Albion

Fire it up, undo your ropes, extract your pins, set off and enjoy your boating. You'll be kinder to your engine by giving it regular oil and filter changes with good quality oil than you ever will by worrying about the start up/idle-to-warm up regime. Your engine is based on a Yanmar industrial diesel engine. Industrial diesels have been developed to withstand hard use and abuse so your engine can take a cold start or two without wearing out. The industrial equipment that these types of engines are developed for certainly would not be molly-coddled in the morning, they would be expected to start work straight away. HTH Roger

The generally accepted (and recommended technique in most car owners handbooks) is to start up and drive away as soon as you can with reasonable, and varying, revs (but not revving the whatsits off it). It is definitely not recommended to leave them idling. Engines only really warm up quickly under load, particularly the Gardner under consideration here (great lump of iron and gallons of coolant), so leaving it idling won't achieve a great deal. By the time that you've started the engine and udone the ropes/pins etc the oil will have been circulated adequately and that is sufficent. I must say that the Gardner 4LK that I had in Albion never needed any prolonged warming up and I was always able to increase the revs above idle as soon as I wanted to. One way of proving/disproving Tony theory would be to do a comparison between a morning start when the domestic electrics have had a good bashing the evening before and another when they've hardly been used. If the engine responded normally to the throttle in the second instance and not in the first then Tony's theory will have been proven. If the engine won't rev in both cases then the cause of the problem is elsewhere. Roger

Looking at your further pictures it would seem that the belt is definitely riding too far down in the pulleys. Normally the belt outer surface is approximately level with the 'outside' of the pulley vee. Also I've never seen such a corroded looking alternator pulley. Where is the shiny surface where the belt has been running? It may just be the distortion from the photography but in the picture from above the engine the alternator looks as though it might be slighlty forward of the other pulleys. Have you checked out this alignment? As suggested try a wider belt. Roger

This wouldn't really test the motor under load though Alan. It's under (significant) load that it fails. I would dare bet that it would seem OK under no-load testing such as you suggest. Roger

Phew, good job you're here then Tony to give the correct definition. Roger

There is one other aspect that you may wish to consider Mandy and that is, considering the self-sourced calorifiers are not significantly cheaper than the supplied one (excluding fitting), that if you get the boatyard to do the whole deal then you'll have some comeback against them if anything goes wrong (the fitting or the part itself). If you get involved with self-supply then you give them a great get out clause if anything fails. Just a thought. I've used a relatively low power immersion (about 1 kW IIRC) on my boat and found it perfectly OK for a heated water quantity to be available reasonably quickly. Calorifiers are well lagged and you can get enough for hand washing/washing up fairly quickly. Long shower quantities will take longer to heat up but I never found it a problem on my boat. Roger

I'll readily admit that I'm no expert on the inside of PRMs but, using my engineering nouse after a lifetime in the garage/motor industry I would have thought that the lower picture arrangement is the correct one. I say that because it looks to me as though there are two fingers of a retaining plate that prevent the hub 'walking' and these seem much better fitting in the lower picture. The upper picture shows the fingers not apparently near anything and the hub able to walk. I stand to be shot down of course but that picture two would be my guess. Roger Edited to add: I've just thought, are there any wear marks on the inside/outside of those fingers that I've mentioned? If there are and they are the same diameter as the larger diameter of the hub then you can deduce the correct positioning from that (assuming it was put together correctly in the first place of course )

It's a good point about the size of the alternator, and yet this should be a reputable marinisation(?). The alternator size would definitely be a factor after some considerable discharge from the domestic battery system (I'm assuming that the belt in question drives the domestic alternator or the only alternator with a split charge system) as the alternator struggles to put the charge back into the battery, particularly first thing in the morning. Does the belt squeal on first start-up after some considerable domestic battery discharge? The photos look as though the belt has been running at the bottom of the pulley by the very rounded innermost edges compared to the new belt held alongside HOWEVER we can't tell whether this is cause or effect. Did the belt wear so much that it started to run on the bottom of the pulley after a while or did it always run on the bottom of the pulley? We can't tell from a picture and description I'm afraid. Roger

Who knows? I'm just going by the diagram as shown. Roger

I would think that, if truly wired according to your diagram, it would provide good but short-term electrical heating in winter. Roger

Ok, number one cylinder on this engine is the cylinder nearest the crankshaft pulley (opposite end to the flywheel ) You should see a pipe running from the distributor pump to the injector on number one cylinder. You should also see a pipe running to number three cylinder and so on for all four. The firing order is 1-3-4-2 so, to advance you move the distributor towards the number one cylinder distributor pump port and away from the number three cylinder port. To retard, it is the opposite. You should have been able to maintain 9 volts at the battery for a minimum of 15 secs and preferably 30 secs. The battery voltage should not have fallen below that unless cranked for a huge length of time. The battery voltage should also have recovered rapidly. If, as you suggest, the voltages were falling away so quickly (and the revs on the starter motor) that you didn't dare continue the test then it suggests a duff battery or starter motor. I think I remember you saying that you'd had a new battery and so (assuming that it was the correct one for the engine) and that there are no excessive volt drops in any of the cables and terminals then it suggests starter motor (although it could still be possible that the battery was/is not a good one). Don't forget that, as the supply voltage to the starter motor drops, the current will rise (as you need a certain power out of the starter and Volts x Amps = Watts (power) so as the volts fall the amps rise) and this can cause a starter to overheat and smoke. You should be able to get the battery load tested at any decent garage which should tend to eliminate the battery as a problem and then you're left with the starter. Do though ensure that you don't have a wiring/terminal problem en-route. I have known the crimp terminals to have poor contact between the cable core and the terminal crimp so don't rule that out until you've checked it. Roger

Yep, that's correct, they're the toothed vee belt type (came in to replace standard vees when better wrapping of the belts around smaller diameter pulleys on alternators became the norm). Vee belts are very susceptible to misalignment of pulleys (and tension) as Innisfree has said. If you are getting wear due to slippage or misalignment you'll find plenty of rubber dust around the place. I'd look at the belts when mounted on the pulleys and sight along them looking for out of line belt runs first. It won't take much to cause sufficient misalignment to wear the belts rapidly. If in doubt try to place a straight edge across the belt pulleys to check alignment. Check that the alternator has been mounted correctly on its mountings and hasn't been moved fore or aft, check the water pump (if the pump is belt driven on this engine) and any other things like that. Tension to about a centimetre of movement in the longest straight run. See what you find and report back if you can. Roger Edited to add: If they are worn badly then they may be running on the bottom of the pulley vee and, in which case, you'll get squealing and further rapid wear. If they are running on the bottom of the vee then ensure that they are the correct section belts for the pulleys and replace anyway.

What type of belts are getting eaten so quickly, vee or poly-vee? There may be another cause for the short belt life that isn't just heat. Roger

Ta, that's encouraging for the 12,000 Btu/hr stand-alone unit that we've bought for the French barge with a room size a little larger than you've quoted due to the inclusion of the galley into the same cabin space. I had a nightmare with breakdowns on a Telair equivalent that we had on the other boat and so I've been wary of one that's fixed to the boat when abroad for servicing and repair considerations. Roger

Umm, I'm not so sure. It is a common perception that LPG is greener/less polluting than petrol but, when I worked in development at Rover Cars (some years ago just before BMW got rid) the emissions guys put an LPG car into the emissions labs and it wasn't as clean as it was cracked up to be. I asked why this would be and they could only surmise that LPG had not been developed for car combustion (it's a heating fuel after all) whereas petrol (and DERV for that matter) have been gradually and relentlessly developed to minimise emissions (in conjunction with improved engine/after-treatment technology of course). Roger

Out of interest Julian, do you happen to know the Btu output of your air con and the size of room it's cooling please? Roger

My guess is that someone has left it there as a wear strip. It is in the right place to take the scraping as you pull away from the towpath. Otherwise I can't see an obvious reason. Roger Edited to add: I assume that you have another identical one on the other side?

To some extent you are right Tanis, but there is a genuine point hidden in the recommendation. Some BW water points (in fact quite a few) are desperately slow. If you have a normal tank it can take long enough and with a super-size one you'll be there forever. Often, even if there is another tap available at the same point, when another boater turns on his tap your tap will slow even further. It's a genuine practical consideration that you should be aware of. Roger

GAS, GAS, GAS and just in case I haven't made myself clear......GAS!!! Gas hob and gas oven is the way to go. It's very economical, you can cook for ages on just one 13kg gas bottle. Roger

Just to clarify, in case anyone is confused, the immersion heater is installed in the calorifier. The main water tank is a completely seperate beast. Roger

The problem with them Brian, in my opinion, is that they are secured with several socket headed bolts (requires tools and time to undo) and the tube stretches all the way from the stern deck surface to the prop shaft in the water. You need a seriously long arm to reach down that length (unless you use a Bargee Bill type device). Roger

That could be a reflection on the length of your legs but best not to go there I reckon. Roger

I'm flying a bit blind here as I have never worked on a 1.5 but, if it's anything like the petrol engine that it was based upon, you should look at the fuel pipes which will be aligned according to the cylinder firing order 1-3-4-2. In that case TO ADVANCE rotate the distributor pump towards the 1 and away from the 3 (difficult to express in words). Try this: 1. If the firing order is 1-3-4-2 in that order in a clockwise direction as you look down on the end of the pump then move the pump anticlockwise. 2. If the order is 1-3-4-2 in and anti-clockwise direction then move the pump clockwise Just found this manual on the web which might help you but it doesn't appear to have a drawing looking down on the top of the distributor pump: www.the-norfolk-broads.co.uk/.../bmc1500L-diesel-workshop-manual.pdf That manual has also reminded me that the reason I did my method for the 1.8 was that you need a special (expensive) tool to set the timing up as per the factory. This wasn't worth it for my one engine so I did it from first principles. Roger Edited to say: Sorry that may not be a complete link so Google for 'British Leyland 1.5 diesel engine' and you should find the pdf link about second in the list.