jake_crew

The times refer to (effectively) the number of seconds it would a prescribed ball to sink a certain depth in a prescribed cylinder of the oil. The "heavier" to oil, the longer the time to sink. At work I am currently experimenting with aviation kerosene and stock diesel fuel. The AVKERO is much lighter than the diesel.

Disconnect the batteries. Probably best to completely disconnect any ELECTRONIC devises ie radios, TVs, inverters, alternators etc. ELECTRICAL stuff ie lights, water pump, etc will be OK just turned off. Don't forget to remove flammable stuff from nearby. Also foam insulation produces the most poisonous fumes when burnt.

Can anyone tell me more about the Harrison boating family ?.

Mrs Wonderful uses the Wrights bread mixes from the supermarket 500g bags (funnily enough looks like a small brown flour bag). 75p a bag, a number of varieties, just add water and a little elbow grease. Bobs your mothers brother.

No indeed it'll be the "Animal Rights" people. What about the rights of all the wild animals they kill I say.

The quietening additive previously mentioned is a bag or 2 of sugar in the fuel tank. Invisible, undetectable and deadly . I have used this a number of times to "quieten" a generator which was too close. (When camping at festivals I should add - not on the cut).

Global warming, nuclear Winter, water and fuel running out etc. The only thing that will suffer is MAN. We've had a good run for the last 100 000 years. The rest of the world will blink and carry on as normal.

Creosote (like Cellulose paint) is still available from the trade outlets. In this case that would be your local agricultural suppliers. If you're near Herts, that would be Shepherds of Hertingfordbury. 5 litre barrels ~ £25. As always at these places, dress appropriately, and make sure you sound like you know what your talking about.

Caution carpet and underlay may not be fire-proof ! A superbly effective sound deadening system used in the aircraft industry is use two sheets of metal of different thicknesses. These are loosely riveted / bolted together (say one fixing roughly 6-12" in each direction. A random pattern for the fixings is good. Different materials (ie ally and steel) of the same thickness will also work. Each part of each sheet will have its own resonant frequencies, but as they are in close contact, the adjacent sheet will damp out the resonances of its mate. Works like a charm.

I wonder if the diagram shows the heater take-off from above the t/stat so that the engine quickly gets up to temp BEFORE the stat opens and lets hot water out to the heater. Otherwise if you had a big heater circuit the engine would take ages to warm up. Y ou should be able to slip the 1/2" hose on OK If you heat it (boiling water/cup of tea?) and smooth & grease the end of the 5/8 stub. It would be better to have grooves/barbs on your stub, but the hose should still grip OK with a decent jubilee clip. I note that your new stub is not the right angle you originally wanted, so you'll worry it might trap air. But I think you''ll find that the flow from the pump will push the air bubble out. I have the identical arrangement in a BMC car with A series engine, and the standard water pump will blow out air locks from at least 6" above the cylinder head.

Dead right JP It was just after the ice fairs that accurate thermometers were invented, so surprise surprise, temperatures have been increasing since. I have seen data that there has been a lot of seismic activity in the last 20-30 years. The amount of greenhouse gases that volcanoes spit out dwarfs mans contribution. Incidentally, water vapour is a far stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. There is up to 4% water vapour in the air, and only 0.03%CO2, so why do they witter on about CO2.

There are simply too many people in the world. And many of them are consuming more than their share of resources. When it all runs out, who is going to suffer most - the bushmen of the Kalahari who live off the land or a futures trader in his penthouse on Canary Wharf ? I'm quite enjoying the Survivors series on'telly as a study in how thin the smear of "civilisation" is and how easily it breaks down.

Big Steve's first picture is surely a "special" made from a brass union and some copper tube. I'd go with the "re-tap to a more convenient size" idea. The head is cast iron and will machine beautifully. Due to the granular nature of the iron, its really best with a coarse thread, so try either standard metric or BSP. Bear in mind BSP comes in taper and parallel varieties. On an old BMC car, the bypass hose stub (under the thermostat) needed replacing. It had rusted away and wouldn't unscrew, so I drilled the broken stub out. This was undoubtedly some old & imperial size so the nearest tap I could find to match the new hose stub was M16 x 1.5, which did the job perfectly. Even this was not a common size and it cost me £35 and I've used it once ! You can borrow it if it helps but its ~ 15mm shank so won't fit in a standard Black and Decker- I'm in Herts too.

I reckon the main weapons of the TV detector vans were a list of names and addresses where licenses had been bought. If there were licenses issued to 2 4 6 8 12 14 Smith Street, its odds on that no 10 would be getting a knock on the door. Whether the giggery-pokery on the roof of the van really functioned is a moot point (or was it just a high powered microphone ?). The modern inspector isn't going to know if the boat is in joint ownership or not. In the unlikely event you get a knock on the hatch, merely quote your name and home address. Provided you do have a TV license of course.

This fetish for licences (car, boat, TV, dog, CB, etc) is very British. The Government have found an excellent way of relieving the proles of lots of money for having the temerity to live. THEY then employ lots of civil servants to administer and police the system, paid for by the fees and fines. Self-financing, a bit like speed camera partnerships. It has a certain chilling beauty. I'm almost old enough to remember when income tax came in, at the time a temporary measure, to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. I thought they finished a while back ..?...

Back when the world was black and white, my dad made an auto bilge pump switch from a chunky toggle switch and simple 12v trash pump. We had a wooden Harboro boat which needed daily attention to the bilges. A balance between deep enough to keep the joints tight, and not too deep to require marinising the engine ! The switch toggle shaft was extended by a rod with a ball cock float on the end. Suitably positioned, it work a treat, with the difference in height between 'off' and 'on' keeping the water level under control. Simple but effective - a bit like me.

You can buy a spray can of "battery terminal treatment" which a yellow grease like material, and has the advantage over Vaseline that it kills acid.

More ventilation will help, as will double glazing. More facetiously - stop breathing ! More heat may help, or make it worse, depending on where the damp is coming from. If its just breath, there's not much you can do other than more fresh air. It could be damp or wet bilges, in which case heat may make it worse.

Certainly blue engineering bricks work OK, if you have enough room. Some people use scrap lead, if you can lay your hands on some ! at the scrap yard. Its really heavy, twice as dense as steel and doesn't rust. Its not cheap but takes up so much less space.

We always go for more, rather than less, ventilation to keep the damp and therefore mould at bay. Cold and draughty is so much better than warm, damp and still.

Item no. 230304512984 finishes 3pm Sunday 9th Nov.