Dowty Owners Club

[Guest]

Sorry can't help you but my first boat was a Dowty Turbocraft - straight six marinised Ford Zephyr engine of about 85hp and a jet drive. I recovered her from the bottom of the harbour at Tarbert Loch Fyne and completely rebuilt her. She was old then and that was in the early eighties. I still have a couple of pictures of her.

Nick

 

[Guest]

Sounds exactly what I've got, this used to be my father-in-laws and hasn't been used for at least 20 years, some kind person has removed all the chrome fixtures, so any photo's would be great, at least I would then know what I was looking for in the shed. Do you have a scanner or digital camera, so I could have a copy.

So I take it you've been into diving then ?

Cheers

Dave

 

[Guest]

I used to dive a bit in my youth but I simply recovered her at low tide by bailing out taking her out on a trailer when there was enough water. When I got her she was white with red antifouling. I repainted the hull dark blue and the deck mid blue with white antifouling. Spares were very hard to come by and mostly were derived from breakers yards. I would guess that source will not yield much as there won't be many pre 1964 Ford Zephyrs around. After 64, Ford changed to a V6 engine so if you have the straight six, I would guess that she is around 35-40 years old. On the other hand, it was a very simple engine and pretty robust. It does, however, need 4 star which is not easy to come by and I am not sure if it can be converted to unleaded. For spares you could try the specialist mags for old car restorers.

The big problem I had was with the jet drive where anodes had not been replaced and the thing was very badly corroded. It required quite a lot of specialist help to rescue it, including re-casting some parts using the old bits to model them. The cable connecting the reversing bucket was broken but that was replaced by a standard marine part from J N MacDonald in Glasgow.

In the end, I replaced the jet drive with a reconditioned one from Lancing Marine but then the engine did'nt match (power wise) the new drive and I thought of replacing it with a marinised Cortina 2 litre engine but I just could not face it so traded her in against a little Shetland cabin cruiser with a reliable outboard.

When she ran (which was not often) she was good for about 35knts with a huge rooster tail when flat out.

I have one picture which is not brilliant on my computer so send me you e-mail address and I will let you have it.

Nick

 

[Guest]

Anyone know how to contact the Dowty owners club ?

Cheers

Dave

 

[Guest]

I've done some more digging and discovered that my jet unit doesn't need a reverse bucket, it's got a gate which slides down before the steering plates, so I suppose it won't steer in reverse ? Also, I contacted ultadynamics, who are going to send me a maintenance manual, there are extremely helpful and went well out of there way to try and track down spare parts, in fact I'm very very impressed by this.

Cheers

Dave

 

[Guest]

The bucket came down over the steering vanes on mine but to be honest, it did'nt steer very well going astern. On a small boat like a speedboat this does'nt matter too much as it is often more effective to just keep a couple of paddles on board to use to get the thing pointing in the right direction initially.

Good luck

Nick