Big COL

Yamanx Will look forward to it.

Daniel As you look at your picture the belt should be running anti clockwise. Top of the belt towards the alternator. If you imagine it running the other way you can see how it could undo if something was to catch on one of the flaps. I have just read what I posted earlier and it was wrong. I shall have to go and have a lie down, its all getting to much.

Whoops. Chill out Phil and welcome to the forum, its only friendly banter. Sorry if you felt insulted, but theres a good bunch on this forum. Stick with it.

John Did some googling on DC ammeters and the Hall effect, very interesting. Also read about what you're describing as induction ammeters,the consensus of opinion is that they get as close to being a measuring instrument as does a chocolate tea pot. Colin

Daniel. The covered part of the link moves towards the pulley with the flap trailing.If you have the flap leading and it catches on something it will pull the belt undone. Hope this makes sense

Yes it is possible to embed a virus in a pfd file and it has been done, however, unless it's changed recently, the reader does not run any code, only the full Acrobat package does. Joy

Hi David, Maffi. Not being totally computer literate, this is over my head but my (she who must be obeyed) other half, has had a lifetime in IT and runs her own IT business so I assume she must know something as its totally lost on me probably an age thing. Hi Joy here, The point of pdf files is that I can produce a document and know if I send it to you, you will see it exactly as I do, regardless of any differences in our systems. A text file is fine for text and if you're not concerned how it's formatted, but if your understanding of what I've written depends in any way on formatting then the fact that you may see it completely differently to what I intended, depending on what program you use to read it, or what fonts you have installed on your PC, may make it impossible to understand. The same applies in a Word document, and can actually be worse, as Word encourages you to use different fonts and formatting, which can make a document less easy to read and understand if you don't have the required font or use a different Word version. Yes, PDFs can take ages to download but this is nothing to do with them being PDF files. It is due to the size and number of images in the document, which applies to any format that can include images. There comes a time in all software development that it becomes impossible to continue supporting old formats without sacrificing the ability to improve or even keep the software compatible with evolving operating systems etc. In the case of PDF files Adobe supply the reader for free and make it extremely easy to download and install. Another consideration, and a major reason why many people supply PDF files instead of word documents is spreading of viruses, Word documents can spread viruses as Word has the ability to run the virus code within the document. The PDF reader has no such ability and therefore it's much safer to download and open a PDf file than a Word document.

I didn't realise you could get DC clamp on ammeters, how do they work on DC,I understand the principle how AC amprobes work, and these will not work on DC so how do they differ, I have this need to know.

Yamanx Pleased to see you got the boat home. How did the gearbox perform, and did the coupling hold up ok.

Maffi Buy as you well know you usualy get what you paid for.

With batteries connected in parallel the battery with the higher voltage will become the lead battery until it becomes equalised with the next highest voltage and so on until all batteries are equal. Basic electricity, ohms law voltage = pressure.

John What do you mean by a hand held clamp DC ammeter it must need wiring into the circuit on DC, amprobes only work on AC.

I don't really know, they are identical in size physically and I had always assumed they were electrically.As until now I have never had reason to remove them from the battery box, but asking this you have set me thinking, I have to admit I have sometimes wondered why there were two of one colour and two of another, but as they say if its not broke don't fix it. I took delivery of the hull as a sail away and they were already installed. I am on the boat again tomorrow and I will extract one of the yellow ones and check its output, the red ones I know are 125 amp hour.

I had considered that, but the faulty two have red cases, and the other two have yellow cases. I gave the good ones a fair test 25seconds each the resistor on the tester was glowing red hot and the needle on the meter did not flinch so I am happy with these at the moment.

Your quite right John he was called Socratrees

Update on the battery chain. Checked all four batteries with high resistance tester, the two that have needed constant topping up are as flat as a witches t--t, and are short of water again after only a week on a trickle charge, replacements under guarantee required, which will be interesting as they are elecosol batteries and after the comments on this forum about customer care that this company offers I am holding my breath. Contacting them by telephone only gets a recording for you to leave a message, and I have had no response from an e-mail that I sent on Monday. Will update you all on the outcome.