pete.i

Thanks for that Tony. Yes to be honest most of the smoke I get is when the engine is cold. Once it has warmed up a bit its fine. I'll probably give those additives a miss. Cheers Pete

I can not see any issues but as I have not investigated the Redex product I can not be sure. I suspect the Fuelset claims to improve combustion by the emulsified water "steam cleaning" the injector nozzle while the Redex probably uses hydrocarbon solvents to remove varnishes etc. What worries me is when people propose to mix one of the emulsifier additives like your first named product with a de-emulsifier like Marine16 or Grotamar. I doubt even that will do any harm but the performance of both products may then be compromised. FWIW if you find an additive that contains nano-particles of cerium then the nano-particles act as a catalyst and lower the burning point of soot particles in the exhaust. This one may very well reduce exhaust smoke.[/b] Hi Tony That part of your reply interested me as I have a rather oldish BMC 1.5. To be fair it does not smoke that much, at least not as much as other BMCs that I have heard of, even so I would be interested in reducing the exhaust smoke content as much as I can. Is this product the sort of thing you are talking about? envirox Cheers Pete

Hi Robbio Not a fix I'm afraid just that the same thing happens to my engine revs. It has been happening ever since I have had the boat (some 18 months) and whilst annoying I dont think it does any harm. My engine is a BMC 1.5. There are a couple of threads about this on the forum but I dont think I ever read of any specific causes but if you, or anyone else, can come up with a specific cause and possible solution it would be interesting. Cheers Pete

Hi Well if he is right, and I feel he could well be right, we could be seeing the end of the British Waterway System within ten years. Also those of us with boats at that time will only be able to sell them as scrap. That scenario does not take into account the thousands of people who live aboard. In my opinion us (the people who own boats) will have to campaign like they did in the old days although I have to agree with his views on the IWA and I can't see any other campaigning bodies on the near horizon. I do hope he is wrong. Cheers Pete

Hi Couldn't care less whether this is merged as a subject or not but I will comment on the fact that this rag (and others) say, and obviously think, this. "Urban canals may be synonymous with vandalism, stabbings, the pushing-in of cyclists," Whilst this may be true in isolated incidents on our canals it is most certainly not the norm and should not be "synonymous" as an image of the canal system. Nor should this image be allowed to be perpetrated by newspapers etc. If it is then there, IMO, not a lot of hope for the future of the canal systems and if we want the system to survive then the many and varied organisations that support our canals should be doing their utmost to reverse this perception. Pete

Thank ye kindly. LOL that was the picture link I followed but it didn't go to that site. Cheers

Hi. Dunno if you can provide a link for those please. I am interested in getting a set for my boat and I have been googling for ages. So far the only listing I can find is on Ebay linked from Google Images. The search criteria I am enetering is "Magnetic barge pole brackets" Unfortunately when I follow the link I cannot find said brackets.

Well I sincerely hope that I am wrong but if the charity thing doesn't work then, as far as I can see, we will not have a waterways system to enjoy. It will get filled in and the developers will build on it. The only saving grace at the moment is that some developers are at least seeing that people want to buy houses/flats near a waterway. Pete

Hi all. It's the best we have at the moment. As Norman said, "The question is what next?" if it doesn't work. Cheers Pete

Tried it and decided it's a pile of junk at the moment. Had that same problem with Chrome that you had MJG and I have exactly the same problem with FF4 so I shall be staying with IE8 till they sort it out. If I try to play a You Tube video on either Chrome or FF4 it says I need to upgrade my Flash to the latest version, (It is the latest version in fact I did an automatic upgrade for flash tonight.) If I use IE8 it works fine. Cheers Pete

Hi MJG Probably best to run the full scan in Malwarebytes and run it in "normal" pc mode, ie not in safe mode. The full scan should take over an hour to scan your pc. That trojan that you have picked up is a very common one and is nothing to do with which web browser you are using. It also seems that it can just be picked up off the internet without you going anywhere in particular. Whilst I have, so far, been lucky and not picked it up I have cleared it, and various other derivatives of it, off dozens of my friends computers using Malwarebytes. Nothing else seems to pick it up and MSE certainly does not. I suppose because it is a trojan rather than a virus it is, perhaps, a bit remiss to expect an antivirus program to pick it up. Microsoft Security Essentials though does contain an anti malware program (Windows Defender) so you would have thought that that at least would have detected it. Hope that helps. Pete

Hi all and Leo. Yep I have that boat with that engine that Leo is referring to. It starts first time, well after holding the heaters on for 30 seconds anyway, even in all that cold weather we have just had it fired upp on the first turn of the key. I do get white smoke from it if I rev it up in neutral but when it is running it is fine. It does leak a bit of oil but for a 30 odd year old engine it runs just fine. If I can pick up a running BMC 1.5 I will recon that as a spare but to be honest my present engine is about as good as it can be for it's age. I certainly haven't had any problems with it over the last year. Cheers Pete

Hi Madcat I did reply to your post but somehow it dissapeared into nowhere land so I will try again. My father and my mother in law both suffer from wet AMD. They have both had injections in their eyes over a period of time and whilst they could not drive (they are both in their 80s anyway)they both report that their eyesight has not deteriorated and in fact both say that their eyesight has improved a little. My mother in law has had the condition for over five years and neither have completely lost their sight yet. My mother in law and my father are both able to get about and watch telly. They can both read large print and both use aids that are available on the national health to read. The injections were done on the national health as well. My mother in law did look at The Yorkshire Eye Clinic in Bradford when she was first diagnosed five years ago. They can do a lense implant operation similar to a cattaract lense replacement. Because The Yorkshire Eye Clinic is a private concern this operation is expensive, around £6000 at that time. Amd is caused when the light receptor cells at the back of the eye start to die off. The Yorkshire Eye Clinic op installs a lense in the affected eye/s which focuses the light on to the good cells that are left. This can reduce or elliminate the black spot that AMD sufferers can see. Hope that helps. If I can answer any of your questions re AMD I will do my best. There is a wealth of information on the web and The Yorkshire Eye Clinic has a website also. Cheers Pete

LOL you think? That would be good but I cannot see that happeneing. But you never know. I'm new to boating and I have joined the IWA. I have heard good and bad things about the organisation but it has always been my position that if I need to do anything ( and don't get me wrong I have absolutely no idea what I can do) I have to be on the inside rather than the outside and the IWA seemed one way to do that. Pete

Hi all I have to say this and I am not getting at anyone in particular especially those that have posted in this thread. In my opinion if we don't all start working together instead of each canal interested party griping and sniping at each other we are going to lose the waterways. I'm sure there are builders out there, even in this cash strapped era, just waiting to get their hands on some prime building land probably very cheaply. Everybody boaters, walkers, canal side businesses, bikers, anglers, BW, however they manifest themselves, etc. will have to pull together. Yes I know thats a massive long shot but I cannot see any other way. Somebody out there has to get all the interested factions together and start working to keep our waterways. That is my opinion and at the moment I cannot see that happening and that frightens me to be honest and I only own a boat for leisure it's not my home. Cheers Pete

Cheers for that Carlt. Yes I suspect that that is what's happeneing. having said that I have emailed the website's "customer services" from their contact us link and they have not had the courtesy to reply to me either. Anyway thanks for the info I will have to keep looking. Pete

Hi everyone. I was wondering if anyone had tried, recently, to buy anything from the Boatsandoutboards website. I am interested in an item and I have emailed the seller twice and tried to ring on the 070 number provided by the web site three times. When I ring the phone rings then cuts off. I have had no reply to my emails to the vendor. I have also emailed the websites customer service about a week ago and had no reply to that email either. The item that I am interested in still seems to be available and has actually moved 2 pages down the page list since I expressed an interest. Does anyone have any idea what is going on? Cheers Pete

Hi MJG Your ex sky box will work with the LNB and dish that come with the Maplin suitcase kit. The downside to buying that is that the Maplin kit comes with a freeserve satellite box which will negate the use of your Pace box. I think that by the time you have bought a suitable LNB and Dish you will probably find that the Maplin kit is not going to be that much more expensive. I think the Maplin one was retailing at £99.99p plus postage. I actually got mine for £69.99p plus the postage as it was a second. Also the dish that comes with the Maplin kit, whilst being small, IS elliptacle. The other problem with the Maplin kits are the brackets that come with it. As the kit is meant for camping/caravanning/boats the brackets are free standing. I found them very difficult to mount anywhere with any degree of stability and, of course, when the boat moves the signal disappears. I eventually ditched the satellite idea and went for a normal aerial and freeserve standard box. The other problem with your Pace box is that it is mains (240 Volt) only. As long as you have mains on board either via an inverter or shoreline you are okay. The Pace boxes though do (or did) like a nice clean stable voltage or the power supplies give up the ghost. Inverter mains and some shorelines don't always give this. One big advantage, though, with satellite is that you can point the dish at various different satellites and get loads of other stations other than the Brit freeserve ones. with an aerial you are limited to what comes from Brit freeserve which in my humble opinion is absolute, complete, and total rubbish. A bit like Sky really which I do have at home and where I spend most of my time flicking through the channels trying to find something (anything) suitable to watch, much too the annoyance of my wife. Hope that helps. Pete. I Hmm looks like they bunged 30 quid on the maplins one since I bought it.

Hi If your ballast is as heavy as mine I would think that rubber feet would, eventually, crush down. I'm cutting half inch slats from some tanalised timber that I have and, very slowly because the slabs are heavy and I'm old, putting that under. Mind you my boat is 30 odd years old and it didn't have anything under the slabs when I got it and there is no rust that I have seen so far so I am not at all sure that the effort is really worth it for my boat. Cheers Pete

Hi Well it's going to happen whether we like it or not. The price of leisure diesel will go up and we shall be fleeced again, as we are being at present, at the road pumps. My engine, a BMC 1.5, will probably stop and I will have to spend a small fortune getting it fixed if it can be fixed. But it will stop global warming. (said with tongue firmly in my cheek) Pete

Yep I got mine from jewsons. They were happy to sell me a single sheet and gave me all the info about it.

Hi I have not used one of these but if you look on the Amazon link referring to this machine they have the same machine at £74 with free washballs and there are 21 reviews for it there and every one is good. So I have ordered that one. Cheers Pete