nicknorman

Well, if it came from manufacture looking like that I wouldn’t be impressed! So it’s almost certainly been reworked. You mention “hot air gun” but it’s not the sort of thing you’d buy at B&Q for stripping paint, it is a temperature controlled gun with adjustable air flow and a very small nozzle that allows you to direct the hot air very locally. Even if a bit of solder paste had been added (and there does look to be an excess of solder) the flux residue can easily be removed with some solvent. I tend to use a can of car brake cleaner!

Because you have to have something to carry it in, then when you pay for something you get a load of coins that clutter up the pocket. And then you get to the Supermarket queue and there has to be some old biddy/grey beardy flat cap bloke who spends 10 minutes counting out the 2p coins to make the payment for their tin of sardines. By comparison one waft of my iPhone has the bill paid, and no annoying coins in the pocket. I haven't been to a cash machine yet in 2023, I think I might have been to one a couple of times in 2022. And I am not exactly a millenial yoof type, I am a state pension collecting oap.

I looked at the fogstar website, they do seem adamant that one can have up to 4 in series. Not totally sure how that works BMS-wise but I also note they have Bluetooth so maybe the BMSs talk to each other via Bluetooth? Although I suppose that if any one BMS detects too high or too low cell voltage for its own cells, it shuts off its FETs and that interrupts the current for the entire string of batteries, so maybe I am overthinking it.

Not just swindling them, but imprisoning them. Just because they can.

No I didn’t bother to flush. The main thing is that you are replacing 99% of the old coolant with new coolant with fresh anti-corrosive additive. There shouldn’t be any solid contaminant. Some people use distilled/deionised water but we have fairly soft water so I didn’t bother. The calorifier bit is just the pipework within the calorifier, not the large volume of fresh water within the calorifier. On our boat the calorifier is on the swim and so it’s above the engine and so it drains via the engine. Seems to self-bleed fairly well too, air gets pushed out by the engine pump.

Inverter faulty. Again! Well it is a Sterling!

Sumup has no fixed monthly fees. Does your card provider charge a monthly fixed fee? And whether that is a problem does of course depend on you turnover. Personally I think that to turn down business because the customer can only pay by credit card means you aren’t making enough profit margin!

The antifreeze bit doesn’t degrade or evaporate, so a test of sg isn’t going to prove anything. As you suggest, it is the anti-corrosion bit that fades and dies. The answer to your question depends on the installation. On our boat with Beta 43, you can of course drain the coolant from the engine quite easily. I would hope there is no sludge etc, otherwise something is horribly wrong! But on our boat, quite a bit of the skin tank is below the level of the engine drain and so obviously it doesn’t drain by gravity! What I do is disconnect the pipe to the bottom of the skin tank and catch the coolant that comes out. But there is still some in the skin tank so I use a spare whale gulper pump and push some garden hose down the skin tank pipe til it gets to the bottom of the skin tank, and pump out the remaining coolant. For refilling, I just fill from the usual place (having reconnected the skin tank pipe of course!), and crack open the top skin tank fitting to let the air out. As I said, your installation might be easier depending on where the bottom of the skin tank is relative to the engine. But probably not!

But these days, card service providers charge the same for debit or credit cards, so there is no reason other than nostalgia to insist on debit cards only. As I mentioned earlier, 1.6% via a Sumup machine for debit or credit.

I virtually never use cash, it’s a pain. Last year someone gave me a couple of 100 in cash for services rendered, it took 1/2 a year to get around to spending it. Cash at the gliding club (where I’m treasurer) is a right pain, one of us has to go to the bank to pay it in, whereas if they use the Sumup machine it is 1.6% which is not too bad. Or of course bank transfer is better, but there are a few who say “Oh I DON’T do internet banking, it’s not safe.”. Presumably they pay for the tin foil for their hats in cash.

Any decent “homeless” these days has a card machine.

In addition to Tony’s post I would say that a blown field diode reduces maximum alternator output in correlation to the voltage split between B+ and D+ that you have observed. Ie not much at max rpm, but quite a lot at normal cruising rpm and even more at idle. At high rpm when that split isn’t much, and with low batteries so the alternator is trying to produce max output, you are getting 2 field diodes to do the work of 3 so they will get hot and will have a shorter life.

Blown field diode.

It may be a blown field diode. If you have a multimeter, check the voltage between the alternator case (or B-) and the D+ terminal, with engine running at moderate rpm such that you would expect the warning light to be out. You should get much the same voltage as when you move the positive meter lead to B+ (the fat cable from alternator to the battery). If there is a big difference, it points to a blown field diode in the alternator.

I would expect an engine battery isolator to disconnect the starter battery from everything else. This is so that there is no “live” electrics on the engine when you get the spanners out.

I always find it highly amusing that people who live in Yorkshire or Lancashire think they come from the North. Consider the distance from London to York, and then go the same distance again further North. No, you still haven't got anywhere near as far North as we live. Bloody southerners, barely beyond the clutches of London, the lot of you.

Thanks Tony, I was making that bit up!

Trace the throttle cable to find where it attaches to the engine. Get someone to move the control lever so that you can see which bit on the engine rotates. You will see that this lever or quadrant has 2 adjusting screws that limit its travel in the fast and slow directions - ie set maximum and minimum rpm. Obviously you want to adjust the screw that the quadrant bears on when the throttle is closed. Loosen the small locknut on it and back the screw out a bit, tighten the locknut again. I wouldn’t set the idle below about 850rpm. It might be that the quadrant isn’t quite touching the adjustment screw with the throttle closed, due to maladjustment of the cable. In which case altering the screw will have no effect. You may have to unclamp the cable outer and move it in a bit to increase the free play, so check this first.

Just completed the survey. Quite easy really, anyone who has a different type of boat to me, or uses their boat differently, should pay much, much more. People like me should get a reduction.

If you just add more of the antifreeze/corrosion inhibitor you will be adding a lot of antifreeze. You don't want to go over 50% antifreeze as the ability of the mixture to transport heat is reduced. Sorry but the correct way to do it is to drain the system and refill with fresh pre-mixed antifree/corrosion inhibitor and water. Every 5 years.

Having quite liked the Mastershunt when we first got it, I've somewhat gone off it because it doesn't have the ability to manually set the SoC. If you depower and repower it, it goes to 100% and you can't change it. Which is no good if your Li batteries are at 50%! And it has a very long time constant (maybe 5 seconds) on the "instantaneous" measured current. Although my gadgets have access to both that and the BMV712's data, I use the latter in preference because it seems a bit more accurate, and instantaneous. The Mastershunt does have a built in 500A fuse which is useful, but that makes it a rather expensive fuse!

..said the duck. Don't you know that quack means no.

Provision has to be made for the gay drakes.

Is that for the Wakespeed? I was talking about the Alpha Pro III