Another interesting service

[Naughty Cal]

Whilst away in York, the engine hours turned 500, signifying time for a major service. Now the OH has done the rest of the service parts but had never tackled the belts. Four of them intertwined for added difficulty in changing. As it happens the service went smoothly and was completed in 3 hours. Not too bad.

 

Now we turned our attention to the props. These had been on since we relaunched the boat in February, so for us having completed 200 hours they were doing well. They were not however perfect so with next weekends jaunt to Wells on the cards we decided to change them for our spare refurbed set. This we can normally do from our home berth whilst the boat is afloat but this time we ran into a spot of bother. The prop nut in the rear cone had tightened up to silly proportions. No amount of tugging onit would make the bugger come free. So we took the desicion to beach her in the slipway. We moored her on the slipway mooring then lifted the drive and firmy dragged her back as far as we could.

The OH then took a quick paddle and with some more force on the nut managed to free the props. The ducks were a great help as were the fish that kept coming to take a look at what we were doing. Beaching her gave us a good oppurtunity to scrub the outdrive and trim tabs and rams though. The props once removed were not as bad as expected. The 4 blade prop being nigh on perfect and the 3 bladed prop having the ends bent over in a similar fashion on all 3 blades hence the lack of vibrations.

 

 

 

 

Once sorted out the only thing left to do was take her for a test run. In the end we only made it to Saxilby for lunch before turning around and meeting Steve and Chris in the Pyewipe (again :roll: )

 

[Denis R]

A 4 blader and a 3 blader? Any particular reason for this combination or am I being a numpty or missed something in a previous thread somewhere?

[carlt]

Another interesting service

 

I thought you'd discovered the canalside massage parlour.

[Tony Brooks]

A 4 blader and a 3 blader? Any particular reason for this combination or am I being a numpty or missed something in a previous thread somewhere?

 

 

Doesn't this thing have a pair of counter-rotating props on each drive leg? That might explain it, otherwise it might be previous damage was sorted in an expedient rather that proper manner.

[Naughty Cal]

It only has one drive leg (as seen in the photo above) as it only has one engine. The forward prop is three bladed and the rearmost prop is four bladed, they counter rotate and are supposed to produce upto 30% more thrust than a similar set up with a single prop. The three and four bladed prop set up is supposed to reduce cavitation(?)

Edited August 24, 2010 by Phylis

[Denis R]

Wow, that sounds like an excitingly techie fun installation. Mild overkill for wallowing around in ditches I feel, but a Grand Day Out on deep water.

[Naughty Cal]

Wow, that sounds like an excitingly techie fun installation. Mild overkill for wallowing around in ditches I feel, but a Grand Day Out on deep water.

 

It can be an absolute pain for canal or river work. The extra thrust means you cant travel slow enough and the counter rotating props have a habit of picking foreign objects up in between them (last object was a tree that BW had kindly mauled and then thown into the water) were as a single prop may have just thrown them off.

 

Still it does make for good fun on open water.

[PaddingtonBear]

I can't travel slow enough and I haven't got contrarotating props or for that matter an engine that has 4 belts, what is wrong with a good old chain or two?

[Naughty Cal]

I can't travel slow enough and I haven't got contrarotating props or for that matter an engine that has 4 belts, what is wrong with a good old chain or two?

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with chains instead of belts. Our Nissan has a cam chain instead of a belt.

 

However i dont expect there are too many alternators, water pumps, superchargers or power steering systems that are driven by chains.