Felshampo

It is still an annoying leak. I have decided to put up with it until I have to inevitably drain the system and then deal with it.

👍

Just tried that. Hasn't made any difference though. The engine is running fine but the lever still has no resistance.

Not used them since last year when they seemed fine. This year my 2LW was very cold so gave each lever a few pulls prior to starting. One was as expected giving a certain amount of resistance. The other one was too easy with virtually no resistance. I was able to start the engine but wonder what the problem is with the charging lever, should I be concerned?

This is the best shot I could get. Hope that clears things up.

Bloody right.......

Yeah but until I do that, as its only producing a drop or two each week, I was hoping for a temporary fix so I'll try a few of the above suggestions.

I'll try and photo it when we go back to the boat at the weekend. Th other fitting was a compression joint onto a a threaded pipe. Problem is they did not match very well. That's why I think it's the same problem. It's under the engine so difficult to get at, which is why I'm not sure exactly what it is.

I think it's leaking around the compression joint. Already had that with the other skin tank fitting, brass onto steel, not a good fit, don't know why they did it that way. Replaced the other one with a tail and hose with a jubilee clip, seals easily, but obviously needs the system to be emptied. This one is also in a much more awkward to get at place. I will try putting on the paste first, if that fails then I will try the tape.

Will do if I have to empty the system... Never heard of this but googled it and that looks just right if it's waterproof. I've got some of that, do you think it can withstand the pressure?

Thanks Alan

Has anyone got any clever ideas how to seal a leak from my skin tank? I have had a leak below my skin tank for some time. I have finally found it is coming off the drain fitting at the bottom of the skin tank. This is a brass tap. It is in the bottom corner of the skin tank in a difficult to get at spot. It is wet around the joint between the steel pipe and the brass tap. I guess it's a compression fitting. I managed to get an adjustable spanner on it and gave it a bit of a tighten. Ideally I should drain down the system and remove and put it back with a lot of ptfe fluid. Is there any other way I could seal it. I'm reluctant to put more turns on the spanner incase it breaks it and I end up with a bilge full of coolant.

The AGM's are supposed to have a CEF that rises for the first 5 cycles then goes down like others LA batteries according to the manual. This means the BM has to be calibrated to account for this. I suppose knackered is relative but my batteries could not fire up the central heating in the morning even though they had been charged up the day before. They had only about 10v having self discharged over night. So I got some new ones. Hadn't realised thy shorted. I now understand that smart guage is measuring voltage to determine SOC. How does the smart guage know how much damage has been done and what the new lower capacity is? Let's say you you don't recharge the batteries properly and you permanently sulphate 20% of the plates. Does the smart guage know this purely on the voltage?

So the CEF determines how much "extra" needs to be put into the batteries to get them back to 100%. AGMs are supposed to have a CEF of 94%, which goes up and then down as the batteries age. The smart guage is more accurate at measuring % discharge as it uses voltage as well as AH to determine SOC? Hope that's right. One last question please. As the battery ages and the lead becomes damaged I presume the capacity goes down. Do the guages take this into account, does it matter? Or is it just CEF that governs the life of the battery. In other words why does a knackered battery loose its charge so quickly? Is it less lead or too much sulphate or both or something else.

The manual isn't clear on this but it slowly lowers the CEF down to 70% as the batteries cycle. At this point it claims they are "dead". How accurate this is I don't know but that allows it to calculate SOC better I suppose. How does a smart guage differ that makes it more accurate?