Tuesday 25th to Thursday 27th August 2020 at Great Haywood and then Aston Marina.
It rained heavily overnight; stormy winds and rain were forecast all day.
M wanted to dry her hair as usual, but the engine refused to start at all. R tried everything that he could think of without success. Eventually he called Anglo Welsh and spoke to Ben. Despite being very busy, Ben came out to find us, carrying his heavy tool box more than half a mile from the nearest road.
Even Ben was stumped and it took him a good hour to get the engine to start at all. Eventually it reluctantly started but again with clouds of smoke, and it would not tick over slowly without running very unevenly. We agreed that we would nurse MM back to Great Haywood where Ben would have proper facilities to investigate. We had to go quite a way ahead before we could wind (turn around) and we suggested we take Ben back on MM but, as he had to rush back to work, he decided to walk all the way back to his car while we went on, turned around and quite slowly made our way back.
Two rather nerve racking hours later, we moored up on the Anglo Welsh service bay. Ben couldn't do anything today but tomorrow is his day off, so he very kindly said that he would come in to help us.
On Monday, we had checked the fuel and the filters and they seemed fine but it seemed likely that there was something wrong with the fuel. The feed for the engine is fed from a fitting a couple of inches above the bottom of the tank, so R decided to open up the normally sealed drain that comes off the very bottom of the tank. This was the result:
It is cloudy with a small amount of black liquid at the bottom. If you shake it, the liquid goes into suspension. It seems likely that this has been sitting at the bottom of the tank for a while and got sucked into the engine.
On Wednesday morning Ben arrived, after we had yet another Big Breakfast. It was his day off, too. What a star!
When Ben pulled the injectors, the injector pins were literally welded in place. The pins should be able to be pulled out by hand, Ben couldn't get them to budge even by putting the injectors in a vice and pulling the pins with pliers. All this happened to new injectors in just one day. It seems likely that whatever is in the diesel worked fine when the engine was running and hot but welded the injectors shut when the engine cooled down.
Ben rigged up a jerry can full of clean diesel connected up to the engine, put in yet another set of new injectors and started the engine up using the jerry can diesel rather than the boat's tank. The engine ran fine and we left it running to get the engine really hot.
In the meantime, the only solution was to suck all the fuel out of the boat's tank (and throw it away), rinse the tank with clean diesel, change all the filters again and then put 100 litres of clean diesel into the tank.
We left the engine running for about four hours and then switched it off and left it overnight to cool down completely.
On Thursday morning, supposed to be yet another day off for Ben, he came back and we tried starting the engine, still using the clean jerry can diesel. It started first time and ran fine. Finally, Ben reconnected the boat's fuel tank and ran the engine on that. Again, it ran fine.
R went and paid Anglo Welsh for the injectors (again), the diesel and for Ben's labour, while Ben went home to his interrupted days off with our heartfelt thanks ringing in his ears. All credit to Ben and to Anglo Welsh, who couldn't have been more helpful.
We decided that we would travel back to Aston Marina as the final test will be to see what happens tomorrow morning when the engine has had a chance to cool down overnight again but this time using MM's diesel tank. At least if there are more problems we shall be in the marina where there is also engineering capability.
We set off back to Aston just as it started to rain so R got wet and M, very sensibly, spent most of the time inside MM, although she did come out for each of the locks and keep R suppied with coffee and cake. Nobody fell in (!) and we arrived back at Aston just after 2:00pm and moored up in our familiar bay, A22.
Tomorrow, we shall start MM to make sure all is well and then drive home. We had to be home by the middle of next week anyway so there wasn't time to go anywhere - so it seems sensible to go back home now.
We will be back on about 7th or 8th September and hope to set off for a second time - this time we hope with no further problems. Watch this space!
Today: 8 miles, 3 locks and 6.9 hours (including engine testing).
Trip: 19 miles, 8 locks and 15.9 hours.
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