dmr

They were designed to be dropped but has poor maintenance compromised this????? There are a few that do drop very quickly, though possibly not quickly enough to do any damage? There are also one or two that are so stiff they Have to be wound down. The 18 turn info is gratefully received, I always find Hatton very hard work. Last year we did Hatton and Lapworh in a single day and I had to drink loads of beer to recover. ..........Dave

Cruising the BCN and weedhatch visits do go together, though some locals appear very skilled in clearing the prop from the bank with a boathook or other implement. I reckon on one or two foulings per day, though others appear to suffer more. We are moderately deep (about 32 inches) and so I do wonder if a bigger slower prop is actually less prone to fouling??? I remember the Walsall was very difficult in parts, the mainline is mostly quite deep and you can really get a move on. Maybe if you do it right after the BCN challenge all those boats will have dredged a channel and taken out a fair it of rubbish! I expect a BCN expert will post in a moment in great detail. ..........Dave

You're half right, anywhere with a tube station probably is London (except for underground stations in Liverpool of course), but no way is Rugby part of Birmingham. Birmingham and the Black Country have their own language and culture and they're only a few miles apart, Rugby is a foreign country. .............Dave

When we are trading we have Buddhist prayer flags on the roof and fly a black country flag from the front, is that ok??? There used to be a lovely old dutch barge style widebeam on the K&A and it always flew a pirate flag. It looked like it might be a pirate boat and I thought it was great. Not sure that it works with a modern shiny "clonecrafr" style narrowboat though. ..............Dave

Use a multimeter to check continuity between the pins and the brushes, do this in both directions and this will reveal any hidden diodes. ..........Dave

If you follow the link in post 32 the photo shows what looks like 3 pins coming out of the bottom of the regulator down into the brush box. I reckon one of these is the one to solder the wire to. Its not 20 amps, its only the field or rotor current so about 4 amps, so any light multistrand wire will be fine. A slightly naughty approach would be to talk to Adverc who can provide instructions and photos detailing how to modify most common alternators. ...............Dave

Yesterday I was reading about soldering Ball Grid Arrays, so I guess a brush box presents very little challenge to an electronics man! ...........Dave

I have heard of this but not tried it, have you done it and does it work? If you get the right yeast does it turn the poo into beer? (or turn the wee back into beer?) ..............Dave

Right, I'll say it again (I might be wrong....but) those pins coming out of the bottom of the regulator look like the best place to fix the wire. Strip the insulation from some suitable stranded cable, form a little hook by bending the bared cable round a very small screwdriver or similar, tin with solder, feed hook round the required pin and maintain very gentle pressure, approach from opposite side with fine tipped iron. ...................Dave

Is it not normal practice to replace the whole lot when the brushes wear out? If this is the case then keeping a spare will not be a waste, and in an emergency (and it always is) I suspect its much quicker to replace the whole unit rather than to replace individual brushes. Assuming those are the regulator pins visible in the picture then a good electronics man should be able to solder onto them (ignore previous comments about big irons in this case). One brush might go onto the case but replacing the rivet with a nut and bolt should sort that???? ...............Dave

Frozen North? I expect a few real Northerners will be a touch offended that you include Birmingham in their territory. .............Dave.

As Tony says, a lot of heat is the way to solder, this means both a high temperature and a big iron with a bit of thermal mass. A "gun" style iron will be more user friendly than Tonys "on the gas stove" approach which is really for experts only. The most common soldering mistake is to believe that a small iron will be safer. Its a good skill to acquire even if you feel the brush job is beyond you. Its rather depressing that an auto electrician would not do this, but it does appear that most "mechanics" are now really fitters who can replace components but can not fix them. I recently asked various garages if they could replace the bearings in an alternator for me, all said no, one gave a look of horror and said "you mean something that's actually inside the alternator" !!! You should keep a spare set of brushes so buy a spare set and get then delivered to Mr Bizzard then you won't be without the alternator.. .............Dave

If you don't want an Epping type range (or the boatman) then the pipsqeak (from the Hobbit people) would be perfect. Sadly it looks like they are not making them at present but you might just find a second hand if you are lucky. ...............Dave

We have cruised quite a bit with a single handed friend and he is a little faster than us, at least on narrow locks. We have a heavy 70 foot boat which needs to be carefully positioned in the lock with the front right up to the gate. His shorter and lighter boat gives him the option to enter the lock faster and get off the boat before its fully stopped. Assuming the OP gets a boat of about 50 foot or less he should be fine. He should also not be able to cause a significant hold-up because if the boat behind feels he is going too slowly through the locks they can simply offer to help. ...............Dave

Its very quiet now but by spring there should be a few boats moving, though this does depend on what you mean by spring. Things usually hot up at Easter. If you just hang around at a lock for an hour its very likely another boat will turn up (hopefully not a fat one!) K&A boaters are, in my experience, amongst the friendliest on the system and will always share locks. If going down the flight its probably best to moor in Devizes the night before (or a couple of nights before) and chat to the other boats to see if somebody wants to share. ..............Dave

After a long search for the perfect stove I concluded that you can have functionality or beauty, but not both at the same time. If you want a stove like that then maybe an occasional puff of smoke is a price worth paying. ...............Dave

I think it was somewhere near Hilperton, maybe it was huge and craned in at Hilperton and got stuck at the first bridge it came to ????? ...........Dave

If the limit is the footbridge at Hungerford then its "flat" so a widebeam will be no more difficult than a narrow. Can't think of any tight arched bridges except for the dreaded High bridge. BillS is absolutely right about this. I suggest the Op goes and has a look and ideally tries to get a lift on another boat to experience approaching it from the water. Is the one just below the Cunning man a bit tight????? If it is possible then across the K&A and down the Thames is a wonderful journey. .............Dave

I think that air draught is the only possible problem but the figure is easy to find. I think its the foot bridge at Hungerford that's the limit. I suspect you are just ok but do check. I assume you are going north via the sea, as via Birmingham will be very difficult indeed. ...............Dave

You could try using a "green" rather than a blue. A few people even manage with nothing at all, especially in the winter, then the money saved can be put towards pumping out a bit more often ...........Dave

There's plenty of room to get an angled pipe down the dump through. Make yourself something out of thin copper pipe, if you bend the last inch or two through 90 degrees you can feed this down the bog and give the tank a good jet wash. The internal baffles will be a limitation but a good water flow from below the bog to the suction pipe should do the job, especially if you rock the boat at the same time. A few boatyards, especially those with a hire fleet, will have such a device if you don't want to make one. Do take care, with a good water tap and a small bore copper pipe you can make quite a potent jet and so there is potential for messy accidents. I have a valve on mine so I can turn it off rather than depending on an assistant outside the boat. .............Dave

Its a right mess at the moment and you can't book it for July. Part of the consultation (which itself is a bit of a botch as most people were not informed about t) i to decide if booking should be on-line. Because this MIGHT happen CaRT have suspended the old paper bookings. !!! Best you do is no submit a paper booking which are currently stacked up but not getting processed, ..............Dave

Phils Raddle does have a slight pinkness to it. I believe Rylards also do a raddle red but that is more red/brown, I have only used Phils But whilst on this subject, I use Bondaprimer as my favourite "red oxide" primer. Now this is a Zinc based primer but like many modern zinc primers is red rather than Grey. I believe this is because us slightly older generation remember using real "red lead oxide" primers and remember how good they were, so manufacturers add red pigment to grey primers to make us happy? .............Dave

I used to be quite serious about equalisation, measuring lots of stuff and writing it all down, but I have got very laid back recently. It feels to me like you can leave it quite a while, get a fair bit of sulphation, and still fix it with a good equalisation. (talking Trojans here, not sure this applies to the cheapo leisures). in the summer we cruise most days so these is no problem. In the winter I sometimes think "the batteries aren't doing very well", maybe down to 50% or less by 5pm (engine time). so then I do a bit of equalising. Maybe every 4 to 6 weeks, maybe a bit less often. Sometimes if we are moving I will do a "mini equalisation" for a couple of hours before shutting the engine off. I rarely bother with the hydrometer. I did push it a bit too far last winter and needed a bit of 16v or so to sort it out (did use the hydrometer for that). I also don't do the "8 hour charge" once a week, just 2.5 to 3 hours almost every day. We do have "washing machine days" when we maybe get 5 or 6 hours of engine running. I do tend to charge at 15v in winter, and drop this down to maybe 14.7 in summer (in addition to any automatic temperature compensation). .................Dave