horsee1

Good to know thanks. Will bear this in mind in the future. You make a good point regarding correct dip stick, who knows.

Thanks @Tony Brooks and @Tracy D'arth Everything was degreased and instructions followed to the word re the gasket goo. The wobbly fit of the cover on one side won’t have helped and I’m yet to investigate the holes that Tony mentioned so pressure build could be a thing if they are blocked. Oil fill read maximum on the dipper so not over filled. I bathed the breather in paraffin and blasted brake cleaner through all the holes so I would assume it to be clear. The engine and engine bay need a day to get things cleaned up and then I will re fill the oil and try again. I noticed quite a lot of oil had leaked from the misshapen cover before touching anything so didn’t carry out a completely thorough clean up as I thought I’d located the culprit.

Thanks @Tony Brooks, I will try to locate these holes and check they are clear. It’s not the side with the baffle that’s damaged so I was thinking along the same lines regarding reshaping. It’s not like the original part is particularly well engineered to begin with. I hate to add add to the pile of threads based around these engines dropping oil, I guess I’m trying to get some informed opinions on whether a poorly sealed tappet cover could be the sole cause of such massive oil loss. The reasonable thing to do is eliminate that leak and look again. I hoped in replacing the gasket I’d have slowed it down but it was not so. I feel a little in over my head but don’t want to bother a boat yard if it’s something straight forward like that I can do myself and learn a come out with a better understanding of things along the way. Encountering that boats poorly engine has given me the nudge to carry out the annual maintenance of my own engine at least. It was a dried out cork gasket I removed but have replaced with liquid gasket silicone as it was my best chance of sourcing something locally.

@Mad Harold Thanks for your response. It’s not the rocker cover that’s damaged, just the little cover bit on the side located kind of below and behind the air filter. According to the manual I found it’s called the tappet side cover, but I’m no engineer.

@StephanA; I’ve not checked sender specifically but I’ll have a go at locating this and seeing if there’s an obvious leak. It’s really not pretty down there, as you can imagine.

Hello everyone, My partners boat has a BMC 1.5 engine that is losing loads of oil. 3 litres in an hour I’d estimate. Sniffing about other threads and going off what others have said we’ve cleaned cleaned the crankcase breather that is part of the front tappet cover. I also removed the rear tappet cover as there was clearly an excessive amount of oil in that area. The gaskets for both were pretty nasty so I sought replacements locally. Was recommended Wynn’s black gasket maker silicone as an alternative so have tried that. After cleaning up I noticed the rear tappet cover would rock on the machined surface of the engine. Presumably deformed through over tightening in the past. I pressed on anyway and re assembled with the silicone gasket. It appears there’s still a lot of oil escaping from this area. Is it fair to assume that the poorly shaped tappet cover could be the reason we’re losing all this oil? What else should we be looking for? Have been looking for a replacement online but haven’t found anything yet, will probably end up calling Calcutt boats and see if they have them but can’t find the cover listed online. The engine appears to otherwise be running well, no smoke of any kind. Thanks all.

Bit late now but it is possible to book 7 days at the Rembrandt gardens moorings, they're on the junction bit between little Venice and kings x basin.

Picking this up again, Bottle, I found that link to smart guage to be very useful, thanks for that. Gave the batteries a good charge last week on a mains charger, they were plugged in for about 5 days and still didn't reach "charged and maintaining" stage on the battery charger but was getting the feeling my batteries were outstaying their welcome where they were. They hydrometer reads 1320> on each cell of one battery. In the other 1310> in all but one cell of the other, one of the cells in battery 2 reads 10 less but from what I've read that should be no cause for alarm. Volt meter readings since taking them off charge have dropped a little bit, we started at 13.72 and 13.66 on day one, 12 hours later we were at 13.16 and 13.08, another 12 hours later we were 13.14 and 13.02, another 12 hours later we were at 13.12 and 12.98 and another 12 hours later 13.01 and 12.95. Does this sound normal? Is the big drop in the 1st twelve hours surface charge? Have invested in a Victron charge controller and battery moniter that I hope will make it easier to see what it is that's going in and out on a daily basis. Thanks again all.

Thanks everyone, will take some better readings and comeback to you. A basic reassurance that we SHOULD have enough to run on solar alone is warmly received. I was aware that the bank was small for the amount of panels but was thinking that it would just mean we couldn't store as much but that it wouldn't matter because even on a short cloudy day we'd harvest enough to get by.

Hello everyone, Can anyone tell me if my batteries are dead, if so why and how I can stop it happening again. It seems every other post at the moment is on topic for this so if you're sick of battery chat stop reading now. This could be a long one, have read through loads of old posts and tried a few things but haven't made any progress! Here's what's happened, we've got 2x115 ah batteries in the bank and 580w of solar panels on the roof. All less than 6months old. Through the shorter winter days this set up has been keeping our pumps and lights running nicely. We have a cheap chinese 60a mppt charge controller which was regularly flashing its lights to suggest our batteries were full quite early through the day. The multimeter to the battery points on the controller would confirm this. I think we were massively over powered but considered it a future proofing technique when buying the solar panels. As the sun has started coming out earlier and staying out for longer I was starting to worry we were harvesting too much power, the little light to say our batteries were full would be on by 9am, we'd leave the lights on all day to try and give the power somewhere to go as I was worried our little controller may have not been able to handle it and we'd damage the batteries. I also imagined that the batteries like to cycle as much as possible to keep them healthy, our consumption is pretty low so was trying to aid this. Last week we brought a 12v fridge on board hoping to keep the milk fresh and put to use the suns rays. We plugged it in for the first time over the night time and by the next day it had drained our batteries. We unplugged the scoundral and waited for our batteries to charge up again, hoping that if we got them charged and plugged the fridge in again that the energy it was taking to get itself cool for the first time would be getting replenished by the sun. The fridge was connected directly to the battery and was supposed to cut off if the batteries dropped below 10.4 volts, though if it draws only a few amps shouldn't it have lasted a few days? It took a couple of days of charging from the solar for them to get back up to 12v and then as soon as it went dark the power dropped out of them leaving us in the dark. The fridge has not been plugged in since the first time and have tried charging the batteries via the solar panels and then testing them separately with the controller disconnected (incase for some reason the power was going back up to the panels or something.) They both seem to lose volts and neither one is able to run the lights for more than a few minutes before it's dead again. Reading about 8v on the multimeter. They're currently on land charging via a pretty basic halfords charger, (the two of them still paralleled, is this the right thing to do?) I was reading a post from last week that mentions desulphating the batteries, I don't think the charger I'm using has that function, from what I've read desulphating requires high voltage charging but with multimeter on the crocodile clips of the charger it's only reading about 13 v, is that even enough to charge the batteries at all? They've been there for a couple of days and are reading 12.60 on the meter. If you're still reading, thankyou, if you can help or have an idea of what I've done, many thank you's in advance! Are the batteries done for? Is it due to having stayed too full for too long and not cycling them properly? Could it be our cheap charge controller? Could the fridge have done it or perhaps my dodgy fridge wiring in? I used 10 mm cable that I struggled to get decent connectors for, I don't know if poor connection consumes more or perhaps prevented the compressor turning off while the batteries were running low? How can we move forward with this? The engine is pretty noisy and used only for moving, when we do so I tend to isolate the domestic batteries from the alternator to try and keep our starter topped up, having said that, our starter recently died making me question whether the alternator is working at all, how is it best to test the alternator?

Already well aware that fenders should never be used in locks, 6 side fenders is sounding pretty excessive now though!

Thanks everyone!

Hello everyone, This is my first post, we're in the process of buying our first boat! This forum has been invaluable to us so thanks to all the experienced members that take the time to contribute. Whist negotiating the price we hadn't thought about fenders, the boat has none. The broker has offered to sell us some at 'cost' which would be £160 all in. (6 side fenders, plus stern and bow button fenders) This sounds more like how much they'd cost if we'd walked into any old chandlery and not a mates rates hook up. Obviously he isn't under any obligation to help us out but I'd rather be told the price and not spun a yarn about how good a deal we're getting. My question is, how much should one expect to pay for fenders? Is there such thing as cheap or expensive fenders? Thanks in advance.