steamraiser2

Fitting a PRM is a great idea, why not go the whole hog and get a decent Seffle or Kromhout to go with it? Kelvins are great in the right place, they make a great mooring weight for example! Dont ya just luv 'em.. well actually no!.

We often rebuild engines from fishing boats. Crabbing boat engines , in particular, run winches which spend a lot of time hauling in pots. Very hard work indeed! These engines tend to be spotless and often require no more than rings and shells to bring them back to top form. Canal boat engines tend to waffle along under insufficient load and are often coked up and have glazed bores. The moral of this is : its important to know exactly how its been used and maintained. The number of hours its done is less important than it may seem. The quality of oil used and frequency of servicing is the main thing. I rebuilt an old diesel engine that had done 10 years in an electricity board van, then five years further use powering a mobile fish and chip shop. bunged rings and injectors in it and it did a further 34 years in a narrow boat...long enouigh for most people Yes still running happily, it'll be the big 50 for it next year!

I rebuilt an old diesel engine that had done 10 years in an electricity board van, then five years further use powering a mobile fish and chip shop. bunged rings and injectors in it and it did a further 34 years in a narrow boat...long enouigh for most people I rebuilt an old diesel engine that had done 10 years in an electricity board van, then five years further use powering a mobile fish and chip shop. bunged rings and injectors in it and it did a further 34 years in a narrow boat...long enouigh for most people

A sale through Ebay which went throughout the scheduled listing and has been paid in full is a contract. Its not the vendors to refuse or try and cancel. Don't mess about, your money is en route to him and he has to hand over the goods. Go to the police. He has your boat. Not his.

I once had an engine throw a con rod which punched a hole throught the wet liner and broke off a piece of the block into the water jacket behind it. Having pulled the liner I realised that the engine was scrap unless I could refix the piece of broken block. I made a paste of icing sugar and filled the block cavity with it, used Devcon to stick the broken piece of block in place and pressed the new line back in while the Devcon was still wet. Once it has set solid I washed out the iciing sugar with boiling water which cleared the waterjacket and reassembled the engine. Twenty five years later the engine is still running happily without any leaks or problems.....so far!

Reminds me of the rather unpleasant couple who moved into the village having bought a cottage next door to a pig farm. As soon as the wind changed all hell broke loose. Not that they got much sympathy as the pigs were not "incomers". It all came to a head when they objected to Tom the pig farmer having a pint in the pub with his overalls on. Ever helpful Tom kicked his boiler suit and wellies off..along with his artificial leg! The sight of him stood in his underpants with a sore looking stump put them off their lunch. They moved soon after! Perhaps they have bought a cottage near moorings. anyone got a boat full of pigs?

Vehicle Electrics, Use them all the time, will recondition your own units too. A really good firm!

The Lister JP is a bombproof motor as such. Check for oil pressure..10psi and above is fine on these when warm. Avoid ones with an oily exhaust as many JPs have chrome liners and will pass oil when the liners and rings get worn. Listen out for low down rumbling and any sign of knocking under load... they run on with worn out bearings and there is a tendency for them to get new big ends but not mains during their lives. Check for end float. If there is an excessive amount ie: its easy to feel it..avoid. Look halfway down the block for three weep holes..if there is water present the liner seals are leaking. Look for frost cracks in the same area as thats where the go if frosted. Avoid repaired blocks. They are not usually a leaky engine avoid oily ones.Basically they are a very good but heavy motor, a good one will last a lifetime. Parts available and there are a couple of firms who specialise in their restoration.

Sorry missed that.. no I'm not going to sell it just yet, at least until I decide which of my engines I want to keep for installation in a boat of our own. We are leaning towards a Kromhout 2 or 3LS at the moment ,as they are terrific engines, but also have other Gardners ,Dormans , Rustons and a gaggle of FR and JP Listers to choose from. Decisions , decisions!...its a bit like how we chose aeroplane seats years ago..smoking or non smoking!

Sadly the air cooled Listers are falling out of fashion these days, such is the demand for lashings of hot water from a calorifier. The gearbox was worth £600 alone. I was watching people fight over a dead FR2 a few months ago while an identical, but working, engine hidden in a bit of old farm machinery did not attract a bid. Cie la vie.

How about NO!

Not at all..it depends where you get them. They only fetch high prices in the UK and are cheap as chips in other countires. You just need to know where to look. I suspect I paid more for this engine than the current price ex-African mine for example. The bargain factor is in this being a good one, believe me I've seen some garbage ones in my time. I buy in quite a few engines overseas and greatly appreciate that "sought after" is relevant to the country its in. Tired old UK bus engines can be worth a lot elsewhere for example and end up broken for bits in the UK. Trade is what makes the world go round!

It must be a good Gardner day..I bought a fully marinised 2LW with gearbox in great running order this morning for £850. Result !

I've come across this before. Firstly check all the valve clearances to ensure that one is not a tiny bit too tight. That can cause the valve not to seat correctly and reduce the compression on that particular cylinder. Consequently unburnt fuel will blow out of the exhaust as the affected cylinder is'nt firing properly.. If you start an engine with a load of diesel hanging around in the exhaust you could well see white or grey smoke for quite a while. An important thing to bear in mind is that if the muck in the exhaust is residual it will clear pretty quickly.. if it keeps on doing it the fuel (or oil) is still getting in to the exhaust system. As you have had the head off its adviseable to get the head torqued down and the tappets set after a few days running anyway. Also..just to further depress you..if you have a cylinder that is not firing correctly you will be washing the lubricating oil off the top of the bore which will quickly wear out your piston rings on that cylinder. So my advice is to check out the valve clearances etc asap and to try and determine if the emissipn is fuel or oil. Fuel should be easy to fix as described. If oil is coming out I would suspect that the rings are worn or broken. Or..that the head gasket is leaking across an oil way. Either way get your spanners out sooner rather than later.

I have a Dorman 2DSM laying around in the back of my workshop. It powered a 75' dutch barge for the boy scouts all over the Netherlands. It had enough grunt for that with room to spare. i seem to recall that an ex GUCC boat had one too. The derating comment is very true as they had to provide a constant duty figure

The Dorman is a wonderful old engine for a narrowboat and will run on for years and years and years. Dormans don't carry the premium prices that some of the other vintage engines do although the one on Ebay is fairly priced ( no connection to me I may add ! ). If you are considering changing the engine for a modern one I wonder if you are buying the wrong boat?. The heavy flywheel on the Dorman will delay the rev drop but once you have learn't the knack of handling a vintage motor I'm sure you will grow to love it . It'll still be worth a good price in years to come unlike most modern engines these days.

The most important thing is to spill point time the individual pumps EXACTLY, the Lister manual will tell you exactly how to do that. Once you have that exactly right set the pump with the scribed line against the face of the pump body. Measure the length of the rack sticking out of the other side of the pump and set the others so that they have exactly the same measurement when all connected by the pump linkage. You will then have all the pumps timed the same and the racks set the same. You will probably have to adjust the speeder linkage to get the right setting remembering that it should only ever be flat out when you set the engine to cold start. If you take your time over this you will end up with an engine that runs evenly without excessive smoke and the unbalanced thump thump you often hear. They are good engines which often suffer from " fingergepoken". Set properly you never have to adjust them.

You don't need to go to much trouble to sort this. Look up the " Bearing Boys" on the net..they can supply any size pulley including a suitable taper lock by return. Cheap as chips!

So register..not a biggie and all will become clear! . Amot valves have the advantage that they operate at the set temperature just like the thermostatic control on a domestic shower. A Waxstat will not control a rising temperature once open, an Amot does. So ,if used as an engine temperature control, it will maintain the set temperature all the time and if controlling feed to domestic hot water will guarantee a constant temp at the galley sink. The RNLI fit them to all the modern lifeboats to regulate and control the engine temps..if they are the weapon of choice for the best of the best who are we to disagee!

Amot valves control temperature far more accurately than a Waxstat ever could and are commonly fitted on maritime and railway engines these days. The outflow temp will always be constant so will avoid the domestic water becoming scalding hot for example.

Its important that the engine is run at a high enough temperature to avoid sludging and coking up. I've seen many engines that have clearly run too cold and underloaded for too long. A simple and effective way to acccurately control engine temperatures is by replacing the thermostat with a modern Amot valve. An Amot will manage the flow back to a skin tank and can regulate the inlet temperature to your calorifier far better than a hit and miss thermostat. Properly managed engine temps are very important with a Gardner considering their smoking habits! One pont with the hook up of the heating with the heat exchanger is to be careful to avoid hydrostatic flow ( hot to cold) Fitting check valves to eliminate this will be a good plan. It would be a shame for your calorifier of hot water to be conducted back towards the engine block overnight.

I built a Dickinson stove into my boat some years ago. It always suffered from sooting on diesel which I attributed to the limited length of flue I could achieve. It certainly ran better on kerosene. I checked out the oven temperature with a digital probe and found it came no where near the performance claimed by the manufacturer, even on kerosene. Personally I would not consider fitting a Dickinson into a boat unless I could guarantee getting sufficient flue length. They use more fuel than claimed too. Reliable enough though. Overpriced.

There is a PH2 on Ebay from a dumper right now. !

Within the UK there are plenty of specialists who can restore vintage engines and others who can supply aftermarket or bespoke parts. The older Rustons are great engines and , if maintained properly, will run on for years and years. The choice between a modern engine with all the parts supply convenience that brings or the call of a real classic engine is a very personal one which most boaters will have a view on I'm sure. The answer lies in your own capabilities perhaps? If you are a competent mechanic, or have one in the family etc, a vintage engine should not be a daunting prospect. If you are not mechanically savvy and are going to rely on commercial support you may well need to have deep pockets. Don't be fooled into thinking the Indian engines can be classified as good bad or indifferent. Lack of consistant quality can be an issue. But then the worst castings I've ever seen on an engine were on a Kelvin ( cue screaming Kelvin fundamentalists ! )

Not the BMC 1.8 but the older 2.2. I did some cylinder head work and the fuel gear on one in 1975 for a friend building a narrowboat. The engine had done ten years in an Electricity Board van followed by another five years as a mobile fish and chip van. Once in the boat it performed well..for another thirty two years!. It was only taken out as it had sprung a leak and a spare motor was available. It would be still in there except for the leak. As previously said it'll last a lifetime...just keep changing the oil!