 On my last trip to town, in this boat over here, I was driving home and I was going full speed. And I was most of the way home when I started smelling this smoke-ish smell. Not a smell I wanna hear, smell. Smell in my nose, not hearing my ears. Anyway, not a smell I wanna smell. And I popped open the back here and sure enough there was a little bit of smoke coming out. Now luckily I caught it right away before anything caught on fire or you know, it was significantly damaged. The motor still works and everything. However, you know, I had to stop for a while. I gotta rip the piece of my shirt off which was really easy because my shirt was disintegrating. I got it wet, put it on the motor, kind of tested it around for where the heat was. And funny thing is as soon as I smelled the smoke, my brain said the connection between the motor and the propeller shaft. There was something I still wanted to do there because it was a little bit loose. And sure enough, when I took my little cloth, wet cloth and put it down here, man, it was sizzling like crazy. This whole area was super hot. And the whole motor was hot generally, but this was really hot. And okay, what I think is going on was that this steel pipe was loose on the shaft here. So it could wiggle a little bit. Now not very much, it was just a bit of a wiggle. However, even when I first put it together, I was thinking I should stuff something in there to take up the space so it can't wiggle. And what I think happened is I was driving for an hour or so, I was almost, I was like three quarters of the way home. And it's like an hour and a half trip at full speed by my estimation. So I was over an hour into it. And this joint here, just because it has a little bit of play, like not even a millimeter, like half a millimeter of wiggle, it kept wiggling back and forth every time it spun around and slowly built up heat. And after an hour, it got to the point where it was so hot it was causing a problem for the motor. And I'm not sure exactly where the smoke was coming from. Hopefully it was just the joint here. And it was just the oil that I'd use to drill the hole. Hopefully there's nothing else burning up. But anyway, I let the motor cool off for a while. You know, dabbed it with water a bunch. And then it seemed fine. I just drove the rest of the way home. It wasn't very long. Drove the rest of the way home on low speed. And now I'm hopefully addressing the problem. And they just did. You see these, there's a little piece of metal right here. And another one right here. Those were not in there. I just put those in. Basically, you know, took the bolt out, slid the shaft down and got, like found this, the thinnest pieces of stainless sheet metal I could find, stuffed them up in there, you know, kind of bent them to fit. Made a little bit of a fatter edge. This part's folded over up here so it won't fall all the way in. But I really stuffed it in there. It was pretty hard to get in there. So that's good. I think all the play is taken up. It doesn't wiggle at all anymore. And now as a last extra resort, I am going to take some lithium grease and I'm going to squirt it into that bolt hole. I'm going to take the bolt out, put some grease in there. You know, that way if it is wiggling a little bit, it'll at least be lubricated and shouldn't make so much heat. Come on, wires get out of the way. It's always funny with machines like this that you custom make yourself. There are always little adjustments to make even after it's basically finished. Two nuts, you know? All right, I'm going to squirt some of this in here. All right, I stuck my finger on the other side, plugged it up, squirted stuff in here. And since I was plugging it from the other side, hopefully it squirted all up in there. Although right now I'm about to stick the bolt in there and I'll put my finger on the other side again so it kind of squishes the grease everywhere in there. And I don't think the two shims I put in, the two pieces of metal, I don't think they'll fall out. Partly because gravity is helping them stay in place because they're aiming down, but also they're in there really tight. Like I had a difficult time getting this shaft back on there. So I don't think I have to worry about them being lubricated and falling out. Anyway, let's get this bolt back in there. You know what I do not want is this nut being lubricated. When I put it on here, I don't want it to come off easily. So maybe I'll, I'm gonna grab these threads with my pliers a little bit, just mangle them just a little bit to give enough friction to make sure this stays on. Yeah, because right now it's way too loose. All right, that sucker's on right now. Ooh, do do do do. Let's see how it sounds. Let's put it on low speed. That actually sounds noticeably less rattley than before. So it may have been rattling more than I even realized. So let's go, did I fix that? Man, that was, that is way quieter than it was before. And now all the noise is just coming from that bearing in the back. Plastic roller bearing back down here, which is currently not lubricated because it's not in the water. So it should be making more noise. I guess this is one other thing I want to check on. Just check on the battery. I did just do a big trip and just did an hour over an hour at full speed. Everything looks, everything looks good in here. This is, this is the battery, the kind of battery it is made by SOC 24 volts. I don't know what 361 means. Karen, are you talking to me while I'm talking to a camera again? All right, give me like three seconds. Anyway, everything looks good there. So now I'll get to you in like four seconds. Okay, 12 seconds. Yeah, now I just have to test it again and I guess I'd need to do another over an hour full speed test. I'll have to try going to town again and try coming back the whole way full speed again. And on that trip, the battery was doing great. You know, I was three quarters of the way home going full speed, still had plenty of battery, no signs that I was gonna have to slow down. So the power system, amazing, working really, really well. I was also getting electricity on the solar panels to help the battery. But yeah, the battery was totally, totally being amazing, like the whole power system. And yeah, I guess I just have to test it again. That was a really fun trip, by the way, the other day. I had excellent weather. And yeah, the only problem was that when the motor started smoking, but it turned out to not be too bad. The motor's still functioning and everything. Hi, mister, what do you want? What's up? I set up a trap on my cabinet. You set up a trap? Should I go see if I can investigate your... It was a tapeworm trap. Oh, it was a tapeworm? A tapeworm trap. What's a tapeworm trap? You know those sticky old things. Okay, I gotta go see this stuff. Wait, wait, wait, what happened? Aurora went to my cabinet and then she got a tapeworm on my whole butt. So Aurora went to your cabinet, your big sister, and she got stuck in your trap and get one of these tape, whatever, stuck to her butt. She was writing something. I wanna go see. And then I told her, and then I told her, what? Oh, now I'm so excited to test the boat again. I even just wanna get it in the water. Maybe I'll throw it in the water and just drive around and see how much smoother it runs now without that rattle in there. I think I should've just fixed the rattle right away. I mean, I knew about it, but I was just like, ah, I'll do it later. Yeah, Jamie, do it later. Oh, no, just, when you know there's a problem, just take care of it right away, dude. Oh man, look at that. I've got another one over there on the other side of the trees, too. Ha, this guy's almost ready. All right, I think I just have enough time to throw this in the water and do a couple laps around the island, test it out. All right, um, I guess I'll see how it works. Low speed. So when I overheated the motor, it didn't completely die, that's a good thing. Just turn and aim in a good direction before we speed up. Keep my nose out for smoky smells. Putting those little metal shims in there definitely made a difference. Check the motor for a heat build up or just go if it's getting warm. Let's just go. All right, full speed after I turn around. All right, full speed. Okay, way less vibration than before. I shouldn't say way less. There wasn't much vibration before, but now, yeah, it's almost completely gone, the vibration. Like when I used to sit back in the chair, I could feel the boat vibrating against my back. Now I can feel it if I think about it. Like, yeah, it's like almost nothing. The only downside of fine tuning this boat is that the smoother it runs, the less fast it feels. Although I know it's going fast because I know what that looks like. It's just so calm. There's so little noise. Yeah, we're definitely moving. All right, that's super cool. All right, I'm going to do one whole lap around the island. Check if anything feels hot. It's only a few minutes, shouldn't. My speed control has been working really well. Okay, before I go park, check on everything. Hopefully this is cool. Yeah, not warm at all, lukewarm. It wasn't really much time to heat up anyway. This is still a little warm. I have to do a longer test sometime. But for the moment, that looks pretty good. Whenever I do a long trip, I'll just have to, and I'll stop every 15 or 20 minutes to check everything until I get it all worked out. But it might be good. Hey, tiger shortcut, oh, this is good enough. When the tide's a little higher, I can drive almost right in. All right, I think that's pretty good. I'll see how it goes next long trip.