![]() How should you stow your spares to insure their usefulness when you need them? The first and most important criteria is to keep them insulated from the salt- and moisture-laden air. The fins on spare flexible water pump impellers can warp if they aren't stored flat, and even v-belts, if left in a twisted position, may jump off the pulleys in spite of how tightly they are tensioned. If you tuck a preformed cooling hose into a box in the engine room and allow it to bake every time you run your engine, it will soon deform to the shape of its storage position and you may not be able to install it when you need it. Rubber and neoprene belts and hoses are also prone to fail because of improper stowage procedures. Since many gaskets are paper-based, the trapped moisture under a cushion can cause them to delaminate in short order, and they may literally fall apart in your hands just when you need them. ![]() You probably carry a set of spare gaskets which you've cleverly stored under a bunk cushion to keep them flat. The problem isn't confined to metal parts, either. Given the right conditions, that injector may be totally useless in six months. You took your engine serial number to the dealer's parts department and made sure that you bought the right fuel injector, and then you tucked it away in a locker, still in the original cardboard box. The same thing holds true for the spare parts on a diesel engine as well. Your spare distributor points can pit on the faces without ever being used and even the brass parts found in many electrical parts can corrode to uselessness in the damp marine environment. Spark plugs, which should be pre-gapped for immediate use, can rust solid if not properly protected. Second, you've contributed to this rusting by leaving the injector in the original cardboard box, which absorbs and holds moisture to create a rich environment for rust. The most important part of the plug is the firing tip, and it doesn't take much time for rust to build up and clog the tip so that it will be even less operable than the plug you need to replace. First, the plug itself is steel, and we all know what happens to mild steel in a salt atmosphere. Take the spark plugs on a gas engine, for example, which are items that most boat owners consider an essential spare. The problem is that many spare parts simply do not have unlimited shelf life unless stored with great care. It's altogether likely that, even if you are one of the few boat owners who does carry spare parts, many of those parts have gone bad on you and, when a mechanic pokes through the boxes, he may just shake his head and order all new parts, leaving you to wonder where you went wrong. You know you're prepared for just about any engine crisis with a full box of spare parts and a complete set of tools, right?
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