dmr

My instinct is that stolen boats are going to be used as semi static liveaboards rather than leisure or CCing boats,so if I am right and if we know the mooring from where it was taken and the sighting location we can at least get the direction of travel. Its also possible that it was sold on to an unsuspecting buyer and possibly re-registerred. Have you contacted the EA? as they run a lot of waterways, though don't do regular sightings like CRT do.

yes, but it is a distinctive boat so should be easy to spot. As there are no recent sitings it likely has a new name and number, or most likely no name or number. I wonder if CRT would release the location of all the "no number displayed" boats that are in the enforcement process? Or it might be very well hidden somewhere.

We have a Stanadyne pump so a DIY overhaul is not really possible and Stanadyne agents charge big money. I have just acquired a spare pump (not suitable for our engine) so will have a look inside to see if I can learn how to work on them. I did loads of www research when we had our problem, including reading a couple of heavy technical papers. I also concluded that additives were just about the most likely cause, but was not brave enough to say that here as the evidence was (and probably still is) very tenuous. An additive reacting with the copper fuel lines was a possibility.

We've had two cases of diesel sticking up the injection system over the last 16 years of boating, the most recent one was about 14 years ago and I think it was a very early case of sticky diesel, though did have "marmalade" type gunge on top of the injectors which is not mentioned in the recent reports. The key factor in both of my problems is the the "contamination" went right through the filters leaving no trace so must be disolved in the diesel, then something about temperature or pressure in the injection system casuses it to come out of solution. The diesel shop who overhauled the pump said, "seen it before but only very rarely, and all the really bad stuff always goes right through the fikters".

Not a magnet, the base is the Makita battery, a mag base would have been good but its nice hanging up hook compensates. I can still kneel down easily, its the getting back up thats difficult. Morrisons have their Brewdog on the bottom shelf (thats for Gillie, I split myself between cider and Vocation) and I kneel down to get it without a second thought.... but then I can't get up again. Its not easy to get "engine room" stlye rugs, the rug makers just don't see this as a big market, but anything with stripes sort of fits in with a back cabin theme.

So this is my new early Christmas present to myself. Ive got good at holding a torch in my mouth but find that it makes me dribble so decided to get a good worklight.. Don't need a stool, might be getting old but can still kneel on the engine room floor, but it is carpeted these days (or at least a couple of rugs)

You mean domestic water pump like a Jabsco......they really do not last long on a livaboard boat so get one in stock now, living on a boat without running water is not good. Common problems are leaking or not turning off etc, in this case, and if you have space, keep the old one for general pumping duties like if you need to empty the water tank for maintanance.

£240 does look to be the going rate for a decent 100amp alternator, we have a similar problem with our Beta 100amp. I actually got a full rebuild at Cox Automotive for quite a bit less but this is only fine if you can get the alternator to them and wait a few days, shipping is expensive. Maybe get a new one and get the old one rebuilt as a spare? The common Beta type 175amp alternator is now a bit cheaper than the 100amp but like you it would not be trivial to fit it.

If you are a full time liverbord (😀) then 9 years is probably about right for an alternator. Its most likely the brushes though I would have expected that to go from intermittent to total failure a bit quicker. Brush replaement is generally easy and within the skills of a DIYer. The slip rings might have gone too but a new set of brushes will often get a bit more life out of the alternator. A failing regulator is also possible and on many alternators this is part of the brush box so a new brush set fixes this too. A bad connection is another possibility, though less likely, check the big cable where it fixes to the alternator, if its not tight it can get quite hot leading to corrosion. If you don't fancy doing the brushes yourself then a call out for an engineer may well be £100 so a new alternator is quite tempting. Buy one in now anyway as I bet yours has not got long to go even with new brushes.

I think it is, but that is probably not what they intended it to mean 😀 On a good engine in a narrowboat 480 hours is just about the running in time 😀.

Interesting stuff, I note that the engine must continue to meet its emissions spec. for the entire life of that engine, which for a diesel is....... 480 hours.😀

That might be a bit harsh, I think one issue is that the boating world, in fact the whole country, is changing, and rules and regulations, and control from insurance companies, is becoming a bigger issue, as this thread might suggest. The old attitude of "thats not too good but will be ok" might still be valid, but what if the boat gets another survey in a years time from a new owner and the new surveyer says the boat does not meet requirement and the reputation of your surveyer is damaged, or even worse a new owner decides to try to take legal action, because sadly more and more people are thinking that way. If the bad bit is right at the bay and not on the cabin could it be cut right out and a new section welded in? neater than over plating?

In the spring I took all the ballast out of the back of the boat to derust and epoxy the top of the baseplate. Ballast was two layers of broken paving slabs with just over a tonne of scrap steel on top. I deleted the slabs as they are a water trap and put the steel back in directly on the baseplate (slightly raised on little rubber stick on feet.) The steel was of course derusted and painted 😀. To make up for the loss of the slabs I added 150kg of finest lead ingots as I could not quite afford gold. This will have made a small change to the centre of mass of the boat, which will likely be just a little lower. Do I need to pay somebody £3000 to re-assses the boat and issue the correct paperwork??? (😀)

I have very briefly looked at these, they are popular with DIY wind turbines as they are much more efficient at low wind speeds as they don't waste a whole load of power in the rotor. Without voltage control (expensive power electronics?) they would be ok for bulk charging but would have to just be shut off (relay or clutch) before the absorption phase? I would need to think about this a bit more, but I suspect loads like the fridge turning on and off would be difficult to handle while a conventional voltage regulated alternator just copes nicely. With a good system in an ideal world an over voltage disconnect should never happen, maybe I am worrying too much.

Good point about the rotor inductance but this will still result in no more output current than what was flowing immediately before the disconnect. The response time of the alternator controller is another possible factor in voltage pulse duration, and this is where your dedicated chip might just do better than the Zeus software based control loop. The Zeus has really good data logging but does not have near enough voltage resolution to measure any ripple. My lithium is now delayed till January so I will try to do a data log of battery voltage during charge with the Trojans (using other equipment with 24 bit resolution). My intuition is a lot of ripple but I think I am going to be wrong 😀