BlueSkyNick
Well-Known Member
The most expensive screw I\'ve ever paid for.
.... no no, not that sort of screw. I mean the little blighters that hold the plate over the raw water impellor. On our boat, I have to sit at the bottom of the cockpit locker, and work through the wiring to the alternator.
A few days ago, I undertook a pre-season change of the impellor, dropped one of the said screws and its gone to the bilges forever. The engine runs OK, and the water pumps perfectly well, but there is a slight drip which also ends up in my nice clean dry bilges, and anyway its not right, like it should be.
Several phone calls to engineers, spares suppliers, dealers etc have failed to identify the required size (need to know part numbers, blah blah), the complication being that the face plate has Volvo Penta stamped on it, even though its a Johnson pump on a Thornycroft engine !! (Dont ask me why!).
So today I find a VP dealer who says he can identify the screw size from the old impellor - which is on the boat, so off I set. True to his word, they have the screws - they are simply 2BA cheeseheads, solid brass etc - so I ask for half a dozen. "That'll be £3.60 Sir" "You're having a Cow-n-calf!" says I. Apparently not - they are 60pence each.
Okay, not a lot of money really, but if I add on about 10 quids worth of petrol, I don't plan to drop too many more into the bilges.
On a more serious point, I would not want to do the job anywhere other than with the boat perfectly still and level, so changing the impellor as a precaution rather than waiting for it to break is very much the right approach, as we all know.
<hr width=100% size=1>I'm average size, Its just that everybody else is short.
.... no no, not that sort of screw. I mean the little blighters that hold the plate over the raw water impellor. On our boat, I have to sit at the bottom of the cockpit locker, and work through the wiring to the alternator.
A few days ago, I undertook a pre-season change of the impellor, dropped one of the said screws and its gone to the bilges forever. The engine runs OK, and the water pumps perfectly well, but there is a slight drip which also ends up in my nice clean dry bilges, and anyway its not right, like it should be.
Several phone calls to engineers, spares suppliers, dealers etc have failed to identify the required size (need to know part numbers, blah blah), the complication being that the face plate has Volvo Penta stamped on it, even though its a Johnson pump on a Thornycroft engine !! (Dont ask me why!).
So today I find a VP dealer who says he can identify the screw size from the old impellor - which is on the boat, so off I set. True to his word, they have the screws - they are simply 2BA cheeseheads, solid brass etc - so I ask for half a dozen. "That'll be £3.60 Sir" "You're having a Cow-n-calf!" says I. Apparently not - they are 60pence each.
Okay, not a lot of money really, but if I add on about 10 quids worth of petrol, I don't plan to drop too many more into the bilges.
On a more serious point, I would not want to do the job anywhere other than with the boat perfectly still and level, so changing the impellor as a precaution rather than waiting for it to break is very much the right approach, as we all know.
<hr width=100% size=1>I'm average size, Its just that everybody else is short.
