dmr

I believe I spent the first 6 months of my life in Icknield Port Road, but sadly I just can't remember that far back! ................Dave

The Icknield Port loop is a wonderful bit of canal history, it will be "redeveloped" soon so I really recommend that you use that as your method of turning the boat around. It looks like a scary backwater from the entrance but is perfectly navigable and many surprises await. .............Dave

Oh dear, it looks like everybody actually has the same job but with the buzz words arranged in a different order. ...........Dave

To celebrate the millenium they planted a whole forest of trees behind the Caan Hill flight but they chose a boggy field so they all died, CaRT are not good with Trees! ................Dave

Or possibly low cylinder wall temperature causing oil additives to deposit on the cylinder walls, or maybe a bit of this and a bit of ring tension, not sure if anybody fully understands it but it certainly happens. .................Dave

I would really like to see a "family tree" diagram of the CaRT management structure, with job titles and names etc. Does anybody have one??? I could do a FoI request but I won't as its just spending "our" money and will sooner or later prompt CaRT to appoint an FoI manager, and an FoI executive etc etc. ..........Dave

Boating is a huge part of what CaRT does, so surely the head of boating/business boating and enforcement is an important man who should be answering directly to Richard. How many layers of top management do CaRT need??? ...........Davei

Power audit (as above) is required. You also need an "ampmeter" to measure how much current your alternator is actually producing and so estimate how many amp-hours you are putting back into the batteries. It takes ages to fully charge the batteries so the common wisdom is to run the engine for maybe 2 hours to part charge the batteries, and then do a long run (8 hours) once per week. You could go for a nice cruise to do this! If you can't get enough charge into the batteries in 2 hours to meet your needs then you need to think about using less electricity/bigger alternator/more batteries etc. Most boaters find that lots of solar panels helps enormously. ............Dave

Trouble is, CaRT don't really maintain them as they should. There are a couple that will drop very quickly if you let them go, and one or two that are so stiff the won't drop all the way down. I usually let them go but if they appear to be going too quick grab the spindle with my hand and hope there are no sharp edges! ...........Dave

You are entitled to your political allegiances but please don't try to rewrite history. It was various speculative bankers, both in America, and here, who caused the economic crisis. Gordon Brown was just trying to rescue our economy and almost certainly succeeded as despite our banks been involved we did not suffer nearly as badly as many other countries. .............Dave

Shot blasting is a messy and unpleasant business and can involve a lot of preparation (masking up and covering up everything in the vicinity) and a big clean up afterwards. If a yard is organised and and well prepared than they can likely do it much cheaper so its worth shopping around. It may be that your boatyard makes hard work of it, or are just charging a premium because they are not too keen on doing it. About £1500 would be a good price. The epoxy itself may well cost almost £500. .............Dave

short answer you will be ok but only just. longer answer....how small is small? The size of the big pulley and pulley centres distance also influence wrap. Assuming the big pulley is not a huge "mtb" jobbie. and assuming you are using an "A" size belt (not a little "Z") then you will just about be ok. Do get a notched belt as suggested, carry a spare, and check tension (and look for signs of black dust) quite often. Approaching 100amps a double belt system would be needed, but finding a double pulley for the crankshaft might not be cheap or easy. ............Dave

Yes, but stuff like this is "non urgent routine maintenance" and competes with urgent routine maintenance, breakdowns, drinking beer in canalside pubs and generally cruising about and having a good time, so just never gets done. ...........Dave (cruising up north, drinking in fine northern pubs and catching up on essential maintenance)

Having re-read your post a bit more carefully I retract my disagreement,, you were spot on. "not ideal" and "past their sell by date" say it all. I would maybe have said "not ideal but acceptable if done correctly" ...............Dave

A "little distance" is relative, as it depends on what size of cable you use, distance can be as big as you want as long as you use suitably thick cables!. I suggest look at the current length of cable from battery to inverter and if your new distance is the same as that use cable a bit thicker, if its twice as far use cable more than twice as thick, but this is my instinct rather than the result of any calculation. Checking specific gravity once in a while is a very good thing to do, and just looking into the cells more often is also good as a failing cell will sometimes use more water. Record keeping is a very good idea. Try to keep tabs on how many cycles each battery has done and when it gets close to the specification (if there is one, but its probably about 300) then start thinking about replacing the battery. In general noticing a significant fall in capacity is the sign that things are not well and although this might be slightly masked by mixing old and new batteries, with four batteries you should still notice if things are going wrong. Spotting a single failing battery is not trivial which is probably why many people say don't mix old and new. I think its better just to replace batteries when their capacity drops off, I think those forum members who talk about batteries down to a small fraction of their original capacity are living dangerously. If you want to do it really proper then a Smartguage AND an amp hour counter will do it! ..................Dave ................Dave

I am going to disagree (a bit) with Nick here, which don't happen often. As long as your current setup is working ok then adding extra batteries at a little distance is acceptable, its a sort of semi-split bank which (despite forum wisdom) is ok. Use cable of at least the same thickness as the feed to your current batteries. There are just two things to be aware of........ 1 if you replace all batteries at the same time then its possible that the two "distant" ones might age more slowly than the "near" ones so you may need to replace them at different times, or replace the whole bank before some are fully worn out. 2 If you add new batteries to your current bank, or replace only part of the bank (as above) then you really must keep a good eye on battery condition. The big danger with this system is that you let two batteries get dangerously old and don't notice because the newer ones are "masking" the weakness of the bad ones., Old age batteries can potentially fail dangerously, even more so when connected to new ones. I hope I am correct because I have done something a bit similar myself, One of my Trojans failed so I have got four new ones and kept two of the old ones. Having 6 Trojans has made life a lot easier, no longer need to run the engine every day. ..............Dave

If your batteries are part discharged, and if you start the engine and stick some revs on, then I would initially hope to see more than 90amps, though probably not the full rated output, This will then fall over the next few minutes as the alternator gets hot. ..............Dave,

But surely a big multinational company has purchased the patents to hush up this revolutionary invention. Luckily the original poster (on some other forum) had recently inherited various secret notebooks from a deceased uncle who used to work for the secret service investigating soviet technology. You may change some of the details but the basic story always applies in these cases! ...........Dave

As I am actually moored right above the aqueduct right now thought I would go and have a look from the towpath side. There is a big CaRT "No Public Access" sign which is rather sad as this is a proper bit of canal history (thought CaRT liked to keep people and history connected!). Its quite easy to get down though. The Arch is in very good condition and there is a stone ledge that looks very much like the original towpath, so here the water level is still at its original level though the bottom must have come up quite a bit as the water is only about a foot deep. Might go and look again tomorrow after the rain! The Railway Hotel in Parbold is a friendly proper workingmans (and womans) pub, whilst most of the canalside pubs are eateries! ............Dave

Thank you, I was looking at that aqueduct arch only yesterday whilst walking the dog but did not realise it was the navigation. I did wonder why a small river justified such a huge stone arch! ............Dave

I did realise that, but had to find a humorous link to the curry powder concept (plus I'd had a few pints). Its interesting that we have to use distilled water to top up our batteries, and Trojan publish a list of impurities, the destructive effect they have, and the very small concentrations needed to cause that damage, yet the www is full of stories about putting aspirin and all sorts of other stuff into batteries to revive them. Still I really hope this idea works, When I was younger electricity, electronics and home computing was really exciting stuff, with a touch of magic and anarchy, but now everything is so regulated, sensible and boring, so I'm with Keble on this (not heard of disruptive technology before). I've just got a new set of Trojans so not going to try it on mine just yet! ............Dave

Isn't alum something to do with Garlic? Why not just get some vindaloo curry paste and put that in, it might turn old lead acid batteries into really high powered batteries! ...........Dave

The labour charge of a skilled engine re builder will be quite high, it takes a lot of hours to do a proper job. The cost of spare parts is also high for many modern engines. Unless you plan to do a lot of the work yourself then a new engine may work out cheaper. I have heard that Beta offer a service where you tell them what engine you have and they supply a Beta with mounts that should line up with the existing engine bed. This should save a lot of effort, though sorting out pipes (including exhaust) and wires can still be quite a job. ..............Dave,

Conventional wisdom is that a conventional greased stuffing box needs maintenance, greasing after every cruise, with refill of the greaser as required, adjusting sometimes, and repacking once in a while. Adjusting and repacking are much less frequent if the stuffing box is isolated from engine movement (or engine is rigidly mounted). Lack of maintenance will lead to a slowly increasing leak that a sensibly owner will notice. Only long term neglect will cause a sinking. A small amount of grease is dumped into the canal. The modern seal type arrangement is better for the environment as no grease is lost to the canal, and only occasional maintenance (seal lubrication) is required. The downside is that some people say there is a very small chance of a sudden failure that could lead to a lot of water getting into the boat, possibly resulting in a sinking. ..............Dave

Its the shape (and narrowness) that makes it a narrowboat, I suppose it should look at least a little bit like the shape of a traditional working boat. Most are steel, old ones are iron, very old ones are wood, and a very very small number are glass fibre. and a few in aluminium and one in stainless. steel. I also would say the boat in your picture is a cruiser, or even a narrrow canal cruiser???, Some cruisers are actually steel, and a few narrowboats are centre-cockpit so are almost a cruiser. People, and marketing people in particular, will use whatever name suits them best and it changes from year to year. I have noticed of late that anything with port-holes is now called a tug by some brokers! ..............Dave