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nick.pritchard

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Everything posted by nick.pritchard

  1. Interesting thought! I usually get told off by ‘er indoors for having such thoughts though. I suppose the zealots in the BSS may find a reason for a fail which stands the test in their own eyes but I honestly don’t know! That said I’ll try to remember to have a look at my BSS training material. I suppose if someone generously filled your waste tank with fuel then the thought of a diesel enema…….. no, stop the visualisation!
  2. It is a ‘fail’ not to have the fuel type marked up! ’Check’ 2.1.2R “Is the fuel in use correctly and clearly marked on, or adjacent to, the fuel filling point“
  3. Could be, i don’t actually know when Vetus stopped using the K4. Try asking Vetus or even Diamond Diesels who may be able to help if you give them the engine serial which is stamped on the block around where the fuel enters the injector pump.
  4. Can’t recall tbh, 1990 or 91 possibly - look on the casting under the injector pump. I’m pretty sure Vetus would have changed build too.it’s cast into the block there. There may be a square plate which carries the manual stop lever if fitted and it’s below that.
  5. Alan, I commented on this a week or so ago. I had one owner who emailed me saying he wouldn’t use me because ‘all I want is a superficial examination of 2hours and a certificate at the end.‘ and ‘last examiner, all I had to do was send him a photo of the corrected item and I received my certificate in the post’. I’ve sent his communications to the BSS! Unfortunately BSS examiners are being seen as one genetic mutation removed from Inland Revenue or VAT inspectors! It’s unfortunate that the new level of checks that have to be worked through should take at least 4 hours and well over an hour to enter to the database. Don’t forget the travel costs and time for that too or owners expecting a free retest. I’ve spent nearly £9,000 to get the registration and that slowly has to be recouped too. I am struggling to get work offering below £200 per examination - which is below the recommended level and to be honest by the time the cost of the BSS certificate, £60, is knocked off that you have to ask if it’s worth it! No business is going to survive long term by the time fuel prices and other overheads such as insurance and annual BSS registration fees (around £650 pa), not forgetting income tax, are taken into account . The temptation for some examiners will be to shorten exams and hope the examination isn’t audited by the BSS & CRT. Perhaps I’m fortunate that I’m trying to build the business while I still have a main income from elsewhere.
  6. Hi Simon, nice to hear from you. Originally I bought hoses from motor factors, they were RH919 & RH1426 made by Quinton Hazell (off the top of my head! So I may be wrong! I can’t remember 5 minutes ago but 25 years is a cinch!) I had my own thermostat housings cast which only required a 90 degree hose but I also had silicon hoses made in South Wales which fitted the standard Mitsubishi stat housing. That may be mixed up actually, it may have been the QH which fitted the Mitsubishi housing.
  7. nick.pritchard@boatserve.co.uk if anyone wants any info on the engines I’ll dredge my memory and try to help
  8. The Boatserve dipstick was taken from a Ford Sierra with the metal section showing the markings removed and a piece of 1/8th nylon fitted with a flat filed on it. the diameter was reduced to wind it into the flexible section. Sorry, I’ve only just come back to ‘canals’ to do BSS exams and resurrect Boatserve after many years in the Oil &Gas industry and saw this by chance. I’d love to hear from owners of any Boatserve FMK engines. FMK stood for Floyd Mitsubishi K series after my dog!
  9. I was told that one of the major reasons the BSS was created was due to a fatality or fatalities aboard a hire boat caused by carbon monoxide. CO can accumulate in a boat not just from appliances within the boat but from neighbouring boats! (CO poisoning is the fifth top cause of boating fatalities in the US) However, to quote the examiner’s training: “ The remit of the BSS is only related to the condition, equipment and use of boats” “The BSS must identify, monitor and develop the minimum safety legal requirements” ”To assist owners to identify and control the risks for which they have responsibility including Carbon monoxide poisoning and electrocution” ”Since 2005 the BSS has adopted a risk based approach and the requirements are driven by incident data” Theres a lot on the BSS site www.boatsafetyscheme.org/stay-safe-advice page
  10. Depends if you are on a river with weirs alongside locks?
  11. Surely if a marina doesn’t require a BSS or insurance and a fire were to break out, I’ve seen the results, then they are being negligent with regard to the ongoing safety of other boats and anybody living aboard in the proximity? They would surely be opening themselves up to litigation in the event of fire or explosion?
  12. Interesting! So legally a marina’s waters must be private and not bound by the rules applying to the canal hence no need for a boat licence or the BSS needed to acquire one?
  13. Spot on MtB. I was being a little conservative on the timings to be honest. A BSS examiner will never get wealthy. I regularly spent 5 or 6 hours examining practice boats before the final examination to become an examiner, that wasn’t because I was a trainee but because of the time required to do the job properly. Yes you can get simple boats without many systems but that isn’t the way the market is going. I’ve heard of guys spending an hour at the boat and asking £100 or so, you take the cost of the certificate off that and it’s not surprising they only want to spend an hour on the boat! On the other hand examining boats for the BSS can generate work for a boatyard to correct faults. The system seems to be tightening up which is why so many ‘old hands’ are giving up, they need to spend time and money being trained on the new checks and the they are finding their existing customers don’t want to pay increased fees.
  14. BSS fees do seem to be a contentious issue! Newly qualified examiners will have studied an extended set of checks which are to be applied to boats. It will have cost nearly £10,000 pounds to get to the point of carrying out their first examination for a customer including the training materials, attended courses which require 5 or 6 nights hotel or other lodgings. Public liability and Indemnity insurances add several hundred to the annual cost of maintaining registration. An examination can easily take four hours or more to carry out on site plus administration time entering the results onto the BSS web site which costs the examiner a further £60 which has to be added to costs. if someone is doing BSS examinations for £170 including the registration of the pass while spending a total of perhaps 4 hours needed to carry out a full exam correctly, maybe an hour to write up the reports plus perhaps an hour (or two) making a return trip plus fuel costs then perhaps they feel that they are busy fools and are quite right to feel it is not a viable operation.
  15. Boaters like Captain Jacks was one of the reasons I got out of the ‘leisure industry’ - expect you to go out on a Sunday morning, lug a battery down the towpath to get the engine started then expect you to accept their profound thanks, a cup of tea and a slice of fruit cake. 1 it isn’t my leisure time 2 I can’t afford a boat
  16. As a matter of interest though I know it’s an old advert, I built the boat for my parents around 1988 in Coventry. It was a forerunner of Phoenix Narrowboats in the basin there to whom I supplied the Boatserve Mitsubishi engines.
  17. Yes they did finish very shortly after but you’d have to cross my palm with a lot of silver to hear the story. They moved out of Coventry Canal Basin and took over the lease of Hillmorton DryDock with the financial backing of the wealthy guy they built City of Sheffield for. It all ended very badly for both parties financially. I was maybe three years post Boatserve and the owner of CofSheffield asked me to help out with Hillmorton as he’d been left high and dry (literally) when Phoenix went bust. He’d also apparently been persuaded to buy a brassware company call Fenda Products too by one of the guys at Phoenix. I spent 12 months running the machine shop making brass curtain rails, brass headlamps and horns to try and make the venture viable for sale so he could recoup some of his money. I don’t know what the outcome was in the end! Phoenix boats were originally Gary Gorton/ Johnny Wilson builds as was my father’s boat ‘Spectre’ but they were then just Johnny Wilson hulls after he and Gary split up. The first was called Artemis when Phoenix was run by an artist from the Coventry Canal Basin Trust. Then was ‘Monday’ for a chap I only recall as ‘Ben’ followed by Drimble for Chris Sealy which had a Boatserve finished Mitsubishi 4DR5 engine (about 2.5 litre) originally marinised by Herald Marine and recovered by Mitsubishi when they went bust! There were a couple of other boats fitted out by Phoenix, one for John and Pam Styles, it was John who used to do the PA systems at IWA Nationals at the time. I met the owner of another who I believe bought it second hand while standing on the deck of a ship in the Gulf of Mexico who started talking about his canal boat and praising the fit out and engine! He near enough fell overboard when I told him I’d built the engine! As a side issue ( I know this has been a long post) I’ve been trying to track down my father’s boat which was sold in 1999 after he passed away. I now hear it went up to the Scottish Canal network in 2017 and is still called Spectre. If anyone knows where she is I’d love to speak with the owners!
  18. Hi and thanks for the reply! Hope all is well. I’m looking at forums and I saw one the other day which talked about Ownerships! A lot of water has flowed…. during furlough I was sent a Facebook page asking for help to rewire a vandalised boat engine, turns out it was a nephew living on the boat who’d done the damage! When I first looked it was a Boatserve engine stamped up as what was one of the first engines from 1987 which I think may have been fitted to my dad’s 57ft Gary Gorton boat we fitted out outside my workshop, ‘Spectre’. looking towards semi retirement and giving up the worldwide travel for work - I’m off to Mexico for August🙁- I have started training for the Boat Safety Scheme examiner role which I should complete in September. I’ve now looked at and serviced a further two of ‘my’ engines and made a new instrument panel for a third! I’ll be going live with a website as soon as I pass the BSS exam and hopefully helping owners out with Mitsubishi engines! Look out for www. boatserve.co.uk where I’m going to include stuff on my near lifelong involvement with canals starting with the reopening of the Stratford Canal in 1964. All the best to you and all those I knew who may read this! Nick (older, a little wiser and greyer!)
  19. I was involved on the periphery of Phoenix as the engine supplier. I recall Farleigh and Drimble, also Artemis which was the first. My Father’s boat Spectre was built at my workshop in Coventry at the same time. ( I’d love to find her!) I’m trying to stir the grey matter to recall a timeline for Phoenix! I’m just coming back into canal boats after years working on ships and oil tankers! Nick Pritchard nick.pritchard@boatserve.co.uk
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