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40+ tonnes of Boatshite - engineshite update 9/5/20


coalnotdole

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A friend and I nearly bought a Ham class back in the mid 90s.

M2720 HMS Powderham. Converted at great expense to an inshore survey vessel and renamed HMS Waterwitch. They were asking £30K for her at Harry Pounds yard. We got the finance arranged subject to survey, but couldnt find anywhere to slip her. Due to her size, she needed dry docking and that was going to cost us nearly £10K when you include 2 guys from Lloyds spending 3 days giving her the oce over. We did get to fire up the Paxmans and have a go with the destroyer siren she was fitted with. ??

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  • 2 weeks later...

Right folks, Time for the yearly thread update ?

I'll try to pick up where we left of last february when the stove front had been sent off for re-enamelling..

 

Stove front came back from the enamelers looking very smart:

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Cut lots of assorted stainless bits ready for remaking the fiddle rails and pan clamps that go on the top of the stove:

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I tacked together the modified stove pan;

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With it all safely tacked together I sent the stove pan off to the shot blasters and it came back looking nice and clean:

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I finished seam welding the modified pan together:

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Trimmed down the tiles to fit into the modified front section:

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And to keep the thread vaguely automotive themed I gave it all a coat of calliper paint:

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The following bits of fabrication on the stove are all pretty recent and bring it pretty much right up to date, As it stands right now theres a bit more seam welding to do then I just need to finish off the sheetmetal work for the oven lining and the outer side panels. The fiddle rails and a few other little bits need welding up too then its time to stick it in the boat and reassemble it all for the final time.

 

Original stove back castings:

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Stainless (316) copy starting to take shape:

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I got my local cnc plasma guy to cut a load of copys of the lugs on the original castings out of some 12mm stainless plate:

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Replica firebox support/ashpan side:

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Tacking stuff together and test fitting panels it starts to take shape:

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Some of the panels I got a local engineering firm to fold in their brake press to minimise the fabrication required:

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Original back panel and rear flue:

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Stainless copy:

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Right hand side panel during early stages of fabrication:

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Front and top castings test fitted onto the new inner assembly:

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Stainless cut ready to fabricate the last few panels:

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Welded:

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And assembled into position:

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Detail showing how the front casting attaches to the inner panels:

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The stove project sort of sums me up really - I've taken a job that needed doing and rather than just fitting some repaired cast iron parts which would probably have lasted a couple of years I've specced everything to an obscene level thus managing to make it take over a year, £2k of materials, countless hours of labour and its still not finished!

How well the stainless will hold up to the heat around the firebox is also a bit of an unknown, I'm fairly confident it will perform as well as the original castings and hopefully suffer less from the damp that seems to form between the panels when the stove is not being used during the summer which has historically caused the cast iron panels to rust and stress themselves causing them to crack. I've also gone for a ceramic fibre insulation to replace the original rockwool lagging that goes between the inner panels and the thin steel outer casing.

 

Talking of thin steel outer panels - I've made a start on folding up replacements for them out of stainless too!:

420.jpg

 

Cheers for reading!

 

Dave

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8 hours ago, motorpunk said:

Great thread. Apologies if you've already mentioned, or would rather not,  but is this moored on the IoW? I'm sure I've stayed in that Premier Inn in the background of one of the pics shown. 

Thanks for the updates :)

Yes I'm IOW based. Depending on how long ago it was you stayed at the premier inn I may owe you an apology for antisocial noise pollution ?

Think they probably breathed a large sigh of relief when I moved across the river and stopped running a air cooled lister genset outside their back window!

 

 

26 minutes ago, lexi said:

Are you using the oil cooled welder and stainless rods for the welding?...........or Tig?

All welded using the oil cooled set and 3.2 and 2.5mm 316l rods.  If I had a Tig  set I would probably have used that instead - Although where its all 6 and 8mm thick plate I'm using I'm not sure it would have been all that much better from a distortion point of view.

I stitch weld it and then go back across and seam weld it by filling in between the stitches to try to limit the amount of heat I get into each panel but still end up spending as much time on the fly press straightening out the panels as I do welding them!

 

Cheers

Dave

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I love this thread .

 

I also hate this thread as it highlights to me that i am a useless procrastinating turnip.

Here is a pic of my kitchen stufa, i wish the quality inside was anywhere near yours, also highlights the fact that it has taken me more than 6 months to re do the chimney,  and i have still not done it so missed all winter.

20191120_121951.thumb.jpg.d74a4624a03dd74263058012aebd76a9.jpg

 

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Engine overhaul update!

As covered earlier in the thread my gearbox oil cooler rebuild snowballed into a full cooling system strip down. Which then extended into stripping down the exhaust manifold, and once I was at that stage it seemed silly not to whip the heads off and do a top end decoke.

As per usual its not all gone as smoothly as it could and its still partially in bits!

 

Heads all removed:

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No2 piston crown looking rather manky and pitted:

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Lets have a look at the head off no2 cylinder:

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Well that explains the pitting on the piston crown then! The crack between the exhaust valve seats goes through into the waterway - just as well I decided to pull them and that I bought all those spare heads eh?!

 

Injectors pulled from the heads:

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Nozzle holders are showing some serious corrosion on a couple of the injectors too:

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Some of the spare heads pulled out of a crate ready to clean up for use - These are some of the random ones I bought a year or two ago, there's also a set of six boxed ones complete with all the rocker gear etc but I've figured it makes sense to keep those in stock and use up the unboxed ones first.

If your thinking they look very shiny that's because they're some exciting variety of low magnetic stainless intended for use on minesweepers:

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To get the rocker shafts out of the rocker cases theres a couple of allen headed grubscrews which unfortunately appear to have heads made out of brittle cheese - only one came out using an allen key and heat, the rest the allen sockets just cracked into six pieces leaving the rest of the grubscrew down the hole.

First four came out ok with some careful drilling:

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Last one didn't ? Luckily I have two spare rocker housings so this i'snt the end of the world:

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Rocker gear and other ancillary bits stripped off the heads awaiting cleanup:

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New heads were marked up and the valves stripped out ready for putting it all through the parts washer:

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With the parts cleaned up it was time to reassemble the cam followers:

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Bit of grease to hold the needle rollers in place during reassembly:

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Reassembled heads stored ready to fit to the engine:

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And assorted hardware cleaned up:

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New head/liner nuts and washers:

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I've also finally got round to fitting the right cam plate to the raw waterpump, bedded in on a nice bit of Stag Red. Something about this stuff means no matter how hard I try it ends up everywhere and on everything:

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Oil Filter and Cooler finally refitted to the engine:

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And finally a shot showing the top of the block partially cleaned up ready for the heads to go back on:

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As I've stripped the top end down its become apparent that whoever did the last rebuild at Rolls Royce in Crewe had an unhealthy obsession with PTFE tape - every head stud had it wrapped around the threads - Despite the studs that need sealing being fitted with copper washers, In one case there was so much tape used that it had cracked the tube nut when they had torqued it down.

The oil feed pipes between the rocker shafts have Oring seals, again ptfe wrapped around every one with bits of tape clogged up inside the oil ways in the rocker arms!

Same with the cam follower retainers which are fitted with copper washers and nylocs anyway...

Getting parts has been a bit of a mission for some of this - Rather than resorting to ptfe I've had a company in the midlands make me up a batch of annealed copper washers in the correct thickness and diameter for the liner studs,  I managed to get Gatwick Distribution Services to track down a few sets of the later improved sealing rings for the head to block waterways, something that seems to have been developed so late in the day they don't actually appear in any of the parts lists. I've also got a new set of injection pipes somewhere en route as my original ones are a mismatched set fitted to an odd set of injector bodies and don't all fit my spare set of matching injectors!.

The joys of owning a 55yo engine that's not had mainstream parts support since the eighties! I think Rolls Royce had the contract to rebuild them up until about 2000 but presumably it was more a case of "stick it together" and send it back out to sit in a RN Depot somewhere rather than actually taking any pride in what they were doing.

 

Cheers All,

Dave

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Interesting seeing the innards of the power unit and seeing the differences between Foden and Detroit's approaches to making a big old two stroke.

Far more conventional fuelling setup rather than the odd throttle actually attached to the injectors themselves - and the attached risk of a single sticky injector being able to jam the whole fuel rack wide open - that Detroit used.  

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  • 1 month later...

Brand new cam followers were fitted to my DS engine when it was rebuilt. Within two weeks the tappets were chattering like Granma's false teeth. So it was back to the old ones which have been fine ever since. I presume that they neglected to case harden the new ones as proper engineering is a lost art.

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This thing: 

DDA2B427-7939-4585-8D11-476C65170B0E.thumb.jpeg.59d59f9cd71769b5d0cf5a83c641213c.jpeg

Originally had a similar Foden 105bhp FD6 - I’d have loved to have heard it run as built. In 1971 the Foden lump was pulled out and replaced with a Gardner 6LW (and later a 180bhp 6LXB). Unfortunately the one flaw with the Gardner lump is that it is very low-revving, and the loco is geared for the higher-revving FD6. It now does 18mph flat out and deafens you in the process as there is no silencer fitted. I suspect the Foden lump was gotten rid of mainly because of the problem with getting bits for them, the Gardner lumps were easier, cheaper and quicker to get bits for.

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6 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

Less likely to need bits either. Time for another engine swap and change it to a Cummins out of a DAF45? That would get the max revs up a good bit.

If it were purely a tool for a job then yes (though more likely an L10 rather than a 6BT), but Uproar (as it is known) will probably stick with Gardner power for the foreseeable mainly because everyone enjoys being deafened by it. There were mutterings from a few people about finding an FD6 to put back in if we wanted to go proper ‘heritage’ with it but it’s just too useful to go sticking an unusual and awkward to get bits for engine back in. The loco is ex-RN (Chattenden & Upnor Railway in Kent), apparently all the RN Hibberds were originally FD6-engined. I wonder if that was to try and standardise on one engine type for different applications (obviously allowing for differences like the boat versions being marinised?)

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2 hours ago, spartacus said:

Great thread. Just pulling the required parts from our Aga to clean it is enough for me, I'm in awe of the lengths you're going to with your stove. Is the cracking a problem with those specifically, or just when used on a boat?

I got the impression it was because the wrong fuel was used and it burned too hot for the stove.

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  • 1 year later...
On 5/9/2020 at 8:05 PM, coalnotdole said:

 

The joys of owning a 55yo engine that's not had mainstream parts support since the eighties! I think Rolls Royce had the contract to rebuild them up until about 2000 but presumably it was more a case of "stick it together" and send it back out to sit in a RN Depot somewhere rather than actually taking any pride in what they were doing.

 

Cheers All,

Dave

Any progress Dave?

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  • 4 months later...
  • 8 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Well..... 

3.1/2 year thread bump required I guess!

I still have the boat, The engine went back together ok and I last ran it up and moved the boat onto a different mooring about 8 months ago (to make space for a paying customer on the pontoon mooring I was previously on). 

Two years ago I bought a house which has turned into something of an epic project (Built in 1776 and bodged up repeatedly ever since) so a lot of my time has been involved in rebuilding walls and foundations using expensive odd sized bricks and lime morter and making up replica 17th century oak frames and wrought iron leaded casement windows. As well as that one of my previous relationships got rekindled and survived about two years before crashing and burning again which took up a lot of my energy and then afterwards left me a bit broken and on AD's for about six months.

 

The Boat has been sat looking a bit forlorn during this process - the plan has always been to get the house to a stage and then spend a summer working on the boat to finish the main outstanding jobs and then probably look to sell it on as I don't have the need for it or the time to maintain it really. which summer that will be I'm not sure as its slipped twice already!

 

Since the last post on this thread I did make up and install the aft/rear bulwarks and make up all the stainless knees for the forward ones. Main outstanding jobs really are forward bulwarks, cockpit floor, refit the stanchions/handrails around the edge of the deck and fit the upper rubbing strake. I have all the materials for those jobs already stored away ready so its just a case of time and weather really.

Hopefully I'll manage a photo update at some point before the next 3 years!

 

Cheers,

Dave

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2 hours ago, coalnotdole said:

Well..... 

3.1/2 year thread bump required I guess!

Dave

Great news  - seriously this lack of update has kept me worried and awake at nights...

9814ee3e-09be-4bd4-ae44-3692a5146bf4_500

Of course, you know now, that we need a 1700's house thread as well....

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