Big COL
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Posts posted by Big COL
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Hi Guys
One question
On the diesel BMC engine is a vacuum system used to lower crankcase pressure? On the petrol version there was such a system and when the diaphragm started to wear the engine would produce lots of smoke. Intermittent hic-ups with the diaphragm caused the problem similar to what is being described.
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The non-return valve on some macerator toilets is only a rubber flap valve and is easily kept open by any debris. I found with ours the use of a lot of toilet paper helped to prevent flowbacks
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The nuts/bolts on the coupling joining my nb's propshaft to the gear box shaft keep on coming loose. I can tighten them all securely one day and they are loose again 2 days later.
Running with loose nuts/bolts doesnt seem to do any harm - they must have been loose for a year or two before the problem was noticed.
Any suggestions on a cause or a cure greatfully received.
Thanks.
If this a regular occurrence then the problem could be something other than the nuts themselves. I would check any uj joints / bearings after the gear box for any signs of wear, and more importantly check the alignment of the drive shaft to the engine /gear box
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Why a router? You can cut either of those joints with a saw!
Richard
I was only following on from the o/p suggesting the use of a router. I still cannot see a difference in strength between a scarfe and a half lap joint. I thought a scarfe joint was like an interlocking half w so the joint can't be pulled apart.
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Not being a wood butcher, If you can't weld,braze,solder,rivet, I am not interested and leave all the woodwork to those that can. However I do understand joints can someone explain why it has to be a stepped scarfe joint and not a half lap joint? the latter being able to be done with a router.
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The OP has not posted his air draft yet, nor has he expressed any intention of traversing the Middle Level. I only just squeezed under the bridges at Upwell and Nordelph on a small narrowboat, but of course this may not be relevant.
Mac
Just had a quick look through the middle level link all the locks are wide enough, air draft looks ok. This is the main link for traffic off the ouse to reach the canal system, only to do the complete trip you need to be narrow beam up the Northampton arm.
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Thanks Brian & Matt, useful info gained from that, have now checked out lock widths, air draft and draft, oh and bought a map. All I need now is a bit of local knowledge with regard to the actual width of the tributaries of the River Great Ouse, no point us cruising down the Lark or Wissey and finding we cannot pass somebody coming the opposite way, our beam is 12 feet. I have also checked out winding holes with regard to our 40 foot length.
Phil
You should be able to get through the middle levels and on to the Nene
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Looking at the prices that are being quoted Billing Marina is very cheap considering it's an 11month residential with water and electric on all pontoons.
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Get a cruiser with an outdrive. No more getting wet to clear/change the props
Outboards are king, Tilt and clean, Shhhimples
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we have a narrow boat which is 8 months old ( from new ) now the time has come to patch up the scuffs on the paint work, spoke with the boat builder and he told me the make and colour of the paint, i sanded down, undercoated, let dry and apllied top coat, the colour was a lot lighter, i checked numbers on tin, rang builder and he says i have the right colour and to go back to paint manufacturer, the boat is not 12 months old yet so would it be reasonable to ask the builder to sort out the problem? Has anybody had same problem?
regards
After 8 months you will find it difficult to get an exact match. Even if you had some leftover from the original paint job, I would think after this amount of time you would still see a difference. Paint exposed to sunlight the colour pigment will deteriorate at a different rate than paint not exposed to sunlight, ie paint that is still in the tin.
There will be a very slight variation in tins of new paint that have been produced from different batches but usually not enough for the eye to see.
This is why most boat hulls are black up to the gunnel as black seems to blend in better to the eye although the difference is still there.
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Why not fit an overflow to the bath ?
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Jan 2009 The general plan was to retire, cruise for the summer and winter in Spain playing golf.
The beginning of the year of great expectations, the year that would bring early retirement, exodus from our business/home and on to our boat that I had spent two and a half years co-fitting to include every conceivable accessory available to make the boat a dream to live on.
Well three weeks into our first cruise down the Oxford to visit good friends Bones and Maffi my good lady drops the bombshell that she cannot do this (continuous cruising) where the boat dictates her life, whereby she is not able to visit friends for coffee, nip off for a game of golf, visit family (not helped by my son presenting us with our first grandchild a week before we set off). Well bombshell is mild, seeing half your retirement dream destroyed, especially when I had been in my element handling the boat every day, needs something special to keep you sane.
Our short term resolution was to find a residential marina to lie over and sort out just where we went from here (Divorce being an option) the compromise was to cruise for five weeks early season lie over at Billing for the summer and cruise five or six weeks end of season, moor the boat for the winter at Billing and bugger off to Spain for the winter.
Easy - well not quite. I now find I just cannot live on a static boat and it's driving me crazy, I need to be working the boat to achieve the full enjoyment from it, just sitting becalmed drove me crazy.
There is nearly a happy ending, situation at the moment is the boat has gone, we now live in a lakeside lodge with a huge deck over the water, I have a new boat (yoghurt pot) which I am told is a very nice boat (still sulking at loss of proper boat) the up side is I am now the manager of Billing Marina, working with boats is a real consolation.
Everything back on course until last night an e-mail from Spain the Co building our bolt hole has filed to go into receivership, this is Polaris World fronted in England by Jack Nicklaus and backed by one of the largest banks in Spain.
I will be pleased to see the end of 2009. 2010 bring it on nothing can faze me now.
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Why we have two big col posters on the forum I cannot comment. I am happy to share as my sig is with capital C&B
However regarding this post it would be a fair analogy that to leave a cat at home with 300 tins of cat food and a tin opener, and go off wherever just about sums this situation up.
If this boat has already been down then the damage is done rather than keep refloating it leave it on the bottom until the owner is back home and can raise it and attend to whatever the problem is.
Big Col (original)
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Quite sure most of the other comments are valid, but what seems to come out of the frequent discussions on the matter here and other places are that they are rather prone to fowling and when they do, are difficult to clear..
I think that over many decades of experimentation a flat rudder has never really been bettered.
You could say the outboard is the ultimate in steerage with the thrust following the degree of turn. This is not the case, at low revs on a boat with an outboard, the boat is virtually uncontrollable unless fitted with an added extra in the form of a rudder extension
A rudder extension being a flat rudder added after the propeller, turning with and at the same angle as the propeller. It's difficult to see any logical reason why this arrangement should make any difference but it does, especially at low revs
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I finally got the matching thermocouple and new flame failure valve fitted and fired up the stove for a test....
I lit it apparently successfully using the manual's method of 50ccs of meths, and all seemed well.. until....
I set it to "high" to see how high it went and have to admit scared myself quite a lot....
The whole inner container got up to bright red and there was a sort of blowbacking whoomphing noise which, quite honestly scared me a lot. I had visions of burning diesel being blown out of the stove. Fortunately just before the peak I switched the fuel supply off, flicked the rotary control down to fully clockwise (off) and flicked the little lever to the up position, but I had the kids moving valuables, cushions and inflammables away from the lounge area and fire extinguishers at the ready. After a few mins the flames died down and all seemed to be returning to normal, so switched the main valve back on, the valve on the end to "down", the rotary control to "low" and it seemed to run normally. Great relief...
However, I didn't try a repeat of the high position again - could it be that the fuel level has not been set correctly and is too high at "max" ? I really don't want it to be possible for the fire to burn that high or hot again - it was really very scary.... and what was causing this quite violent whoomping, whooshing noise ?
It almost sounded like the fire was blowing itself out, then fuel vapours filling the chamber and chimney, igniting with a "bang" and blowing themselves out again... about once a second...
I will phone Lockgate when they re-open but wondered if anyone here knew the reason / problem...
Thanks,
Nick
Hi Nick
Oil stoves used on boats are basically domestic stoves.
With the restrictions for use on a boat not many meet the manufacturers fitting specifications, low air draft up the chimney being the most common The metering valves are the same domestic valves which if turned up too high will flood the burner pot. Each of these valves will react slightly differently when fitted on boats, air draft again being the variant
I always suggest to users that they turn the valves up bit by bit until they begin to flood and give the symptoms that you have experienced, this will give you a max reading on your valve that you should never exceed.
With the banging and popping, you are exactly right. What is happening is the oil is vaporising in the wrong place,and then igniting also in the wrong place i.e. high in the burner pot and the chimney. This happens because when you turn the valve up too high the extra fuel actually cools the burner pot just enough and prevents the fuel from vaporising in the correct place, which is about 10mm off the bottom of the burner pot.
Hope this helps. If you search the forum I have posted a couple of times before on this subject.
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It looks like the WS180 but I dont think thats the model, I have replaced the filter in the past but its probably due for renewal!
I've come across the problem with the car filters as you mention they fit but are usually fitted with a plastic "bolt" on the bottom rather than metal - so fail the BSS.
Hi Stuart
If it has waxed then you will certainly have to change the filter. Filters do not recover properly when the temp rises.
during 79/80/81 freeze we were changing filters around every two days on our vehicles and they still waxed up we would warm the diesel while we changed the filters.
A trick that we used to warm the diesel was to pipe the exhaust with a flexible pipe from the recovery vehicle into the diesel tank of the broken down vehicle and bubble hot exhaust fumes into the diesel. This worked quicker than lighting fires under vehicles and was a lot safer.
In those days we would also add petrol to the diesel tank at a ratio of 40/1 this helped to stop waxing but when you were trying to dewax in temps down to -12c it was hard going and it was mainly at night.
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You could try canalman on the forum. He used to sell rolls of rubber decking approx 25mm thick nice and soft to stand on all day.
It looked like a mat of rubber egg boxes, free draining I can't remember the exact size but from my aged memory they were something like 1mx3/4m, certainly better value than dri-deck.
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Dear all,
curious problem this one. My hot water pressure cycles between high and low when any of the hot taps are on. Hot water comes out of a calorifier with a 3 bar pressure relief valve, and is filled from a regular 2 bar shurflow pump through a non return valve (to stop hot water getting back into the cold feed) - all fairly standard stuff I would have thought (and it certainly never used to cycle like this).
There is no accumulator.
I'm at a loss as to what is causing it. Could it be air trapped in the (horizontal) calorifier from when we've run out of water that is sitting at the top and causing the calorifier to behave like an accumulator? Anyone else experienced this?
cheers
Mick
Hi Mick
If running out of water is the only change to the system then it's likely to be air trapped somewhere. Is the pressure relief valve higher on the calorifier than the hot water take off point? If so twist the knob on the relief valve and bleed the air out through it.
If not there should be a bleed point built into the calorifier.
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Who said you couldn't re-invent the wheel?
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I'm having problems with the joints on our central heating. They're currently 25mm engine hose flexed over an olive on the end of the 28mm pipe and jubilee clipped in place, however when we let the fire go out over the weekend everything contracted apart from the jubilee clips, which had opened up a tad and we had a significant leak... If we'd remembered to switch the water pump off before leaving there might not have been quite so much water in the cabin bilge but that's a different story.
I've been chasing weepy leaks since October but it got serious this weekend.
Where I've had to dismantle joints I've used liquid PTFE that might help but see this as a temporary fix; I need to re-think the jointing completely.
I've considered using 28mm pipe benders to form the bends but this would be awkward considering the pipe layout, and I'd like to use some form of flexible joint however don't know of an alternative and available solution. Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
On idea is something i've seen at the local DWP medical examination centre... Where the walls have distorted they've used some form of crenellated pipe that means the pipes don't need to be exactly in line, but I don't know whether they'd form a decent 30 degree bend although they look like they might. I don't know who might supply them either as I can't see them in the BES catalogue.
Hi
Not too difficult to overcome. Have two high pressure water pipes or steam pipes made with 1" or 1 1/4" BSP or 28mm male, female ends whichever is easiest. There are lots of hydraulic hose companies that will knock up a set of pipes in about 1/2 hour.
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Sorry to repeat myself, but.....
I'd give it ago with simple soapy water with a semi-stiff brush.
Why spend money if perhaps you may not need to do?
Martyn
Hi Martin
The reason being is with any mould you will need to sterilise and remove any mould spores.
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Ditto,
It's easy to drill the cast iron, (go slowly, lubricate with oil!), but the resulting bolt heads on the outside of the door are obviously not as pretty as if they are not there.
Hi Alan
Not meaning to seem picky just an observation which everyone can update the old data base (Brain) but this is an
Urban myth
If what you are drilling is cast iron then you drill it dry, the metal itself contains the lubricant (graphite) -
Hi
How about a Hurricane, 9kw burns gas oil without any problem.
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Hi Noff
Have you looked at Kuranda and kabola web sites? worth a look.
Travel power, how does it work?
in New to Boating?
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Follow the cables from the box with the illuminated switch. One set will go to the mains alternator, and the other set will probably go to a switch of some type, ie isolator/change over.which looks like its switched off.
Colin