oldgregg

No I don't think there was much Honda on a K series! But if you got one of the models that had a Honda engine (complete with VTEC) they were sound. Actually I think with a proper rebuild and upgraded gaskets / cooling system then the K series can be sound as well.

There were quite a lot of Honda bits on the nineties Rovers, so they weren't too bad unless they had the dreaded K series in them... My brother in law had one of those 400's and had it years without too much trouble. The Montego Turbo I have a feeling was not an EFI engine, bizzarely, perhaps due to complexity / budget? I wonder if it was therefore a bit more reliable as mid 80's electronics were not the best. I do seem to remember they were not hard to blow up if thrashed, but then any high-performance engine is like that.

I think the building is fairly close to Grebe Island in Horning, and yes it looks very wonky.

That's an interesting comment. Do you drive an SUV / MPV-type vehicle where you sit quite high?

I guess with a mud berth they just set the lines to the 'low tide' length and then leave them?

Yeah it was, and the car was used for towing a Caravan for a couple of years. I remember just how slow it was up Hawkshead Hill (before the engine rebuild and in reality probably after though we didn't try it again) with the 'van on the back. To be fair, anything other than second gear is overrated anyway, right? It was changed a couple of years later for the gold Cavalier CD, though. Now that was a car!

I've split the rest off this thread off into Car Talk.... Was my fault it went off track!

We had one. I think it was 7 years old when bought and while it wasn't a low-miler it wasn't crazy either. It needed a head-off rebuild of the engine, with one of the inlet valves being bent and having to be replaced. Of course these were pushrod engines (yes really) like on boats, so it was relatively easy. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Indeed. Spot the tiny boat.... And that's a 34ft Aquafibre Sedan.

I think there were some people a few years back who took some narrowboats on the Caledonian Canal. All sounds good until you realise that includes Loch Ness, which is 24 miles long and a mile and a half wide in places and can either be as calm as crossing Barton Broad or like being at sea depending on the weather. When the wind gets up it's not pleasant in an offshore boat so I wouldn't like to try it an a flat-bottomed narrowboat!

Yeah that's been there a few days. It was a LONG way into the roundabout.

I saw this channel pop up on YouTube the other day. Nicely produced and their boat (which is a month old) looks great! Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Don't forget the Austin Ambassador! We really did build some crap in this country. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Also sadly the steering wheel is not square.....

Looks that way!

Yeah I think Ibiza would make a very nice private boat. She's got a fairly large toilet / shower room aft I seem to recall, which is always a plus on a Broads boat.

I was puzzled by that. A D reg puts it as being first registered here in 1997ish (obviously not new), and a mid W as circa 2014. It's possible she came and went, then came back and has gone again, of course. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Is Coryton not on a Beam of Light? Aquafibre Diamond 43 as per the other thread...

The latter, unfortunately. We didn't do anything deliberately to remove pictures, but I do remember there being a problem with one of the scripts when we first started to move things to AWS. Although we spoke to the software vendor about their bug and they ran some processes to clean some things up, unfortunately it had still managed to lose a fair few older images.

Okay - Just being very cautious then I think! Anyway, I seem to remember the Wroxham Bridge Pilot telling me last year that we (Thunder) were the tallest of the ex-Broom Diamond 43's because of our light mast.

That's odd then. Surely even Woods aren't stupid enough to have put a fixed helm chair on the Beams? Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

A Jewel of Light has less curvature to the roof than a Diamond 43, too. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Yeah, it would. We need nearer 8ft 6 with the screens up, though I don't know the exact figure. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Beam of Light are exactly the same basic height as Thunder and Lightning as they were built for the Broom hirefleet back in the 90's. My guess would be that 7ft 2ins is the height to the top of the upstairs helm seat when it isn't folded down as that's the highest point on the boat and easy to forget to fold and damage on a Bridge as one of our owners did that last season. Either that or the helm seat doesn't fold, but that would be a mad thing to fit. Yes Noble Captain is basically a Broom Ocean 38, fitted out by Haines as are most of Manor House's boats. A very nice spacious boat, one of my favourite of the Broom designs. Incidentally, we were held up on our handover because all the engineers had to rush off in a RIB to stop one of the Noble Captains sinking as the hirer had holed it on rocks at the top end of the Lough. It came back strung alongside the RIB with big pumps running and they craned it out straight away to start repairs. We hired Noble Chief 3, a Haines Charter 360. Very spacious inside, but I think a Captain would have handled a lot better. Sent from the Norfolk Broads Network mobile app

Fundamentally it depends whose engine is in it.... Mercedes buy their smaller diesels from Renault, and many manufacturers will buy something for a particular size or application from another company you'd never expect because the cost of developing engines is so high. They'll use terms like "developed in partnership with XX", but fundamentally that just means that one is writing cheques to the other to cover any additional development costs.