As Victor would say I DON’T BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!

Now where do we start, from yesterday morning I suppose.

Yesterday started as any other day Paul got up made a cuppa took the dogs out and on his return there was a phone call from Clifton Cruisers to say that our parcel had arrived from Beta as promised. So off Paul went to collect the parcel and two filters which he had on order.

When he got back it was coat off sleeves rolled up. With the plastic pipe still in situ the engine was fired up just to make doubly sure that Paul was on the right track, of course every thing was okay. It didn't take long for the spanners to be taken out of the tool box and the faulty original filter housing was removed.

Original filter housing.

The new filter housing was fitted to the engine and during this time our mates Betty and Graham arrived, as Paul hadn't seen Betty for a few days the obligority cuddle had to be got out of the way before work continued. Graham then sat on the steps and oversaw Paul fitting the pipe work to the new housing, after priming the filter and checking all the nuts and bolts the engine was then fired up. Graham with his keen eye noticed there was diesel laying on top of the housing they assumed that this was residue diesel from the bleed screw although it had been wiped down. The engine was put through its paces and although didn't falter the engine note didn't sound as sweet as it did when the by pass tube was in place. However this was put down to a small amount of air left in the system, engine was left running to see if this cleared which it did.

Filter housing number 2.

After coffee and cake our friends made there way back to town to get the bus to Braunston.  We were certainly popular as about half hour later Del and Al arrived. That Del just couldn't keep away I’m sure it was the thought of opening Pauls tool box that got him all excited. During the boys inspection of the housing it was noticed that the bleed screw and both blanking bolts had a minute weep. These were cracked up but for some reason the weeps persisted although the engine was running as sweet as a nut. Paul put this down to cheap skate manufacturers using aluminium sealing washers instead of copper, back in the good old days they were 3 farthing each they are probably now £3 each.  So it was decided that some new copper washers would be bought from Halfords to replace the aluminium ones, by this time Del and Al had gone back to Derwent 6 to rescue their gammon joint which was left cooking on the fire.

The engine was run last night to charge the batteries but there was no singing sound that had been present earlier in the day and the afore mentioned bolts still had a minute weep.

Come 10 o clock this morning a quick visit to Halfords to buy a selection box of copper washers. ( I prefer a mars selection myself). After annealing the washers with his blow lamp they were fitted to replace the aluminium ones. While Paul was bleeding the filter he noticed that there were diesel bubbles coming up through the casting. It was at this point that Paul thought of what Graham had said yesterday when he pointed out the diesel on top of the housing.

You can just see the casting defect, this housing was then removed for closer inspection.

The scratches are where Paul was using a screw driver in a rag to wipe the housing clean.

The dilemma was now, do we get a new housing today or go back to old school and refit the plastic pipe.  So a quick call to Graham at Braunston to tell him that he was right in what he had spotted yesterday. Graham being the diamond geezer that he is said he would go to Midland Chandlers and purchase a new housing for us and as luck would have it he had a friend arriving by car to visit and Graham hijacked him to run the new housing up to us, thanks Tim.

Filter number 3 was duly fitted on the engine and this one also came with aluminium sealing washers so the copper ones were removed from filter number 2 and fitted to number 3

 

Number 3 piped up, bled through ready to go.

Everything was run through the test procedure and after 2 hours apart from the engine singing away (and me doing the hoovering) everything performed as it should and best of all NO AIR and NO LEAKS.

Obviously this is not a Beta fault but a casting fault during manufacture Paul feels sure that Beta will have to inspect their stock in case there are others of the same batch with the problem. Paul will be liaising with Beta tomorrow and no doubt they will want number 2 housing returned to them and hopefully we will be reimbursed for number 3.

Paul keeps disappearing to check there is nothing amiss although he is confident that its all okay. Final test will be on tonight's charge up and hopefully on our journey tomorrow.

The rum bottle has taking a hit this afternoon, looks like yet another trip to Tesco to replenish the drinks cupboard.

Paul would like to thank all of you who have made suggestions to the possible causes of this ongoing problem lets hope we have finally cracked it.

All I can say is who needs an engineer when you have a Pauly!!!!!!!!