Maintenance Tasks

If you have been reading the blog for the last week you may remember I was looking for a small piece of timber to use as part of the Victron shunt repair.  Mark very kindly visited us in Wakefield bringing a suitable piece of timber.  The repair has been completed.

This is the shunt above the domestic battery bank negative terminal.  If you look closely you should be able to see that small piece of timber behind the shunt.  The shunt is glued to the timber and the timber is screwed to the supporting length of marine ply.

When I looked down into the bilge I was reminded it needs the annual clean and coat of paint.  You can see our small dry bilge and pump in the top half of the photo below.  This has also reminded me I need to do something about an extraction method for the gearbox oil.  Twice I’ve attempted to drain the gearbox by removing the bung in the base and both times I’ve ended up with oil under the engine.  There simply isn’t sufficient room to manoeuvre a container of used oil from around the engine mounts.  I think we are going to need to buy an extractor pump. 

A walk to Halfords resulted in the purchase of another 5 litres of engine oil which will be needed for the next service.  It’s a major service so the gearbox oil will need to be replaced.  Whilst there I purchased some Fabsil for the pram and cratch covers. 

It’s a silicon based canvas waterproofer.  The pram and cratch have been recently cleaned and I wanted to get the Fabsil on before the canvas had a chance to get dirty.  The Fabsil isn’t supposed to restore the colour to canvas but after two coats I think the covers look brighter.

Getting itchy feet…. Time to move!