How to change a fuel filter | Lister ST3 Fuel Filter

Over last weekend I thought Sirius had an exhaust leak until I realised that it was infact a fuel leak. The seal on the fuel filter had failed and hence it was dripping (well at one stage spraying) diesel onto the hot engine and then it was smoking.

I have ordered 3 new filters from Online Auto Spares who are a business selling engine parts via eBay, excellent service and Graham who has been emailing me is obviously very knowledgeable, thanks Graham!

Here is a photo of my Lister ST3 and the offending fuel filter:

The fuel filters are very easy to change:

1) Turn off your diesel supply
2) Undo the nut on the top of the fuel filter (make sure you put something underneath to catch any diesel inside the filter.)
3) Remove the filter (make sure you don't loose the spring inside!)
4) Give the filter bowl a good clean with some kitchen roll or rag
5) Refit the filter using the new rubber seals provided with your new filter
6) Don't over tighten the nut

Bleed the Engine (I.e. get rid of the air in the fuel line)

1) Open the small nut just above the fuel filter as shown in the view from above.
2) Turn over the engine until fuel starts to come out of the hole and then re-seal it
3) If you have further bleed points do the same again
4) Then turn over the engine until it starts, simples :)

I hope this helps someone!

England's five best canal holiday routes

There was an article on Times Online today by Terry Ramsey about his five favourite canal holiday routes. I wonder how they compare to others? Feel free to leave some comments about your favour canal routes :)

Narrowboat Wardrobe | DIY repairs | Completed

As you may have seen from a previous Narrowboat Wardrobe post one of my many DIY jobs to do on Sirius was to mend the wardrobe doors, well you'll be glad to hear that I have finally finished and the repaired doors are now hanging :)

The only problem which you will notice if you look at the photo below is I have some how managed to loose three of the slats, so there is a small gap at the bottom of the left hand cupboard door, opps!

Double Bridge Naish Hill Lacock | Official opening by the Duchess of Cornwall

The Duchess of Cornwall is to open a newly restored double bridge on the Wiltshire and Berkshire Canal next Tuesday (26th May 2009)

I actually found this article on Twitter and the original article can be found on the This is Wiltshire website.

You can find more information about the event on the Wilts and Berks Trust website, the following page might not exist after the event: The Official Opening of Double Bridge Naish Hill Lacock

I hope I still have my Narrowboat when this link is finally finished :)

Narrowboat Directory - Looking for ideas / feedback.

I am currently building a new website which I am hoping to launch in July 2009 which will be available on the following URL:

http://www.NarrowboatDirectory.com


As you can probably tell, the idea of the website is to be a directory of all Narrowboats in the UK. I have the current listings from BW, EA & the Broads Authority which are all pretty poor when it comes to database design. E.g. The BW database has approx 12,000 Narrowboats but it has approximately 3,500 different Manufacturer names!

So, a simple bit of maths tells you that there must be something wrong, it's unlikely that there were so many craft builders and even less likely that on average they only built 3 boats each.

A couple of weeks ago I dug deeper into the data and realised it was a real mess, but you'll be glad to know I am sorting it all out and creating a new database with a unique list of Craft builders, so when my new site goes live you will actually be able to see all the boats manufactured by the same craft builder!

Of course with 12k+ boats I may make the odd mistake, and of course my source data may well be wrong in the first place!

What I am hoping is that some of the people who read my blog and own Narrowboats might actually be interested in my new site? If you are, I would be really interested to get some feedback comments with your ideas of what sort of information I should store related to each of the boats?

My medium term goal is to allow boat owners to update their own records with things like links to their blogs / websites. Contact details (not public) to allow easy contact (i.e. a forwarding service for messages)

What else would you as Narrowboat owners like to see in a Narrowboat Directory?

If you have your own blogs, it would be great if you could link to this article to try and increase the amount of feedback it receives, thanks everyone in advance!

Narrowboat Wardrobe - DIY Repairs

The next phase of my DIY on Sirius is to repair the wardrobe door and give the wardrobe a good clean! As you can see from the photo I took yesterday, it really needs both :)

The left hand wardrobe door fell apart a couple of years ago, but I have all the bits and a couple of clamps and some wood glue, so hopefully I will be able to put it all back together again. Then the cupboard will need a really good clean as I was storing wood and coal in the cupboard ( no idea where I am going to store it now! )

As soon as I have sorted it out I will create another blog post with the results so watch this space :)

Google Tasks or Remember the milk?

I have been using Remember the Milk for a few months now for trying to manage my tasks, both related to my job working for Ava (who produce Temporary Staff Agency Software) and also for day to day tasks like repairing the floor on Sirius!

I saw today that Google have announced they are now providing Task Lists in Google Calendar which I am sure will effect companies like Remember the Milk.

For me though, Remember the Milk still has the edge as they have an excellent little iPhone application that allows me to check my tasks whereever I am, and it also allows tasks to have a location associated with them, so I can see what are the closest things I need to do at any time. So for any of you travelling up and down the cut in your boats with an iPhone, it could be useful to you too, i.e. Remember to buy XYZ at a certain boat yard, or Milk at the next Tescos :)

Narrowboat Bedroom Floor Repaired - Part 1

I have been meaning to upload a couple of photos for over a week now! I have been busy as my younger brother decided to beat me to it and he married Linda over the bank holiday weekend, they were very lucky with the weather!

A friend Dave and I ripped up the very rotten flooring in the bedroom on Sirius and built a new supporting structure which is fixed down onto the Narrowboat steel. Most of the floor boards are now fixed on top of this structure, I just have a little bit more to do, I thought I would post some photos today showing how far we have got, and then when it's all finished and TIDY ;) I will post some better photos :)