A better Mr Fixit?

 

In February I posted this picture of  a bit of Herbie’s engine, where the throttle linkage goes into the injection pump.

We have a diesel leak there. Broken or worn seal I suppose.  Anyway, at the time I said that the “engineers” at our then moorings took one look at it and reached for their crucifixes muttering about injection pump repairs being one of the dark arts.  They could remove the whole pump (might take them some hours they said) and send it away for repair, then of course take some hours to replace it when it was fixed.  At their prices I conservatively estimated a bill of about £350+. I politely declined their offer and resolved to have a word with Calcutt boats when we got Herbie back up to the midlands.  The engine came from Calcutt and I know from past experience that they know what they are doing .

Well, at the Crick show I had a word with Jim from Calcutt and described the problem.  “Does the pump need to come off?” I asked.  He said he doubted it, this problem is normally fixed in situ. He’s done a few of them. If all goes well it could all be fixed in a couple of hours.  Should cost less than £100 inc parts. Is he being overly optimistic?  Well he has previously removed Herbies engine, swapped out the camshaft, and reinstalled the engine in a day, so who am I to doubt him?  Of course the problem might be more serious and require more work, but still I rather he does it than some of the so called marine engineers out there.  We’re booked in to have it done on the Monday after the Braunston rally weekend because that’s when we’ll be in the area.

Talking about Mr Fixits, here is a picture of our son Peter’s elbow, which another Mr Fixit declined to fix yesterday, but for a very good reason.

The pen marks on his arm were intended to inform the surgeon which elbow to put two screws and a plate into.  Peter took a fall last week and cracked his elbow radial head. Ouch! He was booked in for the op yesterday but at the last minute the registrar had second thoughts. On re-examining the x ray they could see that the bone was crushed rather than split and the damage was granular, so putting in screws might make matters worse.  The surgeon agreed and as the injury was healing up reasonably well, they elected to let nature get on with it.  Now he is home with us for a week.  He and I have plans to play with electronics and meccano to make some useless but amusing toy or other.

Oh one last thing.  Thanks to those who have been kind enough to send in reviews of my book to amazon. I now have seven reviews, three at five stars and four at four stars.  I’m delighted that the most common comment is that it is an enjoyable read.  The ever helpful Val Poore tells me that if I get up to ten reviews I can register on another site that recommends books to it’s subscribers, so if anyone else out there has read the book and can find a minute to send in a very short review I’d be forever grateful.  If you haven’t read the book, what are you waiting for?   Go read the reviews and invest a trifling 99 pence to get your own copy at  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jobs-For-Boys-Herbie-Neil-ebook/dp/B00JXQKHP0.

 

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