Bleeding the fuel system for a BMC 1800 marine engine.
Made the video today, after completing the bleed of the engine’s fuel system.
Wasn’t too easy.
Bonnie’s roadworthy
Or canal-worthy again.
Here’s the video for those avid engineers out there….
Month: October 2016
Day 48 – Caen Hill Locks
Diesel hasn’t sorted the engine out, it now needs ‘bleeding’.
Whilst the engineer I spoke to yesterday agreed to make it for 10, his cat was taken ill in the night, and their were some complications and confusions.
These weren’t helped by the fact that my phone was flat and I couldn’t get a signal.
Whatever, I decided to pull the boat down to the next marina.
7 Locks away.
Caen Hill Marina
The boat is now moored in Caen Hill Marina.
I’ve had a chance to tidy her up a bit, and her batteries are charging.
Haven’t had chance to look at the engine – due to the weather.
I’ve got until 2 pm tomorrow to sort it out myself.
It ain’t a great or difficult job.
Bleeding a BMC marine engine
Bleeding is a case of getting all the air from the injection system, by means of manual pumping and turning the engine over.
When you run out fuel, it’s a kind of standard job you’ll find yourself, or someone else, doing.
I’ve got some additional kit and tips off other boaters, and TBH, I’d managed to bleed it through most of the bleed points on the BMC 18,000 engine. I need the power in the batteries to continue the job and finish off.
I’ll have another look at it tomorrow, when it’s not raining.
No pictures or map today.
Day 47 – Devizes – Caen Hill Locks
The biggest set of ‘staircase’ locks I’ve encountered.
29 Locks in 2 miles.
I believe, we got to lock 23, with anther 6 to go…
Ran out of fuel
I dipped the tank at the top, the day before I set out and there seemed to be a good 2 inches in the tank, which I thought would easily power me down to Trowbridge.
Turned out not to be the case. Continue reading “Day 47 – Devizes – Caen Hill Locks”
Day 46 – Honey Street to Devizes
Penultimate day on the boat…. I suspect.
Honey Street is only down the road from Devizes, saw this on the way. Milk Hill I believe they call it.
Weather is only just holding off rain, and cold.
Pass this contraption.
Filled with hi-vis CRT workers.
On the end it has a fork lift contraption and a massive rotating disk. It looks like something out of ‘Robot Wars’.
Honey Street Visitor moorings
I pass by the visitors moorings in Honey Street, which are outside the ‘Barge Inn’.
Impossible to find either on the OS map, or the internet. Probably about 300 yards from where I moored in someone’s back garden.
Devizes
I intend to stay in Devizes for the next couple of days. Continue reading “Day 46 – Honey Street to Devizes”
Day 45 – Great Bedwyn to Honey Street
Woke up in the morning to find the boat on it’s side.
During the night, the pound, (the expanse of water between locks), had emptied out. I can see from my bed that one side of the boat is much lower than the other.
This makes me kind of uneasy, as I don’t know how much water has gone from under the boat.
As I look out of the window, it doesn’t look to be a lot. Still, if I leave it, it will get worse, especially if people come and start using the locks.
Quickly put some clothes on, do an engine check and start the engine.
I can push the stern out from the bank, but not the bow, which seems lodged.
I shove it in reverse, kicking up the mud and gravel and shit, and waggle the tiller a little, which has the right effect.
As I drift backwards, the front end follows, and I drift backward to the safety of the bollards of Potters Lock.
It looks like the pound had emptied by around a foot or so whilst I was asleep.
Moored at the locks, which you’re not supposed to do. Had a bit to eat and got going before anything else could go wrong.
Later on down the pound, a wide beam has run aground on the shallow water.
Earlier on the following day, some large canoeists had been leaving all the bottom paddles up and gates open, now all the pounds are empty.
16 Miles 16 locks
There’re more sets of locks on this Kennet than any other canal.
They’re all double.
Apart from that, they only have one sluice or ‘paddle’, this means that unlike the other double locks on the CRT system, they fill very slowly.
Most double locks have a ‘ground paddle’, which opens and lets water in from the bottom of the lock, and a ‘gate paddle’ that lets water in at the top of the gate, water level.
This has the net effect of creating an even filling of the lock.
These locks are much slower. Painfully slow.
So, I hang around.
