Rust never sleeps. Also. Rock and roll will never die. But that's another story.

We had two problems leading to water on the engine (and rust.) One of the deck drain fittings failed, leaking rain water over everything. This was an amazing amount of water. All the snow-melt from the port side of the boat ran down through the broken fitting under the lazarette and onto the engine. And onto the top of the center fuel tank. It filled the bilge above the level of the fuel tank, floating the remaining diesel fuel out of the tank. While catastrophic, by the end of the summer, I eventually pumped the remaining diesel out of the center fuel tank. It's now filled with ~100 gallons of snow melt and a little antifreeze.

The second problem was smaller. The exhaust anti-siphon loop got a tiny bit of crud in the little flapper valve. Crud is rare in the raw water intake, but it's not impossible. There are calcium deposits and and a zinc that can leak large particulate into the raw water system. The bit of crud in the anti-siphon meant it leaked raw water in the engine room. The big, bronze anti-siphon comes apart with pliers. Inspection and cleaning is all that's required to fix it. But. Raw water rusting things up.

In this picture of Mr. Lehman, I've removed the aft air cleaner, pushed a rag into the intake, and scraped as much loose paint as I could with a soft wire brush.

Theoretically, we should etch with some solvent, prime, and paint.

But.

For now, I'm going to cheat.

A can of Rust-Oleum IH Farm Implement Red will probably do about as well as a really professional masking, priming and painting exercise. The exhaust manifold is a giant cast-iron block. The rust can (eventually) eat through the metal, but I expect it would take decades.

We are dealing with exhaust gasses here, so a little care seems prudent.

(And a new carbon monoxide detector will also be a good idea.)

The color doesn't match the original red perfectly. The folks at American Diesel in Kilmarnock told us not to spend a lot of money buying the Ford-branded engine paint. Rust-Oleum was perhaps better, and the Farm Implement red was a good match.

CA has a bunch of places that need additional touch-up. We'll be masking and painting some more.

The "use in a well-ventilated area" doesn't fit well with spraying paint inside the engine room. This means we like to paint just before we leave the boat. We'll be touching up a little at a time.

Rust never sleeps.