Sid it.......

Royal Engineer Mark and I were back working on the gentleman's boat today.

We drove over from the Parish to Ely to find the engine room under six inches of water.

Sid it!

(For those of you not familiar with this blog and it's little idiosyncrasies, wb Pippin blogspot comes equipped with an Auntie Mary Filter(TM).

This modifies or removes any naughtiness, rudeness, plain profanity or other filth and replaces it with euphemistic cleanth.

(In case you are wondering, Auntie Mary is real.

And she reads this rubbish.

Further, she is far from being a dour Mary Whitehouse-style 'Thou Shalt Not-ter.

She is actually one of the kindest, sweetest and most lovely ladies you would care to meet.

Therefore, she is not to be offended by casual coarseness of any description......

At least, not by this god-daughter's brother!.......

Just wanted to clear that one up.......)

Anyway, back to the sidding engine room where it was all going tots up and was in every respect completely and utterly forked......and bloggered up beyond belief......

The Engineer and The Boat-man arrived via Boat-mobile (which had somehow or other managed to limp and stagger it's way through another MOT.....) at Ely, lifted the engine hatch on the gentleman's boat, and saw this:

That's six to seven inches of water in the bilge.........

'Crikey', I said to Mark, 'What a lot of water! Let's drive the 12 miles back to The Parish to get a bilge pump and some buckets....'

[Auntie Mary Filter status: OVERHEATING]

The bilge was then pumped dry and swabbed down with sponges:

It's a very good job I'm hardly sensitive at all about my bald spot..... (I wouldn't mind, but the East Anglian Helimedix Chopper tried to make an emergency landing on it the other day........)

But enough of vanity.............

We then plied the air intake with generous doses of Bradex Easy-Start (I prefer the Australian name for it: 'Start-You-Child-Out-Of-Wedlock'.......

[Auntie Mary Filter status: MELTDOWN]

The engine was coughing and belching in an 'I'm on the very cusp of starting' kind of way, when the starter motor gave up the ghost. It wasn't burned out, as we had been careful in it's use. No, it had lunched it's bendix and was spitting springs and colletts all over the shop.

Fork, Bollards, and Farce.....

'Knickers', I said to Mark as the offending component was removed, 'That looks a trifle banjaxed...'

[Auntie Mary Filter status: TOTAL SYSTEMS OVERLOAD, FAILURE IMMINENT]

Fortunately, we did not start the engine. Had we done so, it would have failed as utterly as The Auntie Mary Filter did when we examined the oil filter housing we had removed to get the starter motor off...

It was full of, not oil, but water.

Water.

Yes, we had averted cataclysmic bearing failure and hydrostatic lock by seconds....

All because the cheap bar-steward who supposedly reconditioned this engine had obviously flogged the decent starter to someone who had a duffer......

So it truly is an ill wind......

Anyway, to sum up, and give the poor Auntie Mary Filter a chance to cool down, we are now looking at a new gasket set for the whole engine, removing the head in situ, getting it ground flat, doing the valves, the timing, the timing chain.....

And our gentleman doesn't even know yet.......

Oh well, at least we managed to find a replacement starter motor at Grunty Fen Autos for £36.00

You just know it's got to be a steal........!