Strettonman

I’ll try. Phone is not too great with flash but let’s see.

The joys of being new to boating ?. Bought this old boat and have been gradually getting it home. The prop has always been a little rattly on tick over but today I thought it was a little worse. After about 4 hours of boating we tried to come out of a lock and it wouldn’t engage the prop. On investigation prop has moved back out of the coupling to the fear box. Fortunately the woodruff key was still in the coupling. Prop can move back and forth (only dared moving an inch or do). I can line everything up and give the prop a shove or whack with a mallet but only engages with coupling a few mm. can I just take the coupling off the gearbox, push into prop an inch or so with the key in place and then push the lot forward to rebolt to the gearbox ? Also, for my learning what stops the prop from pulling out when you are in hard reverse ? Do I need to check for anything else.

Thanks all for your comment. I will go back to the drawing board - that’s the beauty of this forum ?. Ive been considering a diesel heater next to the engine but there seem to be concerns about noise - comments like sounds like a jet engine. Are there good alternatives for compact gas boilers in the kitchen - but my main concerns is the space a hassle of a flue.

Hi all, I’m planning to gut an old boat I’ve just bought and thinking about the appropriate water and heating solution. We plan to cruise rather than live aboard and space is tight so I don’t want to have a boiler and the log burner is not a back boiler so I’m thinking the main heat source will be from the engine with a back up immersion in a calorifier (I’m thinking of having 3 or 4 big leisure batteries). For the heating we’ll normally rely on the log burner but need radiators in the bathroom and bedroom (and maybe in the lounge) to take the chill off before we go to bed and first thing in the morning. Ideally I don’t want to run the engine so I wondered whether it would be appropriate to use the second coil of the calorifier that is normally used to add heat to the tank by a boiler to run it through the radiators. I guess I would need a small radiator pump and size the calorifier as large as possible so as not to reduce the hot water temperature too much. Really I wanted to know whether this is a good idea or fraught with problems.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I’m quite Looking forward to the battle ahead ?.

Ditchcrawler and bizzard. Thanks for the tips.

Hi, we’re new to boating having just bought a fairly cheep narrow boat that was well looked after but dated and hadn’t run for a couple of years. After a couple of days boating the exhaust (15” cylindrical silencer box) gave up so I’ve taken a look and it looks quite easy to replace as long as I can free up the two cylindrical nuts connecting the silencer to what looks like a flexible coupling to the engine and the one to the pipe out the side of the boat. So I have a couple of questions before I decide whether to tackle it or get a pro to change it. 1) how do I free up the threads ? They look pretty rusty so should I use WD40 or is that not appropriate on an exhaust or is there something better ? 2 ) do I just need to use brute force with a set of good pipe grips or is there a knack to the loosening the cylinder nuts ? Do I need to do anything with the flexible coupling ? 3) do I need to use and sealing compounds as you would with water pipe. I always leave it to the pros with car exhausts as it’s generally cheaper anyway but I guess that isn’t the case with boats.