Traditional Engines

[Mrs Wilson]

Good Morning.

Excuse my ignorance but I’m looking to buy my first narrowboat.

I'm quite interested in buying a boat with a traditional engine type but isn’t there room to have such an engine under, say a cruiser platform?

thank you.

 

[Alan de Enfield]

Normally a vintage / traditional engine boat is bought because the owner wants to polish it, cuddle it, tell it bedtime stories and ensure it is safely tucked up in bed at night.

He wants to be able to open the side doors so that when people walk past they go "Ooooo, Arrrrrrr how shiney"

 

There is little point in having such an engine and hiding it away. You get all of the 'problems' to solve but can no longer access the engine properly and get non of the benefits of peer envy.

 

For what reason do YOU want a vintage engine ?

[BEngo]

There is room, but that is not really the point.  A traditional engine is a thing of beauty, to be housed in splendour and admired by the hoi polloi who aspire only to modern foreign stuff.  Admiration classes are  run by the owner and crew every hour, on the hour.

 

In the real world, old engines were designed to be attended to. The wise owner keeps an eye on them, and a spanner too, when needed. Spares are not always "off the shelf", so knowing something will soon need to be done gives time to get the bits. Old engines are not always designed for easy servicing either.  All these mean a dedicated engine space with decent access round the engine.  That is usually an engine 'ole.

  Fortunately they are not wasted space.  There are previous threads on here about engine rooms, but as a starter ours houses the Kelvin, the batteries, the bike, the diesel genny and assorted essential stuff.  At the end of a wet day boating  it is a good place to get out of foulies and then makes a handy drying room ready for the next session.

N

 

[koukouvagia]

26 minutes ago, Mrs Wilson said:

 . . . but isn’t there room to have such an engine under, say a cruiser platform?

 

I'd like to see you try to fit a Kelvin K2 under the back deck ?.

[frangar]

I guess a turner flat twin would be now classed as “vintage”. We used to have a boat here with one under a cruiser stern...or indeed a sabb.....

[LEO]

One wonders if a BMC 1.5 can now be classed as a 'vintage engine', that would fit under a back deck............why pay a premium for a vintage 'lump' and hide it away?

[Athy]

I was thinking along similar lines: plenty of Lister SR2's and 3's throb away beneath cruiser-stern decks.

 

[frangar]

1 minute ago, Athy said:

I was thinking along similar lines: plenty of Lister SR2's and 3's throb away beneath cruiser-stern decks.

 

I’m a big lister fan but I’m not sure I’d say they Throb.....thump maybe......

[roland elsdon]

5 minutes ago, frangar said:

I’m a big lister fan but I’m not sure I’d say they Throb.....thump maybe......

Rattle.

The reason listers should be in engine rooms is so you can fix things in a timely fashion. Walk up boat past engine spot diesel leak, walk back fix fuel leak, walk past  fix rattling ducting, walk past tighten up manifolds, walk past wipe down another leak, walk past stand back in shock and bang head as there is nothing to do.

 

[Bee]

I looked at an ancient Dutch sailing barge a while back that was never designed as a motor barge, the engine, a Kromhout I think, was sitting in shiny splendour in the 'kitchen' and quite right too.

[robtheplod]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Normally a vintage / traditional engine boat is bought because the owner wants to polish it, cuddle it, tell it bedtime stories and ensure it is safely tucked up in bed at night.

He wants to be able to open the side doors so that when people walk past they go "Ooooo, Arrrrrrr how shiney"

 

 

Yeah doesn't have the same effect on my Beta 43...

[OldGoat]

33 minutes ago, robtheplod said:

Yeah doesn't have the same effect on my Beta 43...

Oh, I dunno,

A Beta engine in shiney green paint and well laid out is a joyous thing, god wot.

 

It's the vintage sound that attracts the gongoozler and most difficult to simulate with conviction....

[Tracy D'arth]

I did see a narrowboat with a BMC 1.8D where 2 cylinders exhaust went down as normal but the other 2 went up a stack, sounded very like a vintage thumper.

[dmr]

A bloke I sometimes work with who knows a fair bit about the sound of engines has always fancied converting a four cylinder engine into a simulated twin. It only needs a camshaft change to make pairs of cylinders fire together and there are lots of companies reworking camshafts for the race/rally market. It would be an interesting experiment but I reckon it might need a bigger flywheel, but thats no big deal.

 

.................Dave

[ditchcrawler]

1 minute ago, dmr said:

A bloke I sometimes work with who knows a fair bit about the sound of engines has always fancied converting a four cylinder engine into a simulated twin. It only needs a camshaft change to make pairs of cylinders fire together and there are lots of companies reworking camshafts for the race/rally market. It would be an interesting experiment but I reckon it might need a bigger flywheel, but thats no big deal.

 

.................Dave

A twin twin cylinder engine.

 

As for engine sound, some years ago I was passing through the RN rally at Napton, more than one of the members  enquired what mooring number I was. Good old BD3 

 

[Bee]

9 minutes ago, dmr said:

A bloke I sometimes work with who knows a fair bit about the sound of engines has always fancied converting a four cylinder engine into a simulated twin. It only needs a camshaft change to make pairs of cylinders fire together and there are lots of companies reworking camshafts for the race/rally market. It would be an interesting experiment but I reckon it might need a bigger flywheel, but thats no big deal.

 

.................Dave

Hmmm, If I got a 6 or even 8 cyl Gardner and did a bit of serious hacksawing I could end up with 3 or 4  two cylinder Gardners, That's a hell of a lot of junior hacksaw blades though.

[dmr]

7 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

A twin twin cylinder engine.

 

As for engine sound, some years ago I was passing through the RN rally at Napton, more than one of the members  enquired what mooring number I was. Good old BD3 

 

In terms of exhaust note there is no reason why your BD3 or my JD3 should not sound very similar to a DM3 or any other vintage 3. Another proposal from my eccentric sound engineer friends was to fit a hospital silencer with the exhaust out of the side of the boat, and then take the air intake through the stack on the roof with suitable resonators on the intake to get the perfect sound.

 

...............Dave

6 minutes ago, Bee said:

Hmmm, If I got a 6 or even 8 cyl Gardner and did a bit of serious hacksawing I could end up with 3 or 4  two cylinder Gardners, That's a hell of a lot of junior hacksaw blades though.

There are a lot of 4 cylinder Gardners about but the 2's are getting rare so this could be a lucrative business. I think an angle grinder might be quicker.

 

................Dave

[ditchcrawler]

1 minute ago, dmr said:

In terms of exhaust note there is no reason why your BD3 or my JD3 should not sound very similar to a DM3 or any other vintage 3. Another proposal from my eccentric sound engineer friends was to fit a hospital silencer with the exhaust out of the side of the boat, and then take the air intake through the stack on the roof with suitable resonators on the intake to get the perfect sound.

 

...............Dave

Why not just have speakers and a sound generator, you could even pass boat with the sound of 1000 rpm when you crawl by or go flat out with a tick over sound. Just think of the fun.

[dmr]

4 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Why not just have speakers and a sound generator, you could even pass boat with the sound of 1000 rpm when you crawl by or go flat out with a tick over sound. Just think of the fun.

Because these people are mechanical engineers ?, I think they also suggested some sort of engine driven noise generator. There were plans a while ago to use a speaker system on some electric cars as they are so quiet they present a hazard to pedestrians, dunno if it actually happened.

 

.............Dave

[ditchcrawler]

12 minutes ago, dmr said:

 There were plans a while ago to use a speaker system on some electric cars as they are so quiet they present a hazard to pedestrians, dunno if it actually happened.

 

.............Dave

A friend has done that on his electric motorbike, one of those 100 MPH things not assisted peddle one.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

Traditionally canal boats don't have engines at all. They are a 20th century innovation, excepting a very few early steam ones. So if you want to be properly traditional you should buy a boat and a horse. There are still plenty of shiny bits on the horse tack to apply the brasso to. You shouldn't try and fix a horse with a spanner though. In particular, altering the leg timing to simulate a two leg clip clop sound, rather than a four leg one is only going to end in tears.

Jen ?

 

[ditchcrawler]

21 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Traditionally canal boats don't have engines at all. They are a 20th century innovation, excepting a very few early steam ones. So if you want to be properly traditional you should buy a boat and a horse. There are still plenty of shiny bits on the horse tack to apply the brasso to. You shouldn't try and fix a horse with a spanner though. In particular, altering the leg timing to simulate a two leg clip clop sound, rather than a four leg one is only going to end in tears.

Jen ?

 

I find the horses around here seem to have a 3/1 beat

[OldGoat]

2 hours ago, ditchcrawler said:

I find the horses around here seem to have a 3/1 beat

And not just the upspeakable chasing the uneatable either...

[ditchcrawler]

5 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

And not just the upspeakable chasing the uneatable either...

We don't have a hunt around here but have lots of riders using the lanes, It can be quite interesting listening to the different rhythms as they walk by. 

[OldGoat]

13 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

We don't have a hunt around here but have lots of riders using the lanes, It can be quite interesting listening to the different rhythms as they walk by. 

Our lanes are used too much by motor bikes, thus the horse and pony traffic keep well away. Even the bridleways up to the Southdowns are not that busy. The local hunt - Jimmy Edwards' hunt as I called it ceased some years ago.

A bit of local colour, now missing and missed.