Interestingly, we just had our boat out and the prop was 19 x 16 (it's 44ft long and about 2ft 6in draft). Crowthers said it should have a 19 x 12 which would necesitate more revs on the canals when cruising but enable it to reach maximum power revs when needed.
First impressions are not good - the boat certainly needs lots more revs even to cruise at 3mpjh and it really isn't at all keen to stop either! I think we'll swap back to the old prop.

I have an old AC2WM Petter mini twin in a boat. A bit small for a canal boat I think. Tony.

Hello Tony.

Yes, I don't suppose the mini twins are often to be found on the canals, but they still seem to be a plenty on the open waters don't they.
There was a yacht on ebay a few months ago that had one, which had never been used, as the boat had been built many years ago, but it had never been completed and launched!

We are now running the 19 x 12 prop on our boat and the engine certainly feels less stressed but is now running faster to maintain 'canal speed'.
That, in turn, means it's noisier. The exhaust note is fine (even though there's a pretty short silencer of about 18 inches long) but there's a loud underlying 'clatter' that can be annoying.
My guess is that this comes from the drive up to the hand starting gear and I was wondering whether it might even be feasible to remove this, rely on the electric start only and keep my fingers crossed. Too radical? Pointless? What do the Petter people reckon?

Starman, are you sure its not just normal noise, ie injectors knocking. I have not heard of the handstart rattling, ours doesnt. Try putting a bungee on it to make sure it isnt that.
We had a short cruise at the weekend to turn round and our prop is definitely too small. I think 20X18 would be about right for most canal work.
Dave

I was going to say the same as Dave. There's no noise from mine either. The starting handle rattles if I leave it on after a hand start, but otherwise no noise from there at all.
I guess it's possible that something has become loose in the housing for some reason, maybe the chain has become slack, causing it to possibly rattle, but whether there is a way of adjusting this I wouldn't know.
Certainly I'd be inclined not to remove the hand start, Starman. Whilst I guess it's not as critical on the canals as it could be on the open water (where my boat operates) to suffer an electric start failure, it's sod's law it'll happen at the most inconvenient time!

Doug

Just listed my pile of spares on Ebay item 160373684329.
Its most of an engine, but all the bits my neighbour didnt want and what was left of his old engine. The blocks and heads are good and the crankcase is ok, crankshaft might be regrindable.
I cant split it but let me know if you have any questions.
Dave

Hi Dave, I've been following your listing. I expect you'll get a few bites of the cherry in due course.
Did you see the nice aircooled one on there a couple of weeks or so ago? He did quite well with that (£600ish I think he got in the end).

Doug

Doug, That aircooled one did well, got at least double what it was worth. Didnt even have a reduction box, which is usually needed for canals.
When i saw that one listed i wanted to put mine on at the same time as it would be ideal to convert it to water cooled, but i was away at the time.
25th wedding aniversary took prescedence!
Dave

Congrats on your anniversary Dave! Quite apt for your username!

Maybe we'll see the new owner of that aircooled engine on this forum at some stage.
I dread to think how my boat would handle without a reduction drive!

Looks like a few bids are starting to come in now on your engine parts.

I've just stripped my PH2W down (regular readers will know why!). Two curious things were revealed: cylinder head no 1 (at the flywheel end) had a very heavy carbon build up in the exhaust port compared with No 2 which was pretty clean. Any thoughts on why? Is it something to do with the fuel system? Annoyingly the couple of pages that relate to fuel pumps and linkages are missing from my photocopied manual. Someone elsewhere suggested cyl 1 was running cooler than cyl2.
Second curiosity is that the valves in head No1 are slightly different to those in No2 - the stems are the same dia but in No1 they step in to a thinner dia just before the valve head.
Cheers

It could be that one cylinder was decoked for some reason, maybe for a sticky valve or something, so tha build up of carbon is uneven.
Only other reason would be incomplete combustion in one cylinder maybe fueling issue or valve . Might be worth getting pumps and injectors checked.
If one head has different valves it may be an earlier or later design so may be a replacement head.
Dave

I was going to say the same as the above reply, incomplete combustion for the above reasons and the different valves due to a replacement head at some stage?