$500 Spray Paint

The $500 can of spray paint, I’ll get to that later.

So I have been working on refinishing the V-berth and it seems to be coming along nicely. I removed the compartment doors and drawers, brought them home, cleaned, sanded and applied a couple coats of polyurethane. The pictures do not do justice; they came out really nice and shiny. I also cleaned, sanded and applied polyurethane to the built in wood as well. I’m going to refinish the sole (floor) just before we leave.

We also completed the transition to LED lights. We still had a few compartments that had incandescent lights or no lights at all. We ordered everything from our favorite LED bulb retailer, www.ledlight.com (no S at the end of light), and we’re very happy with the end result. We are now 100% LED on the interior lights. We even ordered some lights for our house and they work great!

I finished the vent filter for the holding tank and vented loop. I installed the mounts, found some activated carbon at walmart, put everything together and in a couple of days I will install and connect the vent hoses. If all goes well we should smell much sweeter!

Now on to the expensive spray paint. Before we leave I have a list of spare parts I need, just for peace of mind. One of the spare parts I must have is a starter. I emailed our engine distributor and they quoted me $620 plus $30 shipping for a starter. So I started thinking that our engine is a basic Kubota tractor engine, the starter is a 9 tooth, 2kw offset gear reduction starter, and there is no reason it should cost $650. Using the basic Kubota engine model I did a little research and found plenty of aftermarket parts on the internet. Long story short an aftermarket starter for our engine is $130 with free shipping on EBay, and it works perfect. The only difference I can see between the two starters is the red spray paint. I’ll hold onto the $520, buy a can of $3.00 spray paint and paint the new starter myself!

 Some shots of the drawers, doors and finished v-berth. The pictures do not do justice.

Cleaned and sanded:

After a couple coats of polyurathane. The reflection is the sky through the trees in our yard:

A few shots (not the best) of the finished product:

New LED bulbs:

It’s the little things:

Off:

On. Makes a huge difference when you’re fishing around for something and you have light that enables one to see:

Magic $500 spray paint…or is this $3.00 paint?

OEM starter:

New starter (ok, it needs paint):

Hmmm, they look similar, not exact but similar. The little blue plastic thing is backwards, and then there’s the paint. I hope it works:

Installed, fired right up. I know, it still needs paint but $500 worth of paint? After testing the new starter I put the original back in.

Vent filter:

Our buddy who tagged along with us to the beach and back the other day, he would not get off the beach chair. Literally would not be removed. We were very careful not to squish him!

 That’s all for now!