Jaywire

Just an update as to what happened with the oil cooler. Removed the old cooler and nothing looked suspect with the o-rings. Managed to pressure test it on the bench with air whilst in water, used jubilee clips to hold the o-rings in place. The oil cooler was indeed leaking, couldn't spot exactly where, but around the soldered ends of the pipes at one end. So bought a Bowman DC60 oil cooler and installed on the return from the skin tank. Bought it from Lancing Marine (https://www.lancingmarine.com) who had exactly what I needed on the shelf, which was great as couldn't find any of the larger Bowman coolers in stock anywhere else. Installation went well, had to flush the gear box several times. I will change the oil again after 50 or so hours. Been out for a test run and I think everything is working as it should, gearbox sounds happier. The confusing thing was the original symptom was oil in the header tank and then it changed to coolant in the gear box. But as stated, the boat had been sitting unused for quite some time so maybe the pressure differences in use / standing made the difference. Also, don't know the service history of the boat, maybe it had a gear oil change and then sat unused before we bought it. Anyway, thanks again for all the help!

I managed to get the marina to agree to at least look again at the work they've done and hopefully I can shadow their mechanic at the time. The o-rings were ordered from Beta Marine, so hopefully the right ones! We've got some more coming from them just in case. Hopefully we'll be attacking the job first thing Monday so I'll update once I know more. If it's anything more complicated than a mistake in the work replacing the o-rings I'm pretty sure I'll just move forward with fitting an external cooler as Tony suggested, as it seems like a better long term solution.

I would agree that it's pretty hard to get o-rings wrong, but also if I've done any work on a system and then discover a new problem with the system, the first thing I would do is check the work done, just in case. Good idea about getting in touch with PRM, just sent them an email. The marina has insisted that the original surveyor takes another look at the problem, not entirely sure why, I think the marina is just trying to proove that they have no liability. Whereas I'm just keen to get the problem solved and on my way.

As Tony pointed out my cooler is in the header tank, which Beta no longer do and they don't have any replacement cores if it is damaged and needs replacing, so most likely going to have to install an external cooler as suggested. Which is made a little more complicated as our engine is cocooned. Looking around at oil coolers it seems the Bowman brand comes up a lot, not sure how to calculate what size I would need though? It seems even the smallest, DC060, would more more than enough for my gearbox (1.6kW) and engine (aprox. 32kW)? Unless I'm reading it wrong or my maths is way off? https://ej-bowman.com/products/transmission-oil-coolers/ I feel like checking the installation of the o-rings that was completed to 'solve' the oil in coolant problem, seems too much of a coincidence that we now have the opposite problem and if this is due to a mistake in fitting, hopefully the marina might help with the cost of repair. I'm assuming that if the o-rings weren't installed correctly it could lead to coolant getting into the gearbox. Thanks for all the help, only had the boat a couple of months and this forum is quickly becoming my most visited website!

I've found out where the coolant is going from my recent post about 'how often should you be topping up your coolant'... Into our gearbox! https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/119389-how-often-is-normal-to-top-up-engine-coolant/ We've recently bought a 20 year old NB with a Beta 43 engine and a PRM150 gearbox. The pre-purchase survey spotted that there was oil in the header tank, but no water in the gear box (or the engine oil). The gear oil heat exchanger is inside the header tank and it was pointed out that this was the most likely culprit. We asked the marina we purchased from to solve the problem as a condition of the sale. Their mechanic ended up replacing some o-rings on the heat exchanger and was convinced that they'd solved the problem as the old o-rings were 'cracked and misshaped'. The NB had been sitting, hardly used, for about two years before the survey. They ran the engine 'for a day' and no more oil was appearing in the header tank, problem solved. We then had the engine fully serviced, which included a gear box oil change. Once we started using the boat I kept a good eye on the coolant and although you could see that there had been some oil contamination, it was getting no worse. I checked the gear box oil after about 15 hours of use and thought the oil looked a little odd. I checked again today (8 week after the service and about 80 hours run time) and our gear box is full of creamy white paste. Not good. Again, checking the coolant, the metal inside the header tank feels 'oily to the touch', but there's next to no oil floating in the coolant itself. So it appears that we had a problem with oil getting into the coolant and somehow fixed that but now have coolant getting into the oil. Which seems very odd to me. It could be that the two problems are completely unrelated, but that seems unlikely. A classic case of fixing one part of the chain which makes the next part fail? Has anyone come across anything like that? Thanks.

Just fitted the new accumulator, as suspected the old one was shedding rust and the rust had built up and pretty much blocked the T-junction below the accumulator. Gave everything a good clean out, fitted and set the pressure on the new accumulator and everything seems to be working nicely. Thanks!

Recently bought a narrowboat with a 20 year old Beta 43 engine in it. Everything seems to be working nicely but I'm a little surprised at how often I have to top up the coolant and thinking that I might have a leak in the system that I've not spotted. I'd say I have to top it up every 10 > 15 hours of run time, just a splash to keep the level, maybe 100ml or so. Just seems fairly often for a closed system (single skin tank & calorifier), I'm used to not having to bother too much with coolant levels for diesel van engines. Just wondering if it's 'normal' or I should spend some more time checking for a leak?

Thanks for all the replies. Checked the PRV valve and it's dry as a bone. Double checked for leaks and again can't spot anything. I'll replace the accumulator as I'm now convinced it's knackered. If problems persist or I come across anything interesting I'll post again. Cheers!

Hello! New to narrowboat life, bought a 20 year old boat a few months ago and having some problems with the water system that I can't get my head around. Everything seemed to be working fine at first but very soon I noticed that the pump was switching on/off more frequently and the pump was switching on for very short periods (a second or two) two or three times a night. I checked for leaks, no evidence of such and then checked accumulator pressure and it was close to 0, so pumped to 20psi as my pumps cut off pressure is 25psi. It worked better for a short while but soon started switching on/off more frequently and switch on at night for no reason. So I assumed that the accumulator was loosing pressure (air comes out of valve, not water). Checking the accumulator pressure again, it was close to 0psi again (this was about 10 days after setting it to 20psi). I followed the advice on this thread - https://www.canalworld.net/forums/index.php?/topic/55716-accumulator-tank-pressure/ - to find the pumps actual cut in pressure: 1. Deflate and lightly (5-10 psi) re-pressurise the accumulator 2. Pump on, taps off until the pump stops 3. Tap on slowly until the pump starts 4. Stop pump and turn taps off as quick as you can. (these last two steps may need a bit of practice) 5. Read the pressure in the accumulator 6. Taps on till the water stops 7. Pressurise the accumulator to the pressure read above. 8. Taps off, pump on. Wait till it stops. But my pump started immediatly as soon as I turned the tap on in step 3, so it appeared to me that my pumps cut-in and cut-out pressure were almost the same, which I'm guessing isn't right. Also, after following those steps my water came out dirty for a while, with what looked like rust in it, which is a first and our water tank is stainless. The anoying thing is that the pump seems to be inconsistant, sometimes it turns on and off with opening and closing a tap. Othertimes the pump runs for 'a while' after closing a tap to build up some pressure in the system. My hunch is my accumulator isn't working as it should, loosing pressure and potentially rusty inside, so step 1 would be to replace that and then I can test my pump with a new accumulator installed to troubleshoot any problems with the pump itself. It feels to me as if the pumps cut in / out pressures seem to vary, but I've never had a pump behave like that before, is that something that can happen? Just thought I'd post on here to see if anyone's got anything to add. Sorry about the long first post!