Here is the reason my friend's narrowboat stopped driving. He was following the lead of another boat in attempting to get to the water point. Forward and back to crush and split the ice when he lost drive. The coupling had failed in a big way. Fortunately, our wonderful alladin's cave of a chandlery at Tooley's had the appropriate coupling. Here is the replacement.
Of course, the price tag was not his only problem. I gave him the good news that fitting the key was a skilled job. The key steel has to be the correct size and a beautiful slide fit (+0.000" to +0.002" fit) in order to transmit the toorque from the engine to the propeller. It is not just a case of wanging up the nuts and tightening up a grub screw!
"Surely you knew that!" came a voice from the next bar table.
My friend, I hope is now looking for a marine engineer to fit the coupling correctly. One thing he did know was that the nyloc nuts are not re-useable. He has a nice colection of sixteen previously owned nuts to confirm previous sorry attempts at making the coupling couple.
Trying to be an ice breaker is turning out to be an expensive occupation
No comments:
Post a Comment