I can not believe this...

We have had a lovely day. We went off happily this morning to the RN open day, there to meet Steve who is returning our pistons, liners and con rods. It was a bit disappointing to discover that Compo wasn't there but apparently he has been getting his knees done too. But it was nice to meet up again with Brian and Allister and David of RN, and drink some rather nice bottle conditioned specially brewed RN beer. There was a barbecue too, at first just inside the works, until it got a bit smokey. The works was looking pristine and Brian's speech made it sound as if there are exciting hings happening there. For a start they are in the process of producing an engine which isn't destined for a boat, but for a domestic combined heat and power unit, that will run on almost any sort of oil. I do think it's still a bit optimisic though, to think that we'll all be able to run our boats on chip fat and waste engine oil, because once the raw suff has run out, I think we'll be at the end of the queue for the substitutes.

Then Steve followed us back to Bill Fen and finally saw and heard the engine in action, and stayed and chatted for a while, then Kevin and Vicky came over, and then Simon and Anne (the Moomins), and then Steve went home and we went over to Melaleuca to look at Simon's engine and couldn't drag Jim away. Then finally we came back to Warrior, sat down with a cup of tea, and I said, did we get our bits back off Steve before he went then?

Did we buggery.

Now how the hell did we manage to forget that, the entire point of the exercise? It kind of puts forgeting oner liner in the shade.

A Pilgrimage

Ashton-Under-Lyne: according to David MacKie in the Guardian (no, I'm not putting a link in; it's not that imortant), a Mecca for tripe lovers. On our travels I did see a retail outlet called The Tripe and Sandwich Shop, but strangely enough wasn't tempted to go in. ('Can I have some tripe please? Oh, and a sandwich ...') Our pilgrimage was not in search of tripe, or any of the other things for which Ashton is no doubt rightly famed, but the National Gas and Oil Engine Company Works. We weren't even sure they were still standing until we got chatting with Guy at Portland Basin Marina where we spent the night of Thursday 17th, but he told us that they were indeed, and that they were nearby, and showed us on a facsimile 1907 map of the area. We were so impressed we bought one. Guided only by this, we set off the following morning, in the rain (ho hum), to seek the very spot where Warrior's engine was built in 1937.

Finding it was a bit of a struggle, owing to a ring road having rather inconsiderately been built at some point in the past century, but find the place we eventually did - and very impressive it was too. Now an industrial estate, the extensive site is still largely made up of the original buildings. Some have modern cladding on, but many don't, as can be seen in the picture. Under the later, painted, names, the words 'National Gas Engine Co. Ltd' can still clearly be seen picked out in the brickwork (although not necessarily in this photo).

It was particularly heartening to see that the site was still being used for manufacturing and appeared to be quite busy and bustling. We got chatting to the people in one of the units, and they let us have a look inside; again, much of the building seemed to be, if not original, then certainly as old as our engine. And we spotted something very exciting. The steelwork supporting the roof was painted in a horrible shade of dirty lime green. We thought that it wasn't unlikely that a company making engines, and having quantities of paint about the place, might use the same paint for the buildings as for the engines ... Of course, the steelwork could have been painted much more recently, but nonetheless I made a careful mental note of the colour.

The following Friday, after we'd arrived at Stretton Wharf and Jim had collected the car from Huddersfield, we went to Wolverhampton to collect the crankshaft (another story) and dropped in on Phil Speight to pick up the paint we'd ordered for the engine, now thinking that it might have been entirely the wrong colour after all. But for some reason it had been made up in coach enamel rather than engine enamel, which was a true blessing in disguise as it meant that we could go back to the drawing board. Phil got out all his colour chips again, and while he and Jim pored over various sensible shades of green, I picked out the one that reminded me most of the engine works. Phil very kindly lent us some of the chips to take away with us and consult further ...

Fast forward finally to our journey home yesterday, when we dropped the crankshaft off at RN in Daventry. Considerable progress is now being made on the engine (again, another story) and it is now in about as many bits as it is possible to reduce an engine to. And on many of the bits that hadn't seen the light of day for decades there were distinct traces of a much brighter, lighter green paint. It matched my chip perfectly. This is enough evidence for us. We are going to stick our necks out and paint Warrior's engine a colour called Muscat. If it does turn out be be wrong, at least we will be able to explain why it seemed like a good idea at the time.

So our morning in Ashton was productive as well as enjoyable and exciting, and I'm very glad we went!

Good news from the men with beards

On Saturday morning the chief wizard, Allister Denyer, from the Russell Newbery Engine Co phoned with the good news that there was progress with phase one of the engine rebuild. Progress in three ways, one, the engine was ever so slowly moving towards completion (only 4 months so far!), two, Allister and I are talking, in fact it is impossible to shut us up! and three the RN Engine Co has at long last, admitted to the value of communicating with their customers. The news is in fact better than even I hoped and certainly better that Allister's initial prognosis. The first part of the first phase which involves the complete dismantling of both the block and the crankcase and the complete steam cleaning of both items is now complete. The block is in remarkable condition and has been crack tested and is one of the best he has seen according to Allister. It just remains to hone out the black rust from the bores which remains after the removal of the liners. It is also remarkable because for the first 17 years of its life it was cooled by sea water as the power plant of a fisheries protection trawler based in Kings Lynn and spent the next 30 years or so sitting on the quayside in the company of a 4cyl Gardner until they were both bought by John Shotbolt in around 1985.
He installed the National in the one and only tug he built, Warrior, in 1995, which he originally intended to keep for himself, but 4 years later was prevailed upon to sell. The Gardner now powers his last boat - Revenge. These two boats were named after the Royal Navy's first two iron clad warships: HMS Warrior is still extant and moored in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Back to the National; following the steam clean inside and out all the residual paint has been removed and both sections have been rubbed down, primed and undercoated ready for me to apply the topcoats of Craftsmaster Paints engine enamel equivalent of Mason's Dove Green which is, after considerable consultation with some of the stars of the old engine fraternity, the nearest we can get to the original National engine colour. Although to be truthful we are being slightly precious here as it is likely that all engines from what ever source were painted with what ever paint was to hand, we however would like to differentiate our unique National from the mid brunswick green used by Russell Newbery.
Next week, after the paint has thoroughly dried, and the honing has been completed RN liners will be slightly modified and then fitted to the block. The crank case and the block then will be ready for the next phase - casting the main and big end bearings in white metal and machining them to the crank which is currently undergoing major surgery at Custom Cranks. This should be ready to be picked up sometime at the end of August, when it will be delivered by me to RN at Daventry. Watch out for the next exciting episode then.

Woo! New engine photos!

Jim has returned from his travels with a new set of engine pictures - see them here in the 'Warrior's Engine' album. All in all the news seems good: the crankshaft is basically sound and the taper will be laser welded and machined to the correct dimensions by the Custom Crank and Engineering Company of Wolverhampton. This will cost (gulp) £900. This is much cheaper than a new crankshaft (sigh of relief). The block seems to be in good shape too. The original cast iron pistons (above) are going to be replaced with new Russell Newbery alloy ones. This is a bit sad, but the old ones are, unsurprisingly, very worn, and we do get to keep the old ones to use as paperweights (or ballast?). Although some people have suggested that it would be OK to replace them with other cast iron ones - assuming we could find some - the balance of opinion is that we can run at higher revs (and that we might want to) with the alloy ones. And some Nationals were built with alloy pistons, so it's not too unoriginal.

Enjoy!

Green paint

Just a quick post today - firstly thanks to Mike for picking up on yesterday's rant and making me feel like part of the blogging community! Secondly, if anyone ploughed through the post about Warrior's engine and thought they detected the odd schoolboy (girl?) error, well all I can say is hopefully they're gone now.

We're off to Braunston tomorrow, armed with a set of paint colour chips in various shades of mid to dark green which we will be holding up to any National engine we can get near enough to. Warrior's engine is currently painted quite a dark green, and a cursory examination hasn't revealed any other shades underneath. While at Daventry we saw two engines - one RN and one National - nearly completed and both painted the same shade of what I think of as 'park bench' green - lighter and brighter than Warrior's. It seemed to me that it would be a bit of a coincidence for a separate company, having licenced the design from RN to make under its own name, to paint its engines exactly the same colour - surely National would already have their colour schemes established?

A trip to Daventry

We took a brief day trip yesterday to Daventry, to visit (aah!) Warrior's engine where it sits in the workshop of the Russell Newbery Diesel Engine Company. This trip was to find out their first impressions of what sort of state the engine's in, and also do do a bit of bridge-building, having got off to a rather shaky start with one of the RN mob who, let us say, hasn't exactly been to the Dale Carnegie school of customer relations - although, to digress here, as I am wont to do, I'm not entirely convinced that it's a bad thing that there are genius engineers (for such, we are told, this person is) out there who don't subscribe to the bland 'have a nice day' approach. Anyway, yesterday we talked mainly to the bearded contingent (David and Ian) who were very nice and helpful; Ian in particular is very good at explaining things, without even seeming to notice he's doing it. So we are now committed to Warrior's engine receiving their expert care and attention, having been told by everyone we've talked to about it that they might be grumpy and miserable, and they might be slow, but that nobody will do a better job.

So what was the verdict? Well, no nasty surprises, at least as yet. The block seems to be in good shape, full of rather frightening sludge, but David says that's normal. The pistons are in OK shape, but we will probably replace them anyway - they need new rings, and they're cast iron, which means they shouldn't be used above 800 revs, which apparently we would want to do, so we will replace them with alloy ones. The crankshaft is going to be thoroughly inspected and sent off to Guildford for an x-ray (aah again) but on cursory inspection looks to be OK. The camshaft is going to be remade on a special machine they have for the purpose (they have a lot of old machines).

We will have a new alternator as supplied by RN. The starter motor, while not original (the engine was originally hand start) is an old and repairable CAV one, in pretty good nick, so that stays. The water pump is a bit more of a poser - the previous owner noted that water pumps were constantly wearing out and it turns out that this is because they were attached to far too large a pulley, making them run about six times as fast as they should. There's no space at the flywheel end to add a smaller one, so we are left with two alternatives. One is an electric water pump, which we'd like to avoid for authenticity's (and reliability's?) sake. The second is that on the front of the engine there is a cover, which apparently covers a spindle that would originally have been used to drive a water (presumably raw water) and bilge pump; it may be that this can be adapted for the purpose provided it won't protrude too far into the gangway. We won't need a fuel pump (it previously had an electric one fitted) as we are having a gravity system installed - they've already made the day tank, although we haven't seen it yet.

The gearbox was quite a nice surprise, in that it turns out to be quite sound. It is (we're told!) an early Bruntons box, 1:1, all metal parts, very simple. It looks like it might require a slight modification to the propshaft to allow some backwards/forwards movement, and this may be why it wasn't engaging effectively before. The gearbox does sport a National plate with the engine number on, which is what led us and previous owners to think it was a National box. We're still pretty sure it's the same box the engine has always had, but was the plate put on by an owner, or were these Bruntons boxes badged by National?

After this successful visit to Daventry we went on to Whilton to have lunch at the garden centre at Whilton Locks, and then we made a move for home - all in all the round trip took from 0730 until 1700 - and we weren't more than an hour at RN. We'll be doing pretty much the same trip on Saturday when we're going to go to Braunston - I've volunteered to drive, as long as my beloved Bluebird is back on the road by then. The cars are another story, but when Warrior news is slack I might get round to it!

Will try to add an engine-in-bits photo later, but I haven't yet joined the world of digital photography so have to wait till I've finished the film and got the pictures back!

Down the Shroppie (1)

Well, we got back a week ago, but I've finally got around to writing this. The trip was a great success, all things considered. The idea was to bring Warrior from Hargrave (Golden Nook) near Chester to Stretton Wharf (near Wolverhampton) where she will be craned out of the water and the engine will be craned out through the roof, loaded onto a trailer, and taken down to Russell Newbery at Daventry for, possibly, a complete rebuild but hopefully something short of that.

Clearly then, the engine is in need of some attention, which is why we approached the trip with some trepidation. In fact, we had never even been able to get it to run consistently before, and hardly ever managed to start it. In the run up to last week we'd had lots of visits and advice from Ian from the Russell Newbery Register, and he turned out for one last time on the Sunday for a final sort out.

So we were holding our breath on Monday morning as Jim wielded the priming tool and and got the valves squeaking and with the (very judicious) application of Easi-Start (everyone's guilty secret) , she started, and didn't stop again for the next ten hours. The main problems, once started, were an unreliable governer (although it wasn't as bad once we'd got started as we'd feared) and an increasingly slippy gearbox, making it hard to control the boat's speed and stopping ability.

To add to our enjoyment, this was the weekend of the working boat gathering at Ellesmere Port, and on our way south we passed many of them going up - literally running into at least one, but they said it had had worse!

On the Monday we cruised for ten hours non-stop (except for locks) getting up the Audlem flight before stopping at 7 pm. The weather was lovely so we made the most of it ar rain was forecast for the next day. Sure enough, Tuesday was wet, but the engine started first time, and we cruised for seven hours before stopping for the night at Gnosall, where we had dinner at the Boat Inn. Nice chips. We passed the other canalside pub on the way but didn't fancy the the smell of chip fat emanating from it. On Wednesday morning Lockboy and I made an excursion into Gnosall to try to find a shop - we eventually found a Co-op, but it was a long way!

So it was on Wednesday, a full day ahead of schedule, that we arrived at Stretton Wharf. With the gearbox really getting out of hand we struggled a bit, but ended up moored behind TV star Dover. We spent all of Thursday there, before setting off by car on Friday to Ellesmere Port. Friday was a lovely sunny day and our day watching the working boats arrive, patronising the beer tent and meeting up with people we met on the way down made it very enjoyable. The museum itself was a disappointment however; the promised 'new' displays were the same ones we'd seen at Christmas. Lovely as the staff are at the museum - and I can't fault any of them - I have to agree with Phil Speight's recent comments (in Canal Boat magazine) about the trustees' priorities.

Warrior's engine

Here is the cause of all the trouble - and what makes it all worthwhile: Warrior's 1937 3-cylinder National engine with matched original National gearbox.

The engine and gearbox came out of a fisheries protection vessel in 1953, and sat on a quayside in Kings Lynn until the early 1980s, when it was bought by John Shotbolt, of Ramsey on the Middle Level, Warrior's builder.

He had it rebuilt (not sure by whom - it's possible he did it himself), and installed it in Warrior in 1995. Warrior was built for his own use, and was the only tug-style boat he built. Only a few years later he was persuaded to sell her, and the rest of her story is still a mystery, until she was bought by her previous owner from a broker a couple of years ago.

In the intervening years the engine hasn't been maintained very well, it would seem. Someone has certainly made a right mess of the kitchen, which will be completely refitted some time soon, and has done some damage in the saloon, although we can sort that out. The original fitting out and finishing, all done by John Shotbolt, is of an amazingly high standard, with terrific attention to detail even in parts of the boat that were never meant to see the light of day. She also has great roses and castles painting which have lasted really well, done by someone called M. Duiker - anyone heard of them? She badly needs a new exterior paint job though. That'll be the last job on the list, when everything else is done and we can decide on a colour scheme.