An Engine Disaster but not for long! Last part...

 After a week of being in the workshop in Manchester, our beloved Gardner 2LW was ready for collection, but not before the offending crank damage was revealed!

Apparently, it was a cruel twist of fate that we should suffer a crank failure.  Nothing to do with his (or my for that matter!) thrashing of the motor.  Just one of those things...

In the workshop looking like a new £12,000 Gardner engine!!

Cheesy picture of me (to give scale!) against the huge engine in the hire van on Richard's marathon pick up session from Manchester.  He had set off at 4.30am to avoid the traffic and was back in the yard for 10.30am!

Safely unloaded onto the bank 

Hoisted into the engine room once again and the roof replaced, Richard was ready to get started bringing her back to life.  (He did a cup of tea and a sandwich first)

A short video of the engine now running and Richard tweaking where needed tweaking.  Sound quality is rubbish as (we discovered later) the screen cover on my phone had a flap over the microphone!  But you can just make it out...

A few hours of checking temperature and other techy mechanicy stuff later and we were off!   Bye for now Paul and Viv Barber, thank you for being our saviours in our hour of need (Old Skool boaters proper!) and we'll see you in March for blacking and welding jobs as originally planned!

Turning the tight corner out of Sheetstores yard on the Erewash Canal, we had to go a little way to the winding hole to turn, which would return us past the yard and onto the Trent.

Winding after breasting up

So back we travelled and nearing the lock past the lovely houseboats

Trent lock drops our boats down onto the river which was just in the green, after a period of amber levels.  As you venture out onto the river, the flow takes the boats left, so to aim for the far bank and slacker water is the plan.  On this occasion, we turned right against the flow and had a fairly steady and graceful (I wouldn't go so far as enjoyable, as this river always needs a fair amount of respect!)  plod up to Sawley Cut

Another very quiet video.  A 360 of our plod up towards the lock where we moored up for the night just before the heavens opened......

An Engine Disaster & A Nervous Wait! Part 3

Now we were in a better place to remove the engine from the boat, Richard completed the process of stripping all peripheral components off the engine.

Next he prised the wood panelling from the ceiling - none of it came off cleanly.  It will require completely replacing, but that isn't a priority for a while.

Luckily, all the bolts holding the engine hole hatch down came undone with no sagas!

Almost ready for hoisting through the cabin roof

Tied securely with ratchet straps ready for lifting

And there she goes, slowly and gently with the 'welded' in exhaust included!  Something else that Richard will have to put right at some point!

Hatch and exhaust on the ground out of the way, attention now went to hoisting the engine out 

The engine also came out of the hole without any argument and was soon safely resting on a pallet, to be ratcheted down tightly

Quite a snug fit! Weighing in at just under half a tonne apparently, I was concerned that our little van may groan under the strain!  Richard set off early the next day to Walsh Engineering (Gardner specialists) in Manchester.

As soon as the engine was unloaded at the other end, the engineers undid the conrod on cylinder 1, which was the suspect end of the engine.  The shells were fine, they rotated the crank and sure enough, there was a thin crack on the crank.  Richard asked them what might have caused this, whether towing a butty was too much, working her too hard, to which they replied that it was 'just one of those things' ~ a flaw in the casting perhaps.  Remembering that this engine was manufactured before ultrasound and xrays were common practice!  We were just unlucky!

Moored in the middle of the basin (the 2 boats on the right of the picture) ~ as late comers to the party!

Meanwhile, as the engine is being rebuilt in Manchester, Richard takes the opportunity to paint the engine room walls grey and the engine hole itself.  Brightens it up in the engine room as it was quite dark in raddle red!

Hopefully, soon our beloved boat will be complete again and we can get back out on the cut selling coal and getting back to normal!   Ooh and there's just the small matter of the bill....