Trevor sourced the spares for the thruster and I arranged for a diver to replace the prop. Looks straightforward. “Now I understand one more system a little bit better!”
The propane failure was weird. I called Trident and they have never heard of this failure mode. Basically, there seems to be a short in the data connection wire on the pigtail from “Alarm A”. So, when it starts up, it goes into alarm almost right away. Why this would start suddenly on a Saturday evening when we haven’t been using the propane system, I don’t know. Actually, if the short is in the pigtail, the jumper I put in shouldn’t work. Trident confirmed that all three pigtails (Alarms 1-3) are all soldiered into the same spot on the board – so they should behave the same unless the fault is in the wire.
Regardless, I hooked the detector up to “Alarm B” and put a jumper on “Alarm A”. The propane flows fine and the solenoid opens and closes. I also tested the alarm by putting a little butane on a paper towel and waving it nearby and that works fine as well. Honestly, I am stumped. I don’t like having a system failing for reasons I don’t understand. Especially when it also recovers, for reasons I don’t understand…. Trevor offered to send me a new kit, but I am going to leave it for now and try to avoid the dreaded “maintenance induced failure”.
