I am new to this boating lark so I thought I would ask here before i bite the bullet and approach my nearest boatyard.
I have a 50 foot narrowboat built 2001 - it has a 2 cylinder air cooled engine and a hydraulic drive. Within a few weeks of having bought it I experienced a fall off in the speed the boat would go - no matter how much i increased the engine revs - it ended up with te filter on the hydraulic drive blowing out/sprung a leak - with the drive in gear it blew hydraulic fluid all over the engine room. Anyway, the guys from canal river rescue eventually got me a replacement filter and fitted it and all seemed fine......five months on and having probably run the boat for i guess around 100 hours of cruising I now have a new problem.....I have started to experience the same fall off of forward propulsion and as i was about 10 minutes from my home marina I limped back to base. I found that by putting it into reverse for a few seconds and then back into forward gear it chugged along quite happily but then gradually slowed right down again. Putting it back into reverse and then forward meant I could limp along and eventually get home.
Does any bright spark out there know immediately what my problem is and how best to solve it ? I am guessing I have some foreign objects (rust maybe from the metal expansion tank for the hydraulic fluid ?) floating around which some how the filter cant cope with and its just preventing any meaningful forward propulsion. I am no engineer and am loath to start disconnecting hoses off my own bat in case i cause more problems than i fix! but is it likely to be something as simple as just a bit of rubbish in the system or am i looking at mega bucks and new drive system ?
Apologies if the answer is obvious and is just get it down to an engineer in a boatyard! I thought I would just ask in case there is something I can do to solve it easily.
Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions and sorry if I have wasted anyones time wading through my longwinded story. If there is any thing ive left out and you need more info then please let me know. Waiting replies with trepidation.........
