Mike Adams

You should never use tyres as fenders. They come off and either get trapped in lockgates and sluices or end up around a propeller. Using them is a real no no on continental waterways.

Your noise problem might be more to do with the boat. I had a small wheelhouse with the engine under and it was quite noisey in the wheelhouse even with carpet etc. Outside on deck the engine was almost inaudable. have you tried running with the wheelhouse off the boat?

I used West system epoxy with an ebedded glass fibre roving over cascover deck sheathing on a plywood deck some 15 years ago and it's still watertight and painted with 2 pack epoxy paint, the boat cruised all over Europe for ten years and is still as good as when we did it. I would avoid anything with a solvent in it. What were yoy thinking of using?

Quite an old set up. unless I am wrong a mermaid conversion of the old ford tractor engine. Speed and power ratings very different from the transit engine. I don't think another Ford engine would be a good idea they are old as well now and you still have the high costs of marinisation. Speak to Mermaid and Beta and ask for thier suggestions.

If it was 1960s/70s it may well have been 'cascover' sheathing. This was a system using glue and a nylon sheath. It lasts well and epoxy will stick to it. If it is just leaking at the joints you could cover the joints with glass fibre tape and epoxy after sanding and where it is leaking around the fittings remove them and fit with new sealant after drying the area and soaking with epoxy.

I assume that is because CaRT need to get around the planning issues for longer than one month mooring licences. Are you allowed to live on your boat on a winter mooring? If CaRT gave permission to live aboard from more than one month they would be in trouble with the planning authorities.

A lot of modern diesel engines are designed to never run at just above tickover. Over the years I have had Ford, John Deere and Toyota engines that had the same problem as you describe and it is much more problematic if you have a large reduction gearbox say 3:1 when the gearbox starts chattering. The problem on a canal is you need very little horsepower so you are running at this point most of the time. You probably need the engine to be running at 900rpm plus to eliminate the problem which means you are going too fast. It is possible to improve things by fitting a heavier flywheel but it never gets rid of it all together. If you want enough HP to do rivers and other cruising you are probably stuck with it. If you don't need the HP then a smaller engine running faster might do it but you would have to change the propeller. Engines with balance shafts are better ie JD 4 cylinder and Bukh. I don't think it is anything to do with mounts just a characteristic of engines.

They are very noisy in my experience and who knows what the spares situation is now. Last engine I would think is suitable for a trip boat unless you want to shake em up, smoke em out and deafen them but may be that is part of the experience.

It says 'This advanced product bridges the gap between having to sand, or blast back, a steel canal boat to bare metal before applying a two-pack epoxy primer, for a 10 year paint system and having to apply a bitumen-based product every year or so. Ballastic Epoxy is a two-pack primer but it can be applied over existing bitumen paint and has all the protection of an epoxy primer which will allow the use of better quality two-pack topcoats.' on the website.

I used a lot of Jotun/SML paints and they are of good quality but I don't like the idea of painting anything over bitumen. The adhesion between the new paint is only as good as that to the bitumen. Whilst it may stay in place if the boat doesn't contact anything you are going to get a right mess when it does. Long term some of these epoxy coatings become brittle so if not well attached will flake off especially if attached to something like bitumen. Bitumen contains all sorts of crap so you don't know what reactions are going to take place since it doesn't cure like paint just evaporates the solvent or some of it. The only way to get rid of bitumen is by shotblasting!

Hire an airless spraygun - you will get even coverage and it will go into the pits. I believe it costs about £100 a day. Not much compared to the shotblasting and paint.

I think you are going to find it difficult, and I am in the same position with a limited 'free' mooring of 45ft. If you could find a genuine historic tug say of the BCN type you might be lucky but then again they are old boats with age related problems. I think very few boats like this have been built since the eighties and some have been lengthened so you are fishing in a very small pool and probably waiting for the owners to die off. When I find I can't cope with a 60 footer and still want to go boating I am resigned to something like a 41ft sea otter which are easy to maintain and much lighter to handle.

I would try checking the connection of the multipin plug on the wiring harness. They are known to corrode and give all sorts of strange problems which could mean the alternator is not charging properly which would account for your loss of power when out cruising. I think the smart charger should switch off when connected to a single battery and it reaches the fully charged voltage. I am not sure how well they work so with a battery bank and/or solar charger.

Unless of course you are a Warden on NT moorings and there are a few 'historic' residential moorings. I guess that does not apply to marinas where, like the Thames there are quite a few

I suppose it is but based on a realistic approach. The Wey is a small waterway and unless say going out for the weekend you are unlikely to want to cruise it that often. The maximum period for mooring when cruising is 48hours.

I don't think that is correct but you need to demonstrate that you are moored local to the Wey, such as on the Basingstoke Canal or the Thames and would make regular use of the Waterway and of course have a home mooring.

I think it might get you out of trouble in the short term but a better solution is needed. I guess when the rubber fails and you get metal to metal contact the alloy quickly fails. You need to avoid any oil getting onto the rubber.

There are various threads on here about the Isuzu 55 engine and head gaskets blowing. It seems to only occur on engines that have skin tank cooling and not on those fitted with a marine mannicooler/heat exchanger. I suspect that your underlying problem is down to overheating of the engine. These engines are not normally fitted with a temperature gauge so your running temperature could be too high without the alarm going off. As you said there is poor circulation to the calorifier I would suspect overheating to be the cause due to poor or restricted circulation.. Possibly check the water circulation pump first as you are taking the head off anyway. It could be a build up of scale/rust in the engine and skin tank on its own or in combination with a blockage of the water passages in the block or head. Skin tanks performance degrades over time with internal corrosion and build up on the external surfaces. Wash out the skin tank and engine and add corrosion inhibitor/antifreeze when you refill. air collecting in the head depending on the cooling arrangement could also be causing the issue.

Can you not use the original drive plate as a spacer ring? I would not use the spacers unless you have no other option.

It is better to take the downward force on the top bearing which is accessible for greasing and just let the bottom bearing act as a sleeve. I have seen ball, taper roller and plain bearings work well.

I think an R and D plate will be fine. I doubt if they have one to fit your pump on the shelf but they may be able to make one. They are usually designed for marine gearboxes all of which tend to have different splines. A spine adapter will work fine if you can get one to suit your pump and one of the standard drive plates from R and D. I doubt this but you might fit something like a borg warner or something that uses an SAE standard spline. You need to trawl through all the data sets and work out what size SAE drive plate your engine can take and if it has an SAE standard flywheel. The SAE drive plate may be bigger than your current one. Goggle SAE flywheel and that will give you the data such as diameter and number of bolts for the drive plate. If you find one that fits the flywheel with a larger spline try and get a spline adapter to suit or you could possibly bore out the r and D spline and weld/press in a plane spline sleeve to suit your pump.

I think there are only three tangs judging by the sections broken off the plate. Clean them up and reposition on the plate and see what it looks like. You might get away with welding it.

I am sure the engine drive plate is Aluminum. A decent welder should be able to weld the broken off parts back on if you can find them all. It looks like you could build up the thickness of the original tangs while not affecting its operation. Then all you need is a new rubber coupling. Or as a temp fix you may find an HRC rubber insert of about the right size.

Those splines don't look too bad to me. of you clean them up and there is not too much slack I think it willlast a long time. You can get splined sleeves to fit hydraulic pumps from an agricultural supplier to get to a parallel shaft. Then you have more options. When I had a similar problem I used a sleeve into a taper lock Hrc coupling and machined the other half of the coupling to fit to a steel plate bolted to the flywheel. There are commercial parts out there but they do take a bit of finding!

I suggest you do what Alan has said and slightly loosen the two larger pipes startthe engine in neutral and if you go into forward or reverse you should see oil leaking out. If you don't just whip the 3 pipes off, unbolt the cooler from the back of the unit, undo the 4 bolts securing the pump to the engine and lift it out. I suspect the drive is broken. I think the drive is broken. splines are gone or flex coupling if it has one.