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Johny London

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Everything posted by Johny London

  1. The fact that it'll be being supplied with 240v and not 12v - just changing the fitting won't alter that. If you are talking about putting a 240v fitting onto a 12v supply, then only 240v bulbs will fit so it wont work. If you want 12v light fittings, then buy those. There are plenty out there.
  2. I use Fertan. It appears to work very well, in so far as it soon turns any rust black, you wipe it off with water and it dries and looks promising. Then a good primer Isopon zinc seems the best you can get these days. However, only time will tell how effective it truly is.
  3. If you are going to remove paint from just the bad areas, it's likely you'll end up with a pretty patchy finish - dunno if that's of importance or not. There are plenty of semi gloss/sheen paints (do they call it a radle???) around, one of those in a light colour and you can decide whether you want to put sand down or perhaps use strips of that grippy tape if/where you might be walking (which could also help cover up any variations in the surface).
  4. Just to add my experience with three on 4g. West on the K&A between Newbury and Bath it can get very patchy and certainly does need a good tall aerial pole with lte antenna. In many places, I've had no signal on the phone (a separate three sim) for weeks on end. I read somewhere (prolly on here) that three phone reception suffers where it cannot drop back to (gsm?) below 3g, as they don't use those types of signal at all - only 3g/4g. Certainly would explain my findings. But, with the aerial up, I now use the phone socket on the Huwaei router to make calls where the mobile phone can't. I will probably change provider for my mobile phone sim next time but stick with the three phone/data sim in the 4g router (because at £20 for unlimited everything it does the job). I have B525s-23a router and a mimo omni directional aerial.
  5. I've got an alternative approach... I used a fast drying cellulose/Xylene based pain (Jotun conceal, which is semi gloss, though they do a similar gloss version that should be a little thinner and thus easier to get a good finish). I put 4 good roller coats on each side (doesn't take long once you are masked up - two hours per coat then straight back round). The next step is to flat it off with something... I'm still to do that yet. Or if you don't mind a roller ed finish you are done. You have to move quick though cos it dries. Better than oils because they are all micro porous - don't use weathershield it's for wood. (Unless of course you have a wooden boat). If you are going over old oil paint, you'll need to key it all first Just used some of that 182 primer as mentioned above (redoing engine bay) seems good. Definitely get all the rust off, go over with Fertan or similar then 182 zinc primer as you can't really get the proper red oxide stuff anymore.
  6. When I was bringing the boat down from up north, recycling seemed plentiful, but it just up and disappeared somewhere along the way - bugger all in the south, and there just is not room to keep storing stuff on the deck of a narrowboat. The other option is carrying all the heavy glass etc along to the car, driving to a recycling point somewhere - I do see them in a lot of supermarkets. But being in different places all the time I never really know what I'm going to find and it certainly isn't worth burning fuel taking stuff around specially.
  7. Too true. I gave up sorting my recycling now because 9 times out of ten there is nowhere for it. On the 10th occasion, well, it's already in a mucky bin bag with everything else so in the general waste it goes. I'm really disappointed that there are not recycling facilities at ALL rubbish points (of which are few and far between in any case, usually over spilling and stinking). On e place there was a sign saying the recycling lorry couldn't reach anymore - it's just not good enough.
  8. What's with all this greener lifestyle? All I ever do is burn stuff - oil, gas, diesel, wood, coal
  9. I'll get an electric car as soon as they filter down into the s/h market at a price I can afford. Actually, I don't advocate throwing away perfectly good vehicles so this could come as natural attrition over the next few years. I hope that as boats go electric (being built from new) then the technology will become readily available, so for example you could go get an electric motor fitted in much the same way as one might now go get a new diesel engine. I can't just go out and build everything myself - a few can but most can't. But I'll happily take it once available.
  10. Doesn't it just depend on what the bank is like where you are moored? If I'm on rings or really good ground for the pins with a nice clean bank edge, I get moored so well (with tyres bank side) people can go speeding by and I won't even notice. On the other hand, give me one of those picturesque but stupid bits of bank (why have crt widened so many banks by putting a lower bit in that goes overgrown with weeds and nettles??? It's like they don't want us to moor) and every few boats I'm back out re doing the pins as the boat gets dragged several feet or more. Also changing water levels make it difficult to moor well. So I moor up nice and tight, a boat uses a lock and the boat is then grounded out at an uncomfortable angle. I move the boat out off the bank some, it levels up. Later the water is higher again and the boat is all over the place when anything goes past.
  11. I just don't understand this pro ICE thing some people seem to have in their heads. Ok so it's a big challenge moving away from burning stuff to going electric, but that doesn't mean it cant be done. If we don't all do something then the planet is probably doomed. I suppose funding for boat electric charging points would have to come from government grants, maybe local councils, CRT and ultimately just boaters and tax payers - what do you want me to say? Where there's a will there's a way - but we could just say "can't" and just bury our heads in the sand I suppose.
  12. Boats don't need to recharge quickly - overnight would be more than fast enough. Most places where there are vm's, there's already electric nearby (housing / street lighting etc etc) - it can't be that difficult can it? Then off into the wilds for however long running off solar only? The large solar arrays needed to recharge drive batteries will ensure the domestic leccy never runs low.
  13. I remember the adaptors being very expensive (around £25 for what is effectively a piece of plastic tube) and I got the proper metal roof fitting for that - also don't have the hassle of handling/storing the dirty adaptor.
  14. I used to have a Vetus fitting for my pump out - which is not compatible with the normally found pump out - it was a pain because I had to get it done at places were they carried an adaptor. In the end I changed the fitting for the usual thing (rather than buy an adaptor of my own, only to end up dropping it in the drink) - had to dismantle a lot of boat to get to the pipe, which is on the roof. Anyway - I find that some places the seal is not too good, it's surprising that just a little air getting in will spoil things. But, a piece of wet tissue wadded around the hole/probe works wonders. Worth knowing, and keep a bit on hand cos wants the pumps running you can't afford to waste it! It's definitely always better to get a serviced pump out if you possibly can - that way it's on them to maintain the suction, you get as long as you need and some places do you a decent rinse out (maybe even a splash of blue in there if you are very lucky!). Mine stinks though - and I sleep over the tank And my gauge is bust
  15. Thanks I should have taken a before pic - just imagine a lot of heavy surface rust on the counters and a few inches of oily water and muck in the (now bone dry) bilge! Will finish the latter in light grey for contrast.
  16. And I got a couple coats of zinc primer on over the last few days and today the second top coat... next time will do the lower bits but this was enough for now as I repainted everything - very uncomfortable in there!
  17. Just thought a fitting addition to this thread, I finally got around to lagging my Webasto exhaust pipes. While I was at it I took the silencer off to turn it around (so the drain hole which I now know about is pointing down not up* - yet strangely this means the logos are upside down?). Plus I wanted to see if there was any condensation in there. All bone dry and it was hard to remove the exhausts with the silencer sealant I had used. To my surprise, some of the sealant on each side of the exhaust had expanded so much that the hoses were almost blocked - yet of cours it's been running ok. As a precaution I took the end off at the heater, which also had a big clod in it. The skin fitting looked clear so left that. All back together nice and neat now. * I blocked the hole up for fear of fumes creeping in, and because the whole system was totally bone dry anyway - but I can easily poke it through if I ever want to check then seal again if necessary.
  18. I've seen plenty boats that use stick on line tape - Alvechurch type ones for one with their yellow lines. Makes a lot more sense than all the extra masking. But if painting and your lines are not straight, surely that would be apparent at the masking tape stage? I'd be concerned about not getting a good clean edge though.
  19. Put the cable through a mushroom vent - that's what they are for! No point making more holes in the roof, no matter what you do one day it will leak. You'll have to pry down bits of ceiling board at appropriate places and fish the cable along on a rod though.
  20. It does, but I have actually got the sense wires going into the sense and the supplies for the supply, I think. It's this meter... https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-0-200V-0-500A-Volt-Amp-Meter-Battery-Monitor-Charge-Discharge-12V-24V-36V-DS/171213089055?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 The thing is this one has a dot in the display - maybe mine should have and it doesn't work. Also mine has one terminal less...
  21. I thought you'd cracked it for a minute there Wotever. I disconnected the -ve supply and the meter just still works as usual. Then I connected the -ve to a ground elsewhere (one of my 12v sockets) and low and behold... I get -49 amps! There are two +ves, but it did say that the meter can be powered from what it is monitoring "no need different supply." Of course I have mucked around with the trim pot but that just makes things even worse. The thing about the meter reading - to be clear, the last post (the meter reads 0.1) is the dvm I was using to check the voltage drop across the shunt, the op was when I was talking about "the meter" as being the installed ammeter!
  22. That's a really good point, 4 to 5 meters I'd say, and they are not very thick either. The way I wired it, the sense wires from the shunt go to the sense wire connections on the meter. The positive comes from its own dedicated fused wire from the batteries. This links to another pin that requires 12v on the meter. The ground supply for the meter I took a loop off the sense wire that is on the battery side, rather than running one separately.
  23. The mV thing was a good idea - I measured across the sense wires when they were unplugged and got 0 or 1mv, then plugged them into the meter and got 0.6mv. In both cases with minimal load (radio and laptop on) so it shows the meter is affecting its own readings. Also some confusion regarding how it is wired as the online instructions in the advert show a different thing to what I have got. I had the -ve supply wire tied to the wrong side of the shunt (the not battery side) but surprisingly didn't seen to make any difference. Then took the thing apart and found a multi turn pot - with the sense wires unplugged/shorted it doesn't affect the reading (always at 000) but with sense wires in I set it so it was just off 000/001 then tried some loads, which didn't show up. And it doesn't see to see the power going in from the solar Waste of time. Thanks all. As far as the mV / shunt thing - surely any meter would just be calibrated to whatever shunt it specified? So all things being equal (ie 75mv shunt) a 100a meter would show 100a when there is volt drop x across the shunt, a 500a meter would show the same 100a for the same x, and 5x for 500a? The thing being to make sure the shunt is meaty enough for the application (and the meter software allows it to display the relevant figures).
  24. That's what I thought - something warm somewhere. But now I just think it is the meter miss reading - or the shunt or problem with how it is wired. Easiest option is to try a different meter (they all seem to use 75mv shunts?). This one only goes down to 1a so not much use for seeing what the small items use anyway. That's what I thought - something warm somewhere. But now I just think it is the meter miss reading - or the shunt or problem with how it is wired. Easiest option is to try a different meter (they all seem to use 75mv shunts?). This one only goes down to 1a so not much use for seeing what the small items use anyway.
  25. I put mine up for opinions - or also if anyone wants to use them to adapt and modify for their own uses. You can easily bucket fill the colours. Still after tape - I guess chandlers but presume it will be well over priced and I need rather a lot (60m+?).
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