cheesegas

Yeah...I've ordered the AV Mounts, will update in December when I'm back! Thanks, good idea but unfortunately the alternative mounts are magnitudes too high, higher than the engine leg!

These ones, or a variant thereof? https://www.asap-supplies.com/products/r-d-flexible-engine-mount-1gm10-for-yanmar-engines-40-131lbs-207074 And yep, you're right - they're too tall unfortunately, I only have 65mm from bed to bottom of the mount bracket! It looks like the R&Ds might be the only option, I remember looking around a lot when selecting new ones and the height was the limiting factor.

The flattest R&D mounts may just fit if I replace the bottom nut with a half-nut actually - the softest one is rated at 13-40kg (they seem to give a range rather than a value) but the deflection is only 3.4mm which is less than the AV Mounts 50kg model at 4mm. No datasheet showing deflection is available on the R&D site though, see attached for info and link here https://shop.tnorrismarine.co.uk/products/r-d-flexible-engine-mount-shear-type-30-90lbs-12mm-stud There's very little info about this engine on the web, parts are equally scarce as well so I doubt there's any recommended feet to go with it. The originals were similar to the AV Mounts, but given how one had sheared and one bracket had vibrated loose, the issue has been there for a while.

Confusingly the 50kg is the squishiest one they make, despite showing 40kg on the datasheet... I can measure deflection yep, from there I can get an estimate of weight. I did this last time which is how I worked out that one mount was taking 30kg more but it's definitely worth doing again with these. I'll get them all at exactly the same height from the bearers with the propshaft disconnected and measure again. The mounts are only £20 each so I'll order three 50kg anyway. I'm out the country for work for a bit so I'll update in Dec, thanks for your help! I was going to go the other way and buy firmer mounts.

Oops, sorry forgot to mention - I'm using the SM1600 series, 75kg on three and 90kg on the one heavier. By the sounds of it, I might be better off with three 50kg and one 90kg? There's much more deflection on the 50kg. Otherwise, I can raise the idle to above the resonance, around 1300rpm but I'm not entirely convinced the gearbox likes this. Does 1300rpm sound high to you compared to other similar 1000cc Kubota based engines for example? The sheared drive plate splines might have been coincidence though as it hadn't been touched since I got the boat around 4 years ago, and the paperwork doesn't mention a new drive plate being fitted prior to that.

Interesting, thanks for the reply. The rear right mount I originally replaced with a 75kg one, but it was so soft it spent all its time bottomed out and eventually failed. The rear left mount was actually taking a small amount of upward force when I installed it. The datasheet for the mounts is here: https://www.avindustrialproducts.co.uk/files/ww/33-34. Silent Marine Mounts.pdf . Unfortunately these mounts are the only ones that are low enough and fit the holes in the bearers, the R&Ds are 5mm too high. The gearbox is 30kg and the engine is 130kg dry without the alternator, so around 150kg wet, total of 170kg. As mentioned though, it's not evenly distributed and most of it is on the back right mount. Had a think - is it worth going to 50kg mounts for the three which are less heavily loaded, and trying a 100kg on the loaded one?

Forgot to mention - initially I fitted 75kg mounts all round, but as I didn't account for the increased weight on the left side of the engine those mounts collapsed after a few months as they were bottomed out at full deflection. The 100kg mounts are better and deflect a similar amount to the 75kg ones on the other side of the engine. edit - might it be worth trying 100kg mounts all round in case I'm exciting some resonance with two different compliances of mount? Advice I got from AV Mounts was to use different ratings of mounts depending on how the engine's weight is distributed. edit two, just seen your edit - the left side of the engine is a lot heavier as both manifolds, starter and alternator are on that side. The rear right mount takes almost no downward force at all - removing it entirely doesn't cause the engine to droop at all! In fact, when I had all 75kg mounts fitted, it was taking upward force.

Got an ongoing issue with engine RPMs and resonances which I'm hoping someone can advise on. I've got a 3 cylinder Isuzu 3KC1 diesel in my narrowboat, coupled to a PRM Delta 30 (basically an older 150) hydraulic box with a Centaflex coupling, about 1' of shaft to the conventional stern gland. Engine is mounted on four AV Mounts' marine series, all brand new as of last year. The rear mounts are in line with the flywheel so the gearbox overhangs and the front ones in line with the belts roughly. The left side of the engine is around 30kg heavier so these mounts are 100kg rated, the other two are 75kg. When I got the boat the idle speed was set to 800rpm (Isuzu state 1000rpm in the manual), one of the mounts was sheared and one of the brackets had worked loose so it all bounced around. Ever since replacing the mounts, I haven't been able to get things quite right. Currently for faultfinding purposes I have the propshaft disconnected at the gearbox flange, engine idle is set to 1000rpm (verified by a handheld laser tach), alternator regulator switched off so there's no load. Between 1100rpm and 1250rpm there's a really bad resonance which is characteristic of 3 pot diesels - the whole engine jumps around, everything bounces and shakes. If I cruise at this RPM, it moves enough to vibrate the propshaft against the stern tube and cause the gland to leak excessively...and it'll shear the bolts that hold the air filter bracket on! Above 1250rpm it's perfectly smooth. Last summer I set the idle to 1300rpm to avoid the resonance band as it's difficult to go from idle straight to 1300rpm when cruising without the engine trying to shake itself out the boat. However - and it may be coincidence - the splines on the drive plate sheared after a couple of months. The gearbox never sounded very happy engaging drive at 1300rpm but the PRM manual doesn't mention an idle speed. https://www.prm-newage.com/media/File/delta man.pdf Is this normal for 3 cylinder diesels? And what's the consensus on the high idle speed causing drive plate failure and/or being bad for the gearbox? This engine was also used in mini diggers, generators and reefers - all applications where it's either idling or at full power RPMs with no variation. I wonder if it was never intended for variable speed use? There's quite a few around in narrowboats though, including its bigger brother the 3KR1.

The waveform is also ‘synthesised’ in the Honda’s control board rather than being created by a magnet moving past a coil like in a non-inverter generator, so it makes sense that each inverter - Honda or Victron - handles loads in different ways. As you probably know, the Honda has a three phase alternator that’s rectified to make DC, which is then inverted to make 240v AC. My Zanussi works perfectly with my cheap-ish Champion 2kva inverter generator though…

It’s definitely not that - in fact, adding a 600w resistive load in the form of a little fan heater makes it work as I expect it’s smoothing the waveform. Nothing else is on at the time.

Thanks for the reply, yep it’s set to 50hz. I expect the fix will involve some sort of power factor correction bodge or 1:1 transformer, still haven’t had a chance to put it on a scope though.

Ah yep, I was going to mention those but didn't put it in for some reason! I recommend them for use on boats as they often have active power factor correction built into the power supply, and don't have a giant chunk of iron inside to make it horribly reactive. They aren't that common in smaller units though, I've only seen big family sizes ones built with inverters.

Yep, that's the inverter drawing a large amount of current. Same as when you put the kettle on, it pulls the battery voltage down by 0.3v or so which is visible in the lights. There's nothing different about the 'loading characteristics' of Li cells. The Multiplus range are suitable for any kind of battery, aside from low/high voltage cutoff points there's no such thing as an inverter optimised for a certain battery chemistry. Chargers yes, but not inverters. Thanks for the input, handy to know that a bigger inverter also doesn't like. Must be something to do with the waveform under inductive load, or with the triac switching. Out of interest, how much resistive load did you add? Mine needs one hell of a lot more than a lightbulb - a 600w fan heater does the job!

Similar but not quite - microwave's don't contain anything which chops up the waveform like a triac control, they just have a honking great transformer inside which is a highly inductive, very reactive, low power factor load which is difficult for inverters to drive. The power isn't actually modulated, on the low power settings it just reduces the duty cycle to something like 5 seconds off, 10 seconds on. Got to pull the machine out anyway to sort something that's got caught in the pump so I'll see if I can get an idea of how it's controlled when it's in bits. Looking at the photos on this handy ebay listing, it's pretty unconventional for a washing machine motor - brushed, series wound, AC motor with a tacho coil. Oddly, the brushes aren't connected directly to the controller, the other washing machine motors I've seen have separate connections for brushes and field. This seems to be series wound with perhaps an extra winding for high torque, low RPM which is switched out to weaken the field at high RPMs. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/293789529617

Yep, all 12v. It's definitely not the battery bank - with an extra 600w load switched on at the same time, the machine works fine. Also, when the drum fails to spin up, the heating element isn't even on, it gets past that stage without a problem. Load averages are less than 200w, but I suspect that the motor skews the current phase enough to pull the power factor down. I've put the 12v side on a scope, measuring across the inverter's input terminals and it never drops below 13v (lithium batteries), so the problem is to do with how the inverter handles low power factor loads.

That would only work if it's a full online UPS, which is basically a charger, inverter and battery. The charger is always on and the inverter is always on, supplying the load. Most are offline, meaning with normal usage the mains input is directly connected to the mains output via a relay and the battery is on charge. When power fails, a relay quickly switches the inverter on and switches the load from mains to inverter - IT equipment is designed to accept this quick drop in power. However, because most IT equipment is fairly tolerant of waveform and voltage - and most have built in power factor correction - their inverters tend to be quite crude almost modified sine wave, which I don't think the washing machine would like. It certainly didn't like the original, very old Sterling PSW the boat came with! Unfortunately my scope's only a cheap single channel one. And yep, all power saving modes are disabled, voltage is set to the maximum Victron allow (245v) and it's running the most recent Assistant firmware. I'm fairly confident it's something to do with how the Victron handles low power factor loads, as it only happens when the motor is trying to start with a drum full of water. Switching on a big resistive load then allows it to spin up... The boat originally came with a rather old 2kw Sterling PSW inverter and the machine didn't even switch on with that, just flashed its lights angrily. I've heard that this machine doesn't work with some and then works with others, even of the same model. I posted on the forums a while ago but didn't get much of a response, I'll try again actually, thanks for the reminder. I am the tinkering type and I do really like how Victron make most of their protocols open source, and there's an active and encouraged DIY development community, unlike Mastervolt who keep everything very secret. Yep, this sounds similar to mine, the machine also needs a resistive load for the last spin as it goes from 0rpm to something like 500rpm. However, mine needs a 600w load - anything less and it doesn't play nice, a little lightbulb isn't enough.

So as most of your probably know, Zanussi washing machines just don't get along with Victron inverters. My setup is a Victron 12/80/2000 (old microprocessor version) and a Zanussi ZWC 1301 3kg. It does the usual thing of getting past the wash cycle, and then on the rinse cycle when there's more water in the drum and there's more load on the motor, it tries to turn the drum but it just twitches, the lights on the front of the machine flicker and then it tries again and again. The lights in the boat also flicker which suggest it's momentarily drawing a lot of current, too quickly to measure with a meter. Updating the Multiplus's firmware to an Assistant version helped a bit as before that it wouldn't even spin the drum on the wash cycle but it still can't complete a cycle. The only thing which gets it able to spin the drum up on the first rinse cycle is to switch on a resistive load of no less than 600w...a little fan heater. This is fine in summer with lots of solar, but as we get to the months of less solar I'm trying to get to the bottom of why is does this as I'd like to avoid using so much power. I suspect it's to do with the motor's lack of back EMF on startup shifting the power factor so low that the inverter's 2kva rating isn't enough to maintain voltage, so the machine cuts out. Switching on a resistive load somehow smooths this enough to shift the power factor. Going to put the machine on a storage scope and see how the waveform looks, and what the peak-peak voltage is. Measuring power factor at that instant is going to be almost impossible though as the plug-in meters aren't fast enough... Initial thoughts are to try a 1:1 isolation transformer which I can borrow from work, and after that a power factor correction capacitor. What's everyone elses experience of Victron and Zanussi? Something similar?

The downside to the air inlet coming from inside the boat is that it doesn't introduce any fresh air and it ends up being damp in winter. Mine comes from outside, find it really handy on a cold-ish damp autumn evening when cooking, to get rid of condensation on the windows. I had a valve in mine (removed to make space for a different bed!) which mixed in inside and outside air to get the best of both worlds. However, unless it was really cold outside I always ran it on fresh air only as it didn't make much difference.

Yep, the exhaust exits via a skin fitting about 10" below the gunnels on the outside of the hull, and then the fresh air is drawn in from the overhang on the inside of the cruiser stern, just above the deck boards.

They are really good. I have a slightly more expensive LF Bros 5kw diesel air heater, installed into the engine bay under the cruiser stern deck, sucking in fresh air from outside and blowing it into the back of the boat. I typically use it in autumn and spring to take the chill off the mornings and evenings - mornings when if you lit the stove, you'd be nice and warm by 9am but sweating by midday! It's also useful if you've been away from the boat for a couple of days, it's freezing in the boat and you want heat instantly while you light the stove. Or if you'll only be on the boat for a few hours and don't want to waste coal and time with the stove. I also use it if I'm cooking with the stove not lit on a cool evening, to get rid of the damp and condensation. On the lowest setting (1.4kw output) it draws 800mA/0.8a and uses 90ml of diesel per hour. This is enough to keep the cold off overnight if it's above about 5 degrees C outside, and despite the vent being at the end of the bed it's quiet enough to sleep with. On the highest 5kw setting it's a lot louder and draws 6 amps, but it'll get a freezing 0C boat to 15C in about an hour. On startup and shutdown, it draws 10 amps for around 2 minutes for the glowplug. The kits from Amazon/Ebay etc do need a lot of modification to be safe and BSS compliant though. Bin the fuel filter, all the fuel line apart from the thin nylon stuff from pump to heater, fuel tank, exhaust hose and exhaust silencer. You'll need to buy a metal fuel filter, ISO7840 rubber or copper fuel lines to your main tank, stainless Webasto exhaust hose, a sealed marine silencer with condensate trap and a mounting bracket. All of that cost me around £150. Depending on the boat it's either straightforward or not very straightforward to fit yourself...

All done. I don't recommend Acothane DW for this application though, in hindsight - the pot time of just 30 minutes is too short, you need to work very fast and I ended up sweating and dripping into the paint! It's difficult to mix up smaller batches as the paint has the consistency of something between cream cheese and mascarpone.

It’s water tank season it seems…decided to do mine on my 30 year old Liverpool boat whose tank had never been painted after it had left the factory according to the previous owner. Cover came off easily and there’s actually more room than I thought to move around inside. However, I was very surprised as to the condition given the age. The only major rust was on the sides where I’d had some waterline overplating and anodes done, and the heat had caused the coating to bubble and fail. A few spots here and there on the bottom and the underside of the hatch was pretty bad but that’s it. The top and bulkhead were absolutely perfect still! It looks like it was done originally with some sort of epoxy which has definitely helped. A snooty shiny boater nearby saw me doing the tank and commented ‘I’d be surprised if they actually painted the tanks on Liverpools’ which did make me laugh at his ignorance… I’m taking it back to bare steel (almost done with that!) and painting with Acothane DW, should be good until the next anode change. So to anyone thinking of doing it, it may not be as bad as you think!

Common for shiny boaters to come through Brentford Thames Lock and moor up overnight on the first mooring they find...which is clearly signposted for the water point and pumpout. Going through the bridge 500m ahead there's always plenty of mooring, maybe they've been scared off by everyone saying that London is always full of boats on every inch of towpath? Went through in July for a late morning lock out of Brentford and wanting to fill up with water on the way, found an immaculate tug style nb moored on there. Carefully came alongside and trotted across their front deck to tie up only for a rather posh and angry man to stick his head out from the front doors and tell me off for waking him up, then gave me an earful for leaving footprints on the deck. I told him that this is what happens if you moor on a water point, and there's plenty of mooring slightly ahead. Much more indignant shouting followed, I chose to ignore him whilst filling up, then sped away with plenty of power when I was done...

Yep...albeit with an 8 month lead time at the moment! You can't get it to match your current engine without getting a cancelled order engine and having someone else do it. Fully aware that a Beta/Canaline/Nanni etc is a nice, reliable, sensible option which would add value to the boat but I'm putting the feelers out for something a little more interesting. Looked at this option and I've got space for a 4107/4108 but one of the bearers needs a chunk taken out of it - the current engine has a massive air cleaner on top so the deck appears to have been built higher than similar Liverpool boats of this era. In an ideal - albeit boring - world, I'd have a 2000ah lifepo4 bank shared between house and propulsion, a 15kw motor and a 15kva capsule generator. Silent recharging in winter (cc'er with no shore power), quiet cruising all year round and the range boosted by solar in summer. Perfect for cc'ing but few advantages for your average non liveaboard who goes on long summer cruises, moving every day and the boat sits on shore power all winter.

Yep, there’s a Chinese clone of the BD35 which appears to be pretty good. No idea what the bare compressor and control box costs on its own though.