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Oh dear he's showing off his ginormous sparkly clean engine again. If it goes wrong there's an spare on the other side.....

We have just had a trip to the Lincolnshire coast with Syd for his birthday. We can't remember a time we have seen the ground quite so sodden and all of the ditches and watercourses so full. There is still plenty of water to head into the rivers. The Trent was on the verge of shutting Dunham Bridge creeping across the field and to the low point where it floods the road. The Fossdyke was also high. It needs to stop raining!

Maybe I can pop in for a coke/pepsi on the way through seeing as I'll be driving past

Not rods, those are the dip tubes. It's a view that few people will see, however long they own their boat, as it's behind a welded steel bulkhead. To make it clearer, here's a view of it fixed in place (minus the top plate of course)

or perhaps a retired ponent. ...................... coat

He was on the cusp, just like he is on the cusp of becoming a leaver?

What a difference a month makes.

He can dream on, I am still awaiting my payment for appearing in The Flower of Gloster more than 50 years ago. Admittedly I only appear for about four seconds, but it took longer than that to film.

Cannot comment on Todbrook, but canal engineers were adept at adopting/adapting existing infrastructure to met their needs. On the Chesterfield Canal, Jame Brindley adapted existing watercourses. One such being the feeder to the ornamental ponds at Shireoak Hall, which he used as theTurnerwood feeder. He also used the existing millpond at Pebley Mill and built a new dam wall to create Pebley Reservoir. Incidentally Pebley is the oldest C&RT reservoir still in service and doing its original job.

That was my initial thought. The guy was adamant it wasn't.

Engine is purring away happily with her new fuel filter. Thanks again for the help and advice. I'm still not 100% sure I'm doing the bleeding correctly, I get plenty of fuel out of the bleed nut on top of the fuel filter, but no matter how much I pump the lever I don't seem to get any from the nuts on the injectors. Should I be pumping with all nuts loosened or just one at a time? I tried both ways and couldn't get any fuel, however when I tightened up the nuts again the one injector was a bit wet with diesel. So perhaps I just couldn't see where it was bleeding out.

That is why you should test it regularly and immediately after a fault has occurred.

Yes, but my victron IP22 30A has a LiFePO4 setting but doesnt cut the current and voltage as it gets to 100%. Best have a charger that will go to float (ie set to low 13V's) at whatever termination voltage you put in and one where you can set the current. I think Richard's Sterling does this. My IP22 would be no good to shut down itself but would work if you terminated via a auto disconnect ie BEP or tyco but the relay cutting the charger rather than isolating the batteries. I would wire all 4 into the Li as it will be the battery to use when not charging via the engine. See response above on shutting off the charger. Yes you do then need to think about how you isolate your Li's from the LAs and I am not sure what the optimum is as I have not thought it through. (Acute brain drop occurs if you try and think too much!) Maybe Richard can explain his proposed system? -it sounds like worth trying but there is a lot of detail to iron out. What you dont want is two BEPs as they are £150 squid each. The Tyco's are much cheaper but then your going to have to talk to MP for his circuit. If you are thinking of trying Li's then it is worth experimenting a bit. If you buy them now and get them installed, say before Christmas, then you will get b**ger all solar but you can charge for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon and not burn out your alternator as it is cold and you will never be near 100% SoC. By Spring, by the time it warms up and you need to control your alternator temp there will be more sun and you will be moving to a more automated system. When I put mine in, I was planning to manually isolate the alternator each day and just use solar when I didnt have time. Within a month I had worked out a solution and so spend no time at all (apart from the word I am not allowed to say but it what you do when you spin lots of plates). Nick will have his alternator controller out by Chrismas!

Advantages are as I mentioned, keeping all the fuel below the water line means it’s at a steady temperature so doesn’t get any condensation issues. It uses up otherwise unusable space under and around the engine, thus freeing up the counter area for storage of “stuff” like cans of oil, grease etc. It is a really good idea, EXCEPT that the breather pipe is far too small!

The big pro has to be that you dont overstress you alternator. Say your Li's are half full, you alternator will be working flat out so may burn itself out if you do this for any length of time and it wont turn off when your Li's get full. If you use the Alt/LA/inverter, then the Li will take the power from the inverter/charger at the rate it wants, the LA's will power the inverter and the alternator will charge the LA's as if they are in bulk. When the Li's get to full, the inverter/charger will back off - IF you can set it to the voltage you need - Richard can as he has a programmable Sterling - so then the alternator will cut back in current as the LA's demand....but still 14.4V to keep the LA's topped up. Negatives? There could be an issue if the inverter/charger puts a lot more current into the Li bank than the alternator is putting into the LA's. In that case the LAs will drop in SoC as the Li's increase in SoC. The beauty of using LAs with Li's is that the LAs are alway near full as you dont drop the voltage below 12.7V. If they drop to 50% then you are going to need 14.4V to get the LAs back to full which you may not have if you then stop the engine. Yes, the Li's will charge the LAs back up to full but only at 13.3V or less. The thing is though that most(?) inverter/chargers are programmable so you should be able to set the charge current similar to the LA charge current. A lot here will depend on the capacity of the LA vs capacity of the Li. This is going to open up a huge can of worms - as Nick criticised my system back in March - saying I needed 14.4V to keep the LA's in good shape. 6 months on, my LAs are in the same shape as life before Li's despite only being charged at 13.7V max - as I doubt they were ever discharged below 95%. There is a logical argument for this which is outside your rules for a response ? so I wont bother outlining it.....but you will need 14.4V to charge LAs if they go down to 50% SoC. What I am not sure about is what happens if your LA bank is 90% charged and you take 50A out with the inverter, what current is you alternator controller give? I've been using an AtoB with my LAs so cant talk about 'normal'charging of LAs. Maybe sulphation is the big downside if the LAs go down to 50% or another downside is lower charging rates from the alternator than if the alternator was directly connected to the Li bank. Need also to think about the wiring so you isolate the Li's from the alternator yet want to have your domestics are fed from the Li's. Someone needs to try it and keep a close eye on SoC of the LA's.

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hey, don't shoot the messenger................................... if a spokesman for a major homeless charity has got it wrong then go heckle them, not me. your observation about my political leanings says more about you than it does about me. ................. nuff said.

And don't forget to turn the fuel shut off back on...

I'd suggest, in that case, when you find them, source half-a-dozen. You should always carry spares on board. If it is that 'special' then you could be stuck waiting for days, when with a bit of planning, you could be underway in the time it takes the kettle to boil. For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

As has already been said (a number of times) you have run out of fuel. The pick-up pipes in the tank are normally at least 1" above the bottom of the tank to avoid picking up '100s of years' of muck sludge and water (very few folk actually give their tank a yearly drain and steam clean). You may well have also sucked up some 'disturbed' muck from the bottom so I'd suggest that you do a full filter change as well. Put fresh fuel in, leave it a few hours for the muck to settle, (pouring fresh diesel will disturb the sediment in the bottom of the tank) put in new filters, bleed and start the engine. Edit to add : As an interim 'trial', disconnect your fuel pipe from the engine, run a rubber pipe from a Jerry can (full of diesel) and connect it to the engine (past the filters) Start engine. If the engine runs then fuel was the problem

With a normally working diesel engine all you need for it to run is a good charged battery and fuel. I suspect you have not got the later and shortly will not have the former if you continue to try without simply fixing what is wrong.

Stoke Bruerne opened at about 08:45 this morning.

I know it's late and I'm probably not at my brightest but this is quite difficult to understand. My confusion starts with "both the last three" but does not end there!?

Thank you very much . The marina is probably only half full and as no one if there for enquiries and or to answer phones it’s looking like moorers are not required as there isn’t a way of obtaining one . The pontoons are in a poor state of disrepair-treacherous in some places so maybe it’s being run down . I’ll contact Companies House and keep my fingers crossed . I’m worn out with it all as I’ve been trying all contact since end of August . If I’ve managed to stop other people parting with their funds something good will have come out of it .

We had a chap come past this evening from Whilton......under a bet to see how far he could get to London....