BEngo

First stop is John Deere for details of the back of the engine. There will be a drawing showing the mounting holes that are available and the holes in the flywheel provided for drive plate ( aka clutch housing) fastenings. They may also have a variety of bell housings available. Next stop is your chosen gearbox supplier for details of the front of the gearbox you fancy. PRM 260?? Again there will be a drawing showing the mounting holes and the available drive options- flange, splined shaft etc. You may need to research some of the options to get the detail needed as they may be defined as, for example, SAE standard items. Try to get the drawings as electronic versions in .dwg format. Then you need a CAD technician to draw up a 3D CAD model of the engine/box junction, particularly the bell housing and gearbox adaptor plate. S/He will be really happy if you can provide 3D drawings of the engine eear and the gearbox front. Once armed with drawings look for a 3D printer to make the housing and a machine shop like Paul Redshaw at Braunston to make the adaptor plate. Most of the drive plate vendors can do a special to connect the gearbox input to the engine drive end. Buy a spare! Using an intermediate shaft can also be done, using a similar process. Don't forget to include proper guards. N

Dont forget to turn the fuel back on, and bleed the new filter or the engine will start and then stop soon after. The bleed screw is just visible at the top behind the priming pump, or loosen the outlet pipe union until it hisses and re-tighten once diesel appears. If the tank level is not above the filter you may need to assist things by using the priming pump. N

Alwayz good to hear from someone who has had benefit from my ramblings. N

I would have thought that an asking price the same as the original sticker price would be a good starting point. You can always reduce if there is no interest, and if the phone is ringing off the hook then a withdrawal is always possible. I guess that many of the copies printed went onto shelves, and will not change hands again. N

Not to mention the eco-warriors who will turn up protesting about the carbon and particulates being released into the air. N

The cable size is the size that produces an acceptable volt drop at the length and working current in use. This will usually mean a cable which could safely carry more current than is needed. Battery fuses are usually midi or mega fuses rated for the load and cable size Very few seem to pay any attention to the interrupt capacity (AIC) of the fuses but this should be thoughh about, particularly if a large Lithium battery is installed. Distribution fusing is often through proprietary or bespoke panels which switch and fuse the subsidiary circuits. Sometimes a domestic consumer unit can be adapted, but then one needs to watch the DC ratings of the breakers. There are also CAN bus solutions but these are not common. N

The tap at Cosgrove sani stn is painfully slow, the one below the lock is better, but not spectacular. N

And then there was the hover Hoover aka the Constellation. Looked a bit like a flying saucer IIRC. N

Mine is either Craftmaster Manchester Red or Alfa Red, depending on what is available when a new tin is needed. N

Very effectively. Even the hardened stuff. In the past I have used clean cooking oil to get blacking out of my hair post docking. Then shampoo. N

Dead right. Not only are they neglected internally a lot are also rusting away from the accessible side as a result of a pool of water on the counter plate in the engine bay. N

You appear to have a pretty good grasp of what needs looking at and how to do it. Why not do all the servicing yourself and look for a mechanic only when you are unsure that something is right or have a snag you can't handle? Some reference photographs of how it all looks when in good order would form a starting point . N

The difference between BT tubes and hull sides etc. is that the tube is often not as thick as the sides. It doesn't corrode much faster but it hasn't got the material to last as long. This is compounded by a tendency not to paint them properly ( not at all on some blackings and some boats with fixed screens cannot be got at except by removing the BT unit) and by the stresses locked into the tube by rolling it and then resistance welding the seam. Drawn tubes would be better (and could be thicker) but they are much more expensive. A final factor is that many are used close to the bank and the tube gets blasted by loose gravel, damaging any paint. N

Flat and knackered starter battery. If you can charge it off the mains for at least 24 hours. It takes much longer than many folk think to refill a battery. Once charged leave it for an hour with the charger off and then check the terminal voltage. It should be about 12.7 v. Poor connections in the starter circuit. Check they are all clean and tight. The alternator needs 12V to get itself going. If the start battery is duff there may well be not enough volts to excite it. Once it is going it will keep itself going, hence why it works when jump started. N

Bow thruster tubes are well known for corroding through. A magnesium anode should slow this, but may not entirely prevent corrosion. Try to get a low profile one to minimise the loss of thrust caused by an obstruction in the tube. N

Aylesbury Canal Society have a superb paint dock. Heated, force ventilated. Comes complete with a dustless sander. Google for the wrbsite. 01296 252101 for details of availability. N

Wakespeed didn't. It was an open source project: " crowd coded" if you like. All the stuff is still out there if you want to build one. N

How is the water tank vented? If it vents to the outside the lice may be getting in that way. If so stuff scotchbrite pad into the vent, or fit it with a gauze like a diesel tank vent. N

It was once not uncommon for a boiler inspector to request a hole be drilled in order to confirm metal thickness, (afterwards tapped and a bolt fitted and peened in). That has long gone and ulrasonics are the tool now. If your surveyors meter cannot distinguish between metal and scale it is not fit for purpose. Possibly it is an model, which did need clean metal or if may be just a cheapy. N

I know you know this, but... First off there are the design costs. American, so probably high. Then All the tests and certifications that are required by the myriad regulatory bodies involved, from UL to the EU the long way round, and again, some of these are American, some even Californian, so will want their collective backsides well and expensively wallpapered. Then, and only then do you get to components, assembly and production testing. ( Probably Chinese so needing on site QC and QA plus someone to make sure that only the ordered number get made.) Add something for the cost of borrowing the development money. Finally add in enough profit that the first batch will cover the development and certification costs and any second batch will pay for the Mk2 version. N

A press is the simplest option. Try a car menders where they deal with economic write-offs. They are likely to have the hydraulic kit to push it into shape. However you will get the best result by having a new one fabricated. Even with a press and heat it will always show as having been bent. It would be easiest if you can take either the boat, or just the old door to the fabricator, so that the hinges can be put in the right place. In any event all the woodwork will have to come off as the first step.

Network rail, or Railtrack before them, had already demonstrated that they could not upgrade the west coast main line without causing so much disruption that you might as well close it and do the work. There were also soaring costs, well beyond inflation so the project was abandoned part completed. Virgin had to be paid a lot of money because they had invested based on a performance promise which could no longer be met. HS2 is supposed to be an answer to this, but merely demonstrates that the DfT civil service knows stuff all about running a railway and ministers are readily seduced by a big shiny project. The original business case for HS2 included aTreasury subsidy of about £1billion a year, in then money. It assumed that people would travel to Euston from places like Gerrards Cross, Beaconsfield, High Wycombe and others to get a train to Brum, instead of getting on a Chiltern train or the M40. Even with such wildy optimistic assumptions and others of similar ilk, it did not stand up but no one had the brains, or balls, to kill it off. The original Great Central London Extension was a victim of similar issues. Once Watkin and the the Channel link had gone there were no profitable intermediate stations and trains to Manchester and Sheffield simply did not have the loadings to pay their way. A new modern but not High Speed railway to Brum might make sense, because it could have stations on the way so that it is quicker and easier to go from a West London or leafy Bucks home to Brum, but it is too late now. N

Whilst it's indeed possible to control the charge/discharge FETs externally, this is the reverse of how other BMSs work. For example, RECbms/Pylontech will take control of all charge sources and tell them when to start and stop charging rather than being told to switch on and off. The contactor/FET in these BMSs is a last resort, which is how it should be in my opinion. I agree that one should not rely oon the BMS FETs for control. I would prefer to take the decision information from the BMS and then shut down the alternator when the conditions are met. That means a modified alternator brush box or regulator at the very least, but does not address the alternator heating issue. A halfway house would be to extract the BMS info and shut down the alternator on that basis but use a BtoB to limit the alternator output, possibly also controlling the half-rate switch depending on conditions. N

The common Daly, JK, JBD/Overkill/xiaoxiang BMS units all expose the state of the charge FETs over their coms units- UART, RS485, BT and App, CANBUS are all available, albeit not fitted to or exposed on all batteries. I haven't run across SPI or I2C, yet. All these BMS' will accept an incoming command to open and close the charge FET. There are others ( e.g. ANT-BMS ) I have not investigated The hardest part seem to be in parsing the control messages from the BMS to extract the necessary decision data (pack voltage, cell voltages, balance delta , charge current from the serial string of hex bytes that the BMS transmits in reply to an incoming hex byte string. Hard wired connections seem easier to manage than BT ones. A look round the home automation and diy solar sites will produce a bewildering quantity of information and there is plenty of C, C++ and Python code lurking. N

Set the user profile up so absorption charge is at 14.6 V and float at 13.6V. You will need to experiment a bit with the duration of Absorption, depending on the solar output. N