nicknorman

How to stay cool? Move to the Highlands of Scotland. Around 10 degrees cooler!

... or we could just ignore Murflynn's rant!

I think you are out of order. Only a complete numpty would imagine that a member of this forum was, or represented, an American organisation. So there is no apparent deception and you are making a fuss about nothing. If he used the NMEA logo in a professional capacity when it was not sanctioned, that would certainly be bad, but this is just an amateur forum where some members post advice to freely help others. Don't piss on it.

Don't know much about this gearbox except that forward is engaged as the default state, and oil pressure is required to get neutral. So whilst I agree with your Occam's razor analysis in general, I suppose another possibility is that removing the gearbox and thus possibly giving it a good shaking and turning it over etc, could have resulted in some sediment being disturbed which now clogs the oil system.

According to this, there is: http://www.marineengine.co.uk/LH150 Adjustment.pdf

I would imagine there's a high resistance connection somewhere, or inadequately sized cable. Bear in mind that with the engine running, the BM2 will only show the current coming out of the batteries, whereas the inverter will be taking that plus possibly the full output of the alternator. A 200A shunt is barely enough for a 2000A inverter - but that said your problem is when the engine is running, when current through the shunt will be much less. Anyway, the obvious point is that the problem occurs when a lot of current is being taken from the alternator, so check the alternator leads and connections at both ends. And remember that the current has to flow in a circuit so the positive connections are just as important as the negative ones. Typically there will be a fat cable from the engine casing to the shunt, and this is where I'd check first. It could of course be a poorly crimped ring terminal, or a loose or dirty/corroded ring terminal face.

Worthy of what? Funny word! People who live a normal life with mains electricity and water coming into their accommodation - which just happens to be floating - are not in my opinion boaters. To be a boater you have to use your boat for the purpose it was built which is navigating, at least occasionally. We had a couple on the adjacent pontoon in our marina. They bought a new boat and lived on it for 3 years. They NEVER left the marina or even moved it within the marina, and freely admitted they didn't know how to operate the boat / were scared to try. They have just sold the boat and gone back to dry land. In no way could I consider them to be "boaters" in the slightest bit. Lovely people, just as "worthy" as anyone else, but absolutely not boaters.

It's really difficult to fight someone who takes 3 days to come back at you!

Having just completed a 16 day trip including the Llangollen, I can definitely say there is still plenty of room. Well the endless online moorings on the Shroppie are a bit of a pain, but hardly catastrophic (and most not live-aboard). Mind you, I wouldn't contemplate venturing south of Milton Keynes these days. The cut is double breasted wide beams all the way from there to limehouse and you can't get off your boat. Allegedly. Anyway I love boating, am retired, but I wouldn't want to live full time on the boat as I have too many other hobbies and need too much junk and space.

Counter-intuitively, the inrush current is worst when the switch on occurs at zero voltage in the cycle.

I feel you are contradicting yourself a bit - you are refuting that removal of secondary load minimises the inrush, whilst also agreeing that it has some minor significance. I agree that the phase at the point of connection will be the primary issue but removing all secondary load will, as I said, minimise the maximum inrush current. Whether it would make enough difference to be significant in your case is of course another matter.

Yes. He pushed the grease up his nose.

A Galvanic Isolator? Anyway, I presume you are plugging the IT into the shore bollard first, then plugging the IT into the boat or otherwise switching on the boat's supply (e.g. at the consumer unit) - if there is no load on the transformer output then obviously the peak current will be minimised.

No reason not to use it, but then again not much reason to use it. The better solution is to not turn off the isolator when the engine is running! Or use an alternator field disconnect contact as mentioned earlier. And actually, thinking about it, if the resistor has a low enough resistance to take say 100A without the voltage rising to more than say 20v, that means that at 14v it will still be taking a lot of current and dissipating a lot of heat. So it would have to be very large and/or get very hot to deal with the case where the isolator was switched off and the engine continued to run (maybe for hours, until someone noticed).

I would say that AFD is not really worth it. That type of isolator is not easily knocked accidentally to the off position. So you are protecting against an intentional switching off of the isolator whilst the engine is running. Seems unlikely unless you are in the habit of lending your boat to numpties! Having AFD doesn't mean that a repeat of the same situation can't occur - if the isolator did go intermittent (which is highly unlikely for that quality of product) then the AFD isn't going to help. Also with the AFD you have more wiring, more chances of a bad connection etc isolating the alternator field current inadvertently. And presumably more cost! Ours does. OOps - did I say that out loud?

Apart from anything else, £1.11 is pretty close to the price paid in a garage forecourt for 100% propulsion. We just filled up at Norbury, 59p domestic. And Wheaton Aston was 57p.

Yes, BSS fail. The other thing you could consider is trying to adjust the horn to cope with the lower voltage. Some horns have a central screw adjustment that changes the contact gap, and tweaking that might allow the horn to work. Also check it with the engine running - the system voltage will be higher with the engine running and might be enough to overcome the voltage drop. I suggest it doesn't matter too much if the horn doesn't work when the engine is shut down - transits of Harecastle tunnel perhaps excepted.

Oh by the way, it is possible for say two phases of the diodes to be duff (out of three) thus allowing the alternator to produce only a pathetic output, which might explain the 12.8v.

Yes unfortunately an intermittent isolator could well have fried the diodes in the alternator. There are some pretty awful isolators out there. Tell us your specific make and model of isolator and we will be able to tell you if it's any good - or not. Good makes are Blue Sea Systems, BEP Marine amongst others.

No it is not direct from the panels. Apart from anything else, panel voltage is far too variable to be of any use. The general idea is that it is for, eg, a streetlight. The Tracer controls when it comes on and for how long, and will cut it off in the event of low battery state.

Ellesmere itself is fine, but the arm is at the back end of it. The concreted area at the end by the supermarket tends to accumulate gangs of feral kids and dodgy people. I think it is just the contrast between there and all the other possible superb rural moorings that made me make my comment.

We had this problem, turned out to be multiple issues. initially it was really bad in reverse, not too bad in forwards except at river speeds. Turned out the gear cable was pushing the gearbox lever hard up against the stop and the force was feeding back into the throttle. I adjusted the cable so that the travel in forwards and backwards was the same. This helped. But the travel was still too much overall, so having read the instructions I saw that the gear cable travel could be reduced by loosening the screw where the gear cable attaches, and flipping the little attachement into the other hole. Apart from the effect on throttle, having the gear lever pushed hard against the stop on a PRM 150 is specifically proscribed in the PRM manual - it puts a radial load on the gear shaft and causes premature failure of the o-ring and consequent oil leak. This helped, but I still had a problem at very fast river speeds eg above 2000rpm (Beta43). Part of the cause is the strong spring within the engine control system that pulls the throttle closed. There is the friction adjustment as mentioned, but the design of this is awful and it doesn't really help - just tends to increase friction near idle, not at high throttle settings. Finally, I attached a long coil spring to the throttle cable which, by the geometry, pulls the throttle open at high throttle settings whilst not really affecting things at low throttle openings. Now it is perfect!

Are you sure it's 27mm? Most (nearly all) American stuff is imperial.

Oh dear we missed you! Mind you, I still don't think we have any whisky! At Curdworth top lock, last day of a 16 day trip up T&M, around the Middlewich branch, up the Llangollen to Ellesmere and back via Brum (which was very quiet). Flying back early Friday morning. Boohoo. Anyway, have a great trip.

The problem is that if you don't know what you are doing, it would be all too easy to fit a prop with the wrong taper. It would work ... for a bit!