Niclas spent some time on the boat this week to get some maintenance done.
Replaced engine oil using the oil extractor (bought from fellow Cruising division member Keith), which sucks out the oil from the dipstick hole. The first time I used this tool and it worked really well once I got the hang of it. One thing to remember is to open the top up cap so that vacuum inside the engine is avoided. I found it took a long time to extract the old oil and I think it was due to not opening the cap in combination with the oil being a little too cold. I did run the engine for a few minutes, but not enough to really heat up the oil. Also replaced the oil filter, and the next time I do that I will be more cautious to put a tray underneath it as I had to wipe up quite a bit of oil from the bilge this time.
Also replaced the impeller which pumps in the raw seawater to the heat exchanger. I have a dedicated tool to remove the impeller, however, the existing impeller was mounted back to front, i.e. the threads you are supposed to attach the impeller puller to was facing inwards rather than out. I managed to remove the old impeller with pliers instead. Noted that the new impeller came from a supplier in Örebro, Sweden, which seems like a funny coincidence with Jessica currently living there.
Finally also replaced the cooling fluid. I could only find the green version when going shopping for it, and for some reason, Yanmar says to use the pink stuff. Hopefully not a big issue. Luckily I had some plastic hose I could connect to the drain plugs (one on each side of the engine) to get the old fluid out. I did also flush through the system with clean water before filling up the new coolant fluid. One slight issue was getting the air out of the system, and I found that squeezing the big rubber hose going into the heat exchanger did help. Also there is a need to run the engine for a bit to get the thermostat to open up.
