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manxmike

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Everything posted by manxmike

  1. Absolutely, have done since I was 10 years old (my parents lived here since the 1940s) We live in Ballabeg now. Not here for the TT, (first time since 1962) but we'll be back for MGP so if you're in the deep south pop in for a cuppa
  2. Wow, this is a prime example of personalities getting in the way of useful information. Looking through I feel I have learnt something.
  3. Ha! Almost certainly it had completely run out of oil, or the oil was so full of gunge it wouldn't leak even if the sump was cracked, you have to love the old A series - almost as awful as the K series (why build an engine that the bolts holding on the head also hold on the sump?) A clean, painted engine, not only looks good, it's easier to work on without getting covered in centuries old oil and grime
  4. Throwing in my two penneth, looking at the pitting and blistering I would (like the pig) get up and slowly walk away. That looks like it's going to need over plating sides and base plate before long. Unless of course you can get the price reduced by about £15k to cover the expected costs!
  5. Started on the canals with my parents in the 50s, had a break when I was in my 20s, then bought my own boat after borrowing a friends boat when I was in my 40s and 50s. Sold the boat when in my 60s and, apart from hiring occasionally, I now drive a motorhome. The boss is now in a wheelchair a lot of the time (MS), so the idea of her doing locks has long gone. Her dyslexia meant that she could never get her head around using a tiller, so the Motorhome is the best we can now do. Yes I miss the canals, but at least we can still get around a lot of the country (more than in a narrowboat!) and she loves the MH.
  6. Beware the cash buyer! We "sold our house" in March some years ago. The cash buyer then had a total of six surveys done - foundations, structure, electrical, plumbing, roof and even trees in the garden! Then they had a second roof survey. It took until the August to complete, by which time I had to do some very fancy footwork to ensure the bungalow we wanted didn't disappear. The buyer decided he could make more in interest from the cash than he would pay on a mortgage. He spent two years and vast amounts of cash doing the house up - re wiring, new plumbing, new roof, etc. Put it back on the market for over a million (no, we didn't get anything like that for it) and three years later it's still on the market. He's reduced the price by over twenty thousand and it's still not moving. Oh dear
  7. OK, I can understand why some Springers have a deserved poor reputation, but like any manufacturer there are good boats and bad boats, same as cars. I had a Vauxhall Astra - the only brand new car I ever bought - it leaked like a sieve from the day I got it. The damn thing ended up in the dealership more than in my hands. I eventually sold it, the new owner discovered that the rear wheel arches had never been welded - no wonder it leaked. At the same time a friend bought the same model Astra and had absolutely no problems with it - he said it was a lovely car, nice to drive, comfy and economical.
  8. Venetian Marina did some excellent work for me (yes - really!) I always found them helpful and ready to listen and then explain. The Marina at Wrenbury, on the Llangollen Canal, sorted out a problem with my battery bank - they spent over an hour and refused to charge me anything. I left some money so the guys could have a drink on me. They were helpful, explained what they were doing, why they were doing it and why it needed doing in the first place.
  9. Quite a few of my friends are gay - do I care? I do a lot in the theatre - on stage and back-stage, the theatre seems to attract a lot of gay people - do I care? I am actually quite jealous of a lot of my gay friends, they usually have excellent taste, their homes are wonderfully decorated, their taste in furniture is amazing, their ability to make something drab appear attractive is excellentl - yes I do care, they are good friends and often have the most wonderful way of putting people in their place whilst seeming to be as polite as anything. They often have the most dreadful gossipy tales that are hysterical to listen to. To be honest I prefer their company to that of a lot of my "straight" friends who just want to talk about football and swill vast amounts of rather poor quality beer. Please don't get me started on black, female, labour, ex-politicians and whether they should be shot !
  10. In answer to the queries about the "eating away" of the hull - I am no expert, I have a CSE in Chemistry (56 years ago) so I asked people with far more knowledge than I. Their view was that a combination of a boat either side permanently plugged in to the mains together with MIC in the water would in all probability produce something along the lines I described. Whatever the cause, over a period of six years the same surveyor found that 8mm had reduced to 2mm. To me that seemed a trifle excessive in a relatively short period of time.
  11. Probably asking the same question again
  12. MIC and being bracketed on both sides by permanent live-aboards plugged into the mains, ate the hull on my Liverpool boat, down to 2mm in places on an 8mm base plate. My solution was to sell it. Having said which I was honest, told the buyer and accepted a ludicrously low offer working on the principal that he/she could have the pleasure and expense of over-plating. At £10k I didn't bother.
  13. I fondly (?) remember coming across a hire boat with two young men opening every paddle - top and bottom - at a lock. I managed to persuade them not to do that and talked them through lock operation. When I asked why the hire base had not instructed them in locking, they said that two of the party (who were still asleep after the previous night's boozing) had been shown "the ropes". It was a stag do, I was so pleased they were going in the opposite direction to me, I hope the hire base got the boat back in one piece!
  14. I did have insurance covering everyone who used the boat, but since (as I said earlier the "friend" denied all knowledge) I had no idea where, when or how the incident occurred which was info required by the insurers, I was unable to satisfy their requirements and therefore did not claim.
  15. Could it be a heavily overweight person on the stern deck when the measurements were taken? Given the trend seems to be for people to be enormous perhaps taking most of the ballast out would be a good idea. I remember (in my youth, when dinosaurs roamed freely) that on some commercial flights passengers had to be weighed and then told where they could sit to balance the aircraft - maybe something similar needs to happen with this narrowboat?
  16. To get back to the topic proposed by the Artificial entity (Dalek?) have you ever tried pushing a wheelchair over ground that's not entirely flat and hard surfaced? I have - around the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland. Sadly I had no gloves and by the end of it my hands were literaly red raw and bleeding. I would imagine unless it was one of the later model Daleks with the anti gravity drive, the OP Dalek would have immense problems as well.
  17. I have to admit the advert from some American guy using god knows what to create endless electricity free (never pay an electricity bill again) looks super - I could convert all my vehicles to electric and never pay anything, electric narrow boats would become realistic. No need for lots of solar panels or generators. I can only assume these ads are like the old religeous broadcasts we used to get on late night radio - "Marinatha sons and daughters of God, send ten dollars as the pastor needs a new lear jet" - would you believe there were enough idiots/believers out there who would stump up the dosh. My local station used to broadcast these, including the Martyrs Memorial Free Presbeterian Church, Belfast, the Minister was the Rev Ian Paisley who harangued his listeners with the most biased and prejudiced rhetoric (my opinion - yours may differ). Even on TV we tend to record ITV and C4 so we can watch later binning the ads.
  18. I'm with you Dave, sold my boat a few years ago for a different reason (wanted to buy something newer), but because the hull was down to 2mm in places I reduced my price and just got rid. Having hired a boat recently I realised I was now old! Locks were hard work where they used to be fun, swing bridges were a pain where they used to be fun, steering in cold wet conditions was never fun, now even less so! When you say "tempts fugit" do you mean you run away from temptation? Wow, that means you really are old !
  19. My Grandmother sold her 15th century wattle and daub house but kept some of the land on which she put a "mobile home". This had two bedrooms, a lounge, bathroom, dining room, kitchen, central heating etc. It had wheels that were about 6 inches in diameter so it fitted the description. It might even had floated come the flood!
  20. Slightly off topic, but when I worked 15 miles from home and my only form of transport was a motorbike in the winter I used to wrap myself in newspaper under the bike gear. It worked too. Not just for fish and chips. Strangely plain newsprint paper didn't work nearly as well - it needed the type on it.
  21. I had used Tekaloid on vehicles in the past - it dries smooth, brush marks disappear. When I went to paint the NB I did a search for Tekaloid and found it had been replaced with tractol - same stuff, different name. It helps if you warm the paint, stand the tin in a pan of hot water. Yes, preparation is key, I did the minimum and it looked great. The picture doesn't really do it credit.
  22. Or the cable might be the right length overall, but the inner is too short in relation to the outer. Have you still got the original cable? Try comparing it to the new one.
  23. nuts, whole hazel nuts - ugh, cadbury take them and they cover them in chocolate!
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