Gordon

We had both a lazy starter and he isolator switch on our old Calypso. At separate times that is A replacement or refurbished exchange starter for the 4108 was a scary price but refurbishment via Boulters was a very cheap. Never did understand the vast difference in price between a refurbished exchange starter and having your own rebuilt Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Having worked in a white goods service centre Jenny will not run the dishwasher whilst out of the house. Neither would her boss. Seen and heard of too many catching fire Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

you have got to be very aware of the costs and whether you can afford it. However if you can afford it don't get too bogged down in the comparisons between owning hiring or syndicate cos sometimes you just gotta let your heart rule your head Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

On the subject of lubrication. I keep a spray can of caravan cassette toilet seal spray on the boat. It is magic on keeping sliding windows free and easy it also seems fairly good at keeping the toilet seals in order. I. Would like to think it puts off the evil day when they need changing. If you are a caravanner I. Was told it's the exact same stuff as awning rail lube but cheaper. Been using it for that for years

Hi Gary welcome aboard. Yes there are a few of us about. Hope we are not guilty of hi jacking the thread for an old PO mans rememiscence. The message of the thread still remains. Respect those batteries they have more than one way of killing you

Did those big boys have electric start? I remember a pair of Blackstone three phase half mega watt generators being installed in an exchange basement and these had compressed air start. No idea how that worked I assume a pressure vessel must have been kept blown up all the time

Absolutely but it must be emphasised that all charging is dangerous. Hydrogen is always produced hopefully is escaped pretty instantly

An amusing anecdote from schoolboy chemistry days. As many will remember the test for hydrogen is a lighted splint held at the mouth of a test tube the result was a harmless squeaky pop. Now on one open day one lad was given the job to demonstrate this he happily sat generating his hydrogen filling it by bubbling into the test tube through water and applying the test all good fun and quite safe. However the head came round with the dignitaries ,if I remember it was chairman of governors and the mayor. Protocol dictated that the pupil stops immediately and exchanges conversation with the honoured guests. Perfect timing he had got the hydrogen into the tube and by the time the worthys were ready to observe he continued. Because air had got in the resulting explosion of the glass tube over the mayor was well worth it. I believe the chemistry master proudly related this tale to schoolboys for the rest of his carreer.

Cor some scary stuff here. It just goes to show familiarity breads contempt. Just check out how little current it takes to cause cardiac or respiratory failure. Roughy a few tens of milliamperes less than it takes to light a torch. Do the sums a 10 watt inverter (if you could get one ) has the potential to kill. Even one of those innocent little inverters that plug into a lighter socket could be lethal. The most expensive inverter in the world won't differentiate between a human connected fully across the 240volt output and an appliance. As someone already has said neither with a trip. As for batteries. Yes those little bubbles are hydrogen. As already stated fun to play with but mixed with a little air becomes a lethal bomb. In my earlier days with Bt large glass lead acid batteries were used for all sorts if things and the bank of batteries to start a standby generator were a bank of 12 cells all made of glass and each cell was very big. These were kept under a careful maintenance charge so did not appear to gas. I did witness the aftermath of an explosion whereby the engine went to start an internal fault in the battery caused a spark. There were shards of glass and acid all over the room. Anyone who had been there to test run the engine ...well shudder to think. We were then sent round to top the water up well above the links within the battery to limit the hydrogen. Later they decided that was silly and took a load out. Then jelly cells were inventedi

On the subject of road vehicles I have a Mazda 6 it is the first car that I have ever had where the oil on the dipstick goes up not down. There is an X on the dipstick above the max point where you should change the oil. This is something to do with short journeys and injecting oil to burn the deposits out of the DPF. And it does go up to that mark. Bearing in mind some people never have their vehicles serviced and rarely check the oil why do we not see more problems. With regard the post 2000 business the last vehicle I heard of running away was a 54 plate Ford Explorer regularly serviced. This was probably due to an issue with the turbo rather than the injector pump

Oh I believe you. Those old Perkies and BMCs are noisy and rattly enough. I just cannot imagine the terror of watching and hearing one trying to rotate at 5 or 6k. I think some of those with theories on stopping one might have second thoughts when confronted by the beast. Me? I would be a as far away as possible.

Thanks for that Mowjo. That is about how I understand it. So maybe both issues are being mixed up on this thread. It appeared that there was an opinion that fame free diesel was an answer to the seal issue which is to do with the sulphur. I am assuming that wherever you buy your fuel it will have lower sulphur and an element of bio diesel. Is that correct?

Can we clarify this please for a simple thicky like me. As far as I was aware there were two issues bothering us boaters. One was the lowering of the pump lubrication due to low sulphur content. The second issue is the adding of bio diesel which I thought was the cause of the black gunge. Blocked filters etc virus bug or whatever you like to call it. So what is this FAME free stuff And if it's no bio is it fact good for less diesel bug rather than the pump problem. Have we got two issues mixed up here?

I somehow cannot imagine laying on the floor reaching into the engine bay trying to suffocate a shaking rattling noisy beast that is racing away at a terrifying speed

I haven't read any of the road vehicle threads but I could imagine that trying to stall a racing engine would not be easy. Could it trash the transmission? As far as choking the air inlet of a diesel I bet that isn't easy certainly that old lister in the 70s wasn't having any of it how much air does a Bmc 1.5 or 4018 gulp in a short run. I bet it's boatloads. Rather than cobble up air cut offs. How about having a co2 extinguisher ready in the engine bay if run away is a concern. You can get em for a tenner on eBay. Do you reckon it would work. I was told it soon stopped that old Lister genny

Wonder if Clive can confirm this please as its where I get my fuel from. A deisel engine "running away" must be a truely scary thing. The first incidence I heard of was on an old Lister standby generator when I was an apprentice. The guy was test running this, old but very low hours engine, when it took off of its own accord, despite the noise in a confined space he attempted to stop it by stuffing a rag in the air filter which only resulted in the filter "eating his rag" and the filter box collapsing. He stopped the beast by emptying a CO2 extenquisher into the remains of the filter. Shortly after that we received a safety memo saying emphatically never to try to stop such an event.. Roughly translated as If the engine runs away so should you! Suprisingly its does not appear to be over common on road vehicles, although we did have it happen to a Ford Explorer about 10 years ago.. I was thinking about this a few weeks ago as I have a deisel Mazda, the only vehicle I know where the oil level on the dipstick actually rises, this I understand is due to deisel being injected to burn out the DPF deposits, surely this must be an issue on older, poorly maintained cars that do lots of short journeys. As previously stated, yes you can smell the deisel in the oil.

We had gas lighting at home downstairs and no lighting upstairs. Gas lighting,fuelled by Calor gas was installed throughout the house but was never working initially. I recall a man arriving when I was about four years old to repair the lighting but declared there were too many leaks to get upstairs working. Yes they were noisy but being used to lighting the house with two Tilley lamps we were used to it. Not sure how safe it was but Mum was convinced that gas lighting did her plants no good. Cannot recall her expressing the same concerns about her kids. As for boats. We hired them throughout the 60s and they had battery lights. I have however been in caravans with gas lighting. Did the mantles survive being towed?

I quite agree Jonzo. My "blue pencil" remark was to illustrate my belief that forum mods should have total support in ,for want of a better word," censoring" comments that they believe bring the forum, its contributors or any other injured party into disrepute. The WWW is a powerful tool and is too often used as a powerful weapon. We see on all forums and this and the NBF are no exception where someone who has had a less than satisfactory customer experience has vented their anger on open forum. There are two sides to every story and proper process to follow to resolve a dispute. This can be unfairly damaging to a business or an individual. Forum mods are often accused of censorship and restricting free speech however there is a very fine line between free speech and cyber bullying. Forum mods are severely lambasted for intervening, but they have a job to do and should be able to do it appropriately without harsh critisism

Perhaps it's time that our mods wielded the blue pencil and deleted this thread. It does this forum no favours at all by criticising any other forum management and the individual posts thereon. As far as I can see the issue boils down to a document being released before it was ready. Gets corrected and all is sorted. I am sure that there are those who post on both forums who are convinced that it is simply like a group of mates sitting round a table in a Norfolk pub having a private chat. No it is a global medium visible to million

For the higher HF bands the roof rail on a bathtub is very useful to tune against I have had good results on 40 metres and above using a moonraker SPX 300 multiband mobile whip clamped to the rail with an ordinary car roof rail mount. Might be a good idea not to transmit when anyone is likely to touch it though. Rail is clearly too short for 80 and 160

Hi Little sprite. Well sure we gotta try but What I was saying is we have to be realistic. On the first point, not sure if even I would go as far as advocating hanging for nicking a boat. Anyway I am not going to be the one who is responsible for diverting this thread onto a rant about soft penalties. No doubt someone will before it's done. It almost went sideways into a "plod bashing"

Not sure that unless it's a seagoing vessel that could go a long way leaving a limited amount of fuel in the tank would help. Apart from the condensation issue mentioned by Lori we could get ourselves into all sorts of problems trying to run on the water and crap in the bottom of the tank Also just a couple of gallons would get the "poor misunderstood individual" to get as far as they would like. As far immobilising it as previously mentioned is hardly possible on an ancient engine they can be started without needing to go anywhere near the keyswitch. Let's face it the scrotes can override the sophisticated immobilisation of a modern car Turning the fuel off could be effective but once again the owner could run the risk of catching themselves out and get out onto a tidal river and not be able to restart without a lengthy bleed of the system On the subject of theft from full tanks I don't believe trying to lock the tank is a good idea. It's not really possible to do so in a way that would keep anyone other than an honest person armed with nothing more robust than a feather out. I would rather lose a few gallons of fuel than suffer a damaged boat and lose the fuel as well

I believe it is possibly an accepted technique in some cases to drill small holes in thermostats to allow air to bleed through. I am however willing to believe there are those that would do so rather than replace

Wot no fenders?

Just a thought on the cheaper ropes at jumbles. I few years ago I bought a couple of mooring ropes , I can never remember which plastic is which. Anyway I paid about £50 for two ropes about 7 metres each with a loop spliced each end I must admit the price made me smart a bit. The following year I bought two seemingly identical ropes at Newark Jumble. Nothing wrong with them as such but they have gone a bit fluffy with a few bobbles whilst the expensive ones are still mint