Tony Brooks

I just Googled "car body stopper" which is a very fine form of filler. You can get one or two pack products. By all means try the two fillers you have, but you might find that when you sand them, and they get really thin, they tear away from the steel. I am sure a boat painter will be along soon. Be aware that stoppers and fillers are porous, as is most/all single pack paint, so if you get water sitting on the filled section for long enough the filler is likely to absorb some water so rust ensures.

Er, the pump valves allow flow from the tank to the system, I think there is every chance that if the main pipework was below the tank level, and it sprung a leak it would syphon. I would not rely upon six little rubber valves to seal in the direction they are supposed to allow flow. If the pump started leaking then I agree air would enter the leak rather the water come out, but then the valves (two per pumping chamber) would be trying to stop any water in the pump d raining back into the tank, but that won't be a lot.

It might be clearer to newbies if you had said "filling with 25% antifreeze mixture", or 30% if you wish. Certainly not neat antifreeze, which is what this thread seems to involve. FWIW you could have added a couple of pots of car cooling system cleaner additive to the water you ran with for a (short) while.

Sorry, I don't understand "fuse lights flashing". If a fuse or circuit breaker has a light associated with it. Usually, it either illuminates when the circuit breaker is turned on or when a fuse blows. I have yet to come across one that flashes, although a light monitoring "electronic boxes" like charge controllers do flash under fault conditions. This is all very odd, I doubt it is an actual pump fault, more likely a wring or circuit fault. Take a very good look at the main cables (pos and neg) between the battery terminals and the domestic fuse/beaker/distribution board. Especially the negative.

I suspect that the locksmith may just modify the lock so a key blank works.

Pleased it is fixed, but not so pleased that you had to buy a new alternator when the old one had every chance of being OK. This is not a pop at you, but it seems we are having a few posters who ignore advice to do tests before buying new etc. Did you do the test I suggested on March 8th? Disconnect the D+ cable at the alternator, turn the ignition on, and see if the bulb illuminated. Unless you were very unlucky and that cable move din the bulkhead, I would bet the charge light remained on - that screams short circuit o the D+ cable.

The keys for different locks are likely to be different. I would suggest that you take the whole lock to a locksmith, who should then be able to cut you the keys that you need.

If your solar is not working, it again points to that master switch, battery terminals or a blown maim fuse. If the ball of paper trick I mentioned above does not work, disconnect the domestic bank negative (so you can't cause a short circuit with the spanner) and the put all the cables that are on the switch terminals on one terminal stud. then reconnect the batteries. If you then have your 12V circuits back, the switch is faulty. If you have a similar switch for the engine battery then that may also be faulty. As most solar controllers are dual 12/24 volt it is VITAL that the batteries are connected to it BEFORE the panels, so it can sense the voltage and set itself. Now you really should disconnect your panels from the controller in some way or cover them so they don't generate anything. keep them disconnected/covered until you ensure you have battery voltage at the controller OUTPUT/battery connections. If you do not, there is every chance the controller will default to 24 volts and start charging the 12V bank well in excess of 15 volts. that is not good and will damage a 12V battery bank.

It is very unlikely to be a short circuit because if it were only a one or two circuits would fail when a fuse blew, or if the fuse did not then the wiring would probably have caught fire. This sounds more like a major break in the domestic battery circuit close to the batteries, and Rusty 69 is correct about crappy master switches with a red removable plastic key. if you have then one screw up a little ball of paper and put it under the key before you twist it down. That will often make it work temporarily. As we are now talking about the domestic battery bank, it sounds like a bad connection between a battery clamps and cable or more likely loose or dirty battery terminals. When you say that you cleaned the battery terminals, did you use abrasive paper or a knife to scrape both the terminal post and inside the terminal to bright metal. Especially the negative terminals. Inverters, especially inverter-chargers, often have a separate feed from the domestic bank with only a fuse in the line, so it is perfectly possible that the inverter works but the 12V circuits don't. There may be a big fuse in the main feed to the 12V domestic fuse/distribution board. 600W of solar should keep the batteries well charged for a lot of the year. the 12.7 to 12.8 V after a small load has been turned on for a short while or the battery has been left to stand for a while without charging shows that you are getting the DOMESTIC bank more or less fully charged, although 14.6v is not a reliable way of inferring fully charged, but seems to be working for you. How many alternators do you have, I expect it is two, and if so the 12.7V only applies to the domestic bank. In most, but not all cases, solar charging is only for the domestic bank so how do you know the alternator is charging the engine battery. I am still leaning to a faulty engine battery.

Thanks, is it or them in excess of 100 watts or so because much less than that and although it will fully charge an unused battery over winter or with a few days with not electrical use, but it may only contribute to battery charging during the summer, but as you run the engine every two days it all helps. If its convenient, I would use the alternator later in the day so you get maximum benefit from the midday sun.

What do you mean by "a panel" please? That could be anything from a remote inverter read out panel, the typical engine control panel with a variety of instruments or if you are lucky a battery monitor read out and controls. If the latter and it has an ammeter function, then there is a pretty accurate way of knowing when the domestic batteries are more or less fully charged. It is not so much an inverter as such, although cheaper ones tend to use a lot of electricity just to work themselves when turned on, but people with inverters often run mains equipment that they would not do when on 12V. Without knowing a lot about the appliances you use and for how long and the alternator(s) output, it is difficult to make any valid suggestions about battery charging.

Which means that it was probably never fitted with a bilge pump because the canopy would have kept most of the rain out of the boat.

A bit over 1000 rpm (10 on the rev counter) is good enough, but if you have an inverter and use it, then it may not be enough during the winter. If you don't have an accurate ammeter, then I would suggest about 4 hours a day is best to keep your batteries in fair condition. If you have a fair bit of solar, then you would need far less engine charging in summer. The chances of the engine sucking up water is very remote unless the boat was flooded, so you can discount that. Tell tail signs - the engine turns a fraction and then locks solid, then the starter may get hot and eventually machine gun (rapid clicking).

I was wondering that, but suspect that if it is a Z drive it would not leak anything like as much as one with a conventional drive line/stern gland.

Roughly what area? If south of Banbury I would happily come and have a look & do the voltmeter tests FOC ONCE I get my car back from the garage, but at present I have no idea when that will be. How long do you run for and at what revs every day or so, because it still gives some indications of a flat/faulty start battery and a discharge domestic bank. Well, that tells me that you were not operating the starter at the time, or you have a bad connection between battery and starter - like Arthur found on his boat. Doing voltmeter tests of starting circuits without the starter operating are invalid tests.

Sorry to say this after you did all that work, but the idea of test procedures is to avoid unnecessary work, so if you had followed the test procedure I gave you it would almost certainly have shown that you had a flat or faulty battery. I am not going to say much more until I can see some test results, but there is every chance that your next move is to buy a new battery. The existing one may have a shorting cell or be badly sulphated, unless you left it unattended and charged over the winter, in which case a good charge might recover it enough to get it working for now.

And that is why it can be difficult and tedious giving advice and trying to cover all possibilities. In this thread, Arthur came up with another possibility that I had not considered because it is, in my view, an exceptionally rare fault. However, if the OP had come back with the results of the tests I suggested, and they seemed OK I would have considered the next set of tests and explained them.

Are you sure that there is a fixed one. I would expect a hand operated portable one like this: That is unless a fixed one has been fitted by an owner. it could be electric or hand operated. Look around the engine room, on the hull bottom, for an electric one.

But if the OP came back and told us what they found, it would be even more valuable for others looking to solve a similar sounding problem. I think that if someone asks for help, they should at least knowledge that help, even if it turns out to be wrong. I think just ignoring the thread is just plain rude.

Not directly applicable, but may be helpful. We had our boat painted in a Masons dark green, Then Masons got taken over and went off the market. I never found a decent match from an alternative supplier of notional Masons colour. That is after cutting back and polishing to get back to close to the original colour. I bit the bullet and chose the closest RAL/BS colour to what I wanted, luckily I was able to but a set of RAL & BS colour chips. So having got the RAL number, I used Johnnstons trade centre to mix to the number in their oil based gloss. I found Johnstons oil based paint was the easiest to apply and lay off compared with a number of others, including Craftsmaster.

I agree that most modern car radios are needlessly complicated to operate. I suspect the internals across brands use common integrated circuits. One tends to think brand name = quality and long life, but me experience of Sony car radio do not bear this out. I have just looked for "basic car radio" on Amazon and found a few around £20, at least one of which has an obvious power button. At least one had an EQ button, so it should be possible to address the higher frequency hearing loss someone raised. None seemed to have a fader control, so if you have speakers at the front and back of the boat, you won't be able to turn one end volume down to zero. At that price for what looks like a simple radio, I suspect one is worth a punt.

No idea about "better" because most tanks seem to have welded in pipes of one sort or another, but it occurs to me that you could drill a hole close, but not quite at the bottom of the bulkhead and fit a metal (brass/bronze) skin fitting with soft sealing washers, perhaps with adhesive sealer, either side. That way you would not need a welder now or in the future, but it would be slightly more likely to leak. This is just an idea, not a recommendation. The hole will have to be high enough for the fitting's flange, washers and nuts to clear any weld line along the bottom of the bulkhead.