a couple
mile walk from the dock I’m at, but it was nice to further stretch the
legs. After Jeff got checked in, we
walked back through town and towards the boat.
We took a quick ride through the harbor, checked out some of the houses
on islands nearby (really cool!), and headed back for the dock.
By now it was nearly 4:00 and I hadn’t heard back from
SeaPower Marine. I called them and made
arrangements for someone to come down at 9:00 the next morning to install the
new part. If I didn’t stay on top of
this, I’d be lucky to get this work done by the end of summer!
We walked back to the hotel and made arrangements for
dinner. While waiting to get picked up
we went to the Baranof Island Brewing Company, which was a neat little place
with good beer. Definitely worth a trip
if you’re in Sitka. Then off to the
Channel Club for dinner. Good food and a
fabulous view, especially since the clouds had given way to blue sky!
 |
| Beautiful evening! |
7.9 nm today and 1,621.2 total
No comments :
Post a Comment