Cleaning Rigging Tunnel with Abrasive Ball

[o8er]

An improvised tool to clean a rigging tunnel is shown below in FIgure 1.

Fig. 1. Improvised tool to clean rigging tunnel.

riggingTunnelCleaningTool.JPG (41.33 KiB) Viewed 88 times

I found this tool at HARBOR FREIGHT, described as an "abrasive ball" of 4-inch diameter. Using a rasp I trimmed the abrasive ball to be a snug fit in the inside diameter of the rigging tunnel. I then attached the abrasive ball to a drill using a flexible extension. With [this improvised tool] I was able to clean the rigging tunnel to my satisfaction.

VERY LONG BACK STORY

I just bought a 1985 17 Montauk that was a little neglected so I've got an ever growing task list to get her seaworthy.

The 1985 MONTAUK 17 has a 2005 Yamaha 90. When I went to crank the engine, I turned the [ignition] key: the console gauge showed 86 hours--loving this. When I turned [the ignition key to START] [the console gauge] went out, and nothing happened).

Later I found the harness power conductor (red) to have a high resistance (250 kiloOhms). Resistance of other conductors were near zero (as all should be). So that explained [the lack of starting], there was enough current to power the gauge but not when cranking.

Everything was pulled out of the rigging tunnel. The steering cable was bad, too. I found evidence of a critter residence, and likely that same critter munched on [the electrical cables].

My next step was to clean the rigging tunnel. First. I used a water hose with a flush nozzle.

Next I pulled thorugh some balled rags. But my endoscope still showed some crud. [Then I implemented the tool described above to finish cleaning the rigging tunnel.]

[jimh]

In some hulls the rigging tunnel is actually a channel molded into the hull liner part, and the surface of the rigging tunnel would be a gel coat resin finish. I would not use an abrasive ball tool to remove dirt from a gel coat finished surface. The abrasion and scratching of the gel coat may be more harmful than a bit of dirt residue that remains after a thorough washing and cleaning of the tunnel.

On some hulls the rigging tunnel is provided by a plastic conduit, and for those tunnels, when the tunnel is completely free of all rigging and cables, using your abrasive ball cleaner may be workable, as a bit of scratching of the inside diameter of the plastic conduit might be tolerable. But, of course, the big drawback to this approach is the need to REMOVE EVERYTHING from the rigging tunnel before using the abrasive ball tool. Also, if the abrasive ball tool scratches the inside diameter of the plastic conduit, it will be creating many future places for dirt to become stuck in the rigging tunnel compared to the completely smooth surface of the original conduit.

All in all, I don't think your improvised rigging tunnel cleaning tool using an abrasive ball is a workable idea.