D. W. Walker

Basic problem is a 4YC is a bit big for most narrowboats. We have a 3YDA which is closely related (albeit air cooled) to the YC series in our boat, and quite a low revving one, and you wouldn't really need one a third bigger! Just like Gardners, a 3LW is a better size for most boats than a 4LW. Pity really, as it's a lovely engine for not much money.

Similarly on Tyneside, to Geordies they are always the "polliss"

That doggie in the window is a Bedlington Terrier called Belle, seen here checking out a Lister JP3 in a boat that we breasted up with down the Caen Hill flight earlier this year

Here's my Wolseley 4/44, you could outrun this on a pushbike!

It's down to cash - the Gardner is a lot more money than a telly. You'd have to scam 15 people for a telly to make the equivalent dosh to 1 Gardner, hence 15 times the likelihood of getting caught and/or having your face beaten to a pulp!

There is a website called Insulation Seconds that sells off cuts, seconds, over productions etc of insulation. Mainly Kingspan and Celotex, good prices etc, (I've no connection with them)

Before we owned our boat we had a hireboat holiday on "Kerry" in 2008, she was very tired even then.

I believe that these would be off a Lister "Start-o-matic generator set, often found in isolated houses, farms etc. They are definitely moving iron meters, as noted above, note the non-linear scale, and incidentally not very accurate! Moving iron meters read directly on AC without any problem, hence my thought that it is a generating set as 15A would be night for a 3kVA generator. You could use one to monitor load current on the 240v side of an inverter, the 15A scale would be just right for that! Never seen one with the name cast in before, but my chimney sweep's Mum is moving and has a disused Start-o-matic in her shed.........

Just brilliant, and clearly a lot of hard work.

The Aga in this boat looks identical to one we had in our last house. Coke fired, not coal, you drop the coke in through a removable bung in the LH hotplate and not via a front door. This is quite an old one, similar to ours which was 1948, but they are very long lived beasts, our friends still use a similar one converted to oil firing, with a burner in what used to be the ashpan, the door at bottom left. As post above notes, they are really heavy, so make good ballast - or make the boat list! You can take them out, they do come apart quite easily, which is how I moved ours.

1.8 starter motor is different to 2.2 and will not fit.

I thought I had sent a post here a few days ago but forum doesn't seem to have listed it! I'm away at present but can probably find a part number for these motors when I get home next week. I can probably help you with a complete starter motor also, but again, when I get home. Tony Brooks comment above is spot on, M45 is the general design of motor, (4 1/2 inch diameter) but each application is unique to each type of engine. They vary by number of pinion teeth (normally 10 or 11), mounting flange, and orientation of the solenoid, even sometimes (on vehicles) between LHD and RHD. I know from bitter experience that the Land Rover M45 motor is similar but will not fit! However the BMC 2.2 and 2.5 motors are definitely interchangeable with each other, but not with the BMC 1.5/1.8. Hope this helps, David

Hi, I can probably help you with BMC 2.2 part numbers and quite possibly with a (correct) motor too. You have to get not only the right motor but the right number of teeth on the pinion! However, I'm away at present, and not back until next Monday, so let me know if you can wait and still need it then. Cheers, David

We stayed there a couple of years back, in the basin, but just as visitors for a couple of days, not longer term. The canal down from Hawkesbury is very "urban" and we got blue rope and carrier bags around the prop, but the basin is much more secure and pleasant, and surprisingly quiet. I didn't feel worried mooring there, or leaving the boat. There is a footbridge across the ring road direct into the city centre. I think there is water but I don't think electricity - it is only intended as a short term visitor mooring.

Something else to remember about "proper" traction batteries, as I have a two x 216Ah sets, is that they are not sealed, and hence require periodic topping up with distilled water, which the common or garden leisure batteries do not, as they are sealed for life. Not a big issue if you are somebody who is used to routine maintenance, major problem if you are a "out of sight, out of mind" type of boater. Also, for the same reason (this water has to go somewhere), your battery container should be both vented and accessible, as they all should be!

The comments about the silly costs from Camping Gaz - why don't you change to Calor, then it's just expensive instead of total rip-off! If space is really at a premium the little 4.5kg calor bottles are still available but do cost more per kg than the bigger sizes, but still cheaper than Camping Gaz. I know you can get adaptors to convert the bottle connectors as I've got one!

Perkins P3 engines are "old school" in terms of rpm, torque as in post above, but they most certainly don't feel "vintage"! Probably because they are really an automotive engine, and hence that derivation gives a different "feel" to it - just like a BMC 1.5 is also very "automotive". Hence also why there isn't much to polish. Often found in vans and commercial vehicles of the period. Having spent a lot of time working on P3's and their bigger brothers the P4 and P6, they aren't something I recall with any affection. Not nice to work on, horribly rough and shaky, particularly the P3, nearly always smoke badly and usually an absolute bas***d to start on a cold morning! Their other party piece, when worked hard, is that they are prone to "putting a leg out of bed" i.e. throwing a con-rod through the side of the block! Perhaps less of a risk on a canal boat installation where they don't get worked so hard. Kindest thing you can say about the "P" series engines is that they aren't as bad as the Perkins L and R series! Sorry to pour cold water on this thread!

We moored for the summer at Stanley Ferry in 2014, lovely people there, really helpful and sensible prices. Would really recommend it. As noted above, the pub on the opposite side is very plastic and full of kids, but you can't have everything. Plenty of other good pubs in the area, including (apparently, because we didn't get to it) the only gas lit pub in Yorkshire!

I worked at C.A. Parsons in Newcastle in the late 70's/early 80's and worked on the Lots Road steam turbines, which were being refurbished at that time. In comparison with the other stuff in the works at the time (e.g. 660MW sets for Drax) the 30MW sets for Lots Rd were tiny, but they were beautiful little things, nice to work on, and like everything from Parsons of that era, built like a watch. We were actually only doing a major refurbishment on these sets, which from memory had been built in the 1960's, this included replacement of all of the blades on the turbine "spindles" (to use the Parsons terminology), i.e. the rotors inside the turbines. There may have been a rewind on the generator too, but I can't be sure as that was a different section. The Lots Road turbines were interesting not just for their small size, but because they weren't used for normal generation to the grid like most sets were. The London Underground generated their own electricity, which made them very independent. The problem for Parsons was that the traction load imposed by the railway was very irregular, both in the short term and over 24 hours. For example, when a train accelerated from a station it imposed a sudden large load, then the driver shut off and the load went to zero. Of course, in practice there were numerous trains on the supply network at any one time, so it wasn't quite as simple as this, but it did impose immense thermal and electrical stresses on these machines which wouldn't be seen on a normal power station. The fact that they worked so long and so reliably is a testament to their designers, builders and maintainers, as they were operating until comparatively recently. There was a much earlier Underground power station on the same site, and it had a major rebuild with this new equipment in the 1960's as by then it was completely obsolete. We travelled up the Thames on our narrowboat from Limehouse to Brentford in August 2013 and passing Chelsea creek I was interested to see the power station I had worked on all those years earlier. which was still reasonably intact but derelict at that time, see pic below taken from the boat.

Couldn't agree more with OP above, brilliant place! Just don't try taking a boat longer than about 20' up the Skipton arm, underneath the castle, unless you are really good at reversing! Pubs are mostly dog friendly and serve fantastic beer - is there anything better than a pint of Timothy Taylors Landlord drunk only a few miles from where it is brewed?

I think that the main differences between the Turkish and Brummie BMC's will be metric threads, at least on some items like unions. The British ones all use UNF/UNC imperial threads, with occasional BSP pipe thread on things like sump plugs. As well as looking at the BMC "B series" petrol engine for common parts, the BMC 1.5 diesel has a lot of similarities, as the 1.8 was developed directly from it (bigger bore mainly) The bigger 2.2/2.5 litre and 3.4/3.8 litre BMC's, often found marinised for use in bigger boats, share very little in common with these smaller brothers.

Scrapyards will pay for batteries whatever the daily rate is for that type of scrap - and this can vary dramatically over a year, sometimes ten fold variation. Also they are very specific, so the price per kg for lead batteries will be different from lead piping for example. The feature above on re-cycling is interesting, I had a visit to a lead re-processing factory in Newcastle some years ago, they took in lead scrap, mainly batteries, and melted it down and made sheet lead for roofing and flashing. However they were also very proud of their plastics re-cycling where the battery cases were melted down for re-use as low grade plastic items like plant pots. The other thing I remember is that they were very tight on pollution control, quite rightly so, as they didn't want lead getting into the soil or out of chimneys, and the staff were monitored for lead in their blood, so it was well run. Suspect if it was outsourced to the third world none of that would get done!

Perhaps because it might be difficult to start? Some are still hand start only! Or with the hunger for electricity on boats today, the inevitable battery charging, for which owners of modern engines are just as guilty.

This is true only to an extent. Old diesel engines (of whatever make) undoubtedly produce a very "visible" exhaust which modern diesels usually do not. However, most of the visible smoke is particulates, which on an old engine are large in size and hence visible. Thankfully mother nature protects humans from such things by our in-built air filter in our nose, and any particulates that get through this are too big to go far into the lungs, so old engines are fairly benign in this respect. Not so with "dangerous" modern diesel engines. In the quest to make them more fuel-efficient and appear cleaner the designs have become much more refined, but the problem is that the particulates that they still emit are now so very much smaller in particle size. Not only does this make them less visible, but they are so small that they pass the nose and can lodge deep inside the lungs, and this is the big problem with them - and also manufacturers who cynically fiddle the computer to produce better test results! So in the (hypothetical) shoot-out between a Gardner and a Volkswagen - for my lungs sake give me the Gardner please!

Not at all boaty perhaps, but my late mother-in-law, who became a professional artist, was taught by Eric Gill when she was at Art College!