Month: June 2017

Bonnie Revival

That’s right!

The Bonnie Journey is to be revived. And finished!

All the way to Lands End.

Not from here in Aldermaston. But from where I left off, Exeter where I sustained my knee injury.

Exeter to Tavistock

I’ll take the train down there. Pretty pleased the weather has deteriorated slightly.

Cycling at 30 degrees isn’t always that comfortable. Especially for upwards of 5 hours a day.

Gets a bit grating.

Journey begins tomorrow, when I will begin bringing you more tales from the road.

Hungerford -> Newbury -> Aldermaston

An outing with the new waterpump.

Works fine.

The problem now appears to be fuel leaking from the bottom of the fuel governor, a mechanism that acts similarly to the carburetor on a petrol car.

Anyhow, that’s not fixable by me at present, and I have to make the boat down to Aldermaston marina for an annual service.

So that’s what I did.

Here’s some photo’s from along the way.

Kintbury Locks.
Kintbury Locks.
Marsh Benham
Marsh Benham
In Newbury.
In Newbury.

BMC 1800 waterpump

Problem.

Just resting in bed one morning, engine running. Suddenly it started making a crunching noise. Sounded ominous.

Ran out and immediately turned the engine off.

This happened twice or three times. A loud metallic crunching sound.

Next day when I started it up, it began overheating quite badly.

Overheating

Most of the coolant ended up squirted all over the engine compartment floor.

When I started the engine, after about an hour, it started ‘boiling out’. The coolant was just boiling off the top of the cylinder heads and being forced out.

This can point to a badly bled system, or a more serious problem with your cooling system.

 

BMC 1,800 marine waterpump

After talking to a couple of people, I was fairly convinced that the problem was with the waterpump.

BMC 1800 marine waterpump
BMC 1800 marine waterpump

Symptoms including:-

  1. Metalic crunching sound; the pump scraping on it’s housing.
  2. Overheating.
  3. No oil in water or water in oil: Not being a problem with the head gasket.

Procedure for removing waterpump

The waterpump resides behind the engine. The fan belt rotates around it, along with the alternator and the drive-shaft.

  1. Loosen screws on waterpump wheel: There are four nuts that need to be loosened.
  2. Loosen alternator: Slacken the belt off.
  3. Remove waterpump wheel: Fully take nuts out and gently lever the wheel from the waterpump. Keep this, you will need it later!
  4. Remove water from your system: Pick the place where the cooling system piping is at it’s lowest. Remove the pipe here and bleed the coolant out.
  5. Remove pipes: There’s a pipe which connects the waterpump to the cooling jacket. Carefully remove this.
  6. Remove waterpump: There are 4 nuts and washers holding it on. Slacken these off and remove the pump.

You should be left holding your old and broken waterpump in your hand.

You may want to dispose of this in the best way you see fit. Continue reading “BMC 1800 waterpump”