Heart of the Beast

So what are we actually having?

Full length

Trad

Tug

That sums it up really, an industrial slant rather than too pretty and roses 'n' castlesey.

Now the heart of every good trad looking boat has to be an old engine. None of this modern clean burning fuel efficient rubbish. Ideally it should weigh an absolute ton (or more) and sit, pride of place, slap bang in the middle of its very own room. 

Lovers say an engine in its own room is vital, haters say it's a ridiculous waste of space. They're probably both right to a certain extent but also important for us is having accessibility to keep the motor well looked after and inspected. 

Even with our generous cruiser stern engine boards getting down into the depths to service and carry out the ancillary checks on our Beta 50hp can be a bit of a balls ache, and if you get your positioning wrong that can be quite literal. 

The down side of a nice vintage engine is the cost. Russel Newbury still make them new pretty well as they were. Lots of lovely moving bits to watch and loads of copper and brass to polish or cry over as it tarnishes. The price, close to £18,000 and that's not fitted or probably even delivered. 

The rarity of some of the more popular vintage two cylinder engines originating from the 40s to 60s is now increasing. Gardiner 2LW and Lister JP2 being very popular for marine conversions are not quite as rare as hens teeth in ready to convert guise but it's getting there. 

The three cylinder versions are less popular, probably because the exhaust note looses the popular 'Boppety Bop' kind of note and the extra power just isn't needed on a narrowboat, even a long deep one. Mike on Royalty Class narrowboat Victoria copes perfectly well even with a decent load aboard with his JP2 motor. And the prices of these, well not much cheaper at between £10,000 and £14,000 at an average. Often plus a gearbox and alternator brackets, delivery and of course installation. 

So as well as being the heart of a traditional boat its also one hell of an investment and not a decision to take lightly especially if overall budgets are a bit tight. 

And as our budget is a bit tight (that's putting it mildly) we had to think outside the box a bit. After lots of searching we managed to find a compromise, funnily enough not to far from our stomping ground in Poole. 

Marine Power Services is a father and son engineering team and exactly what we're looking for. Far more professional than hobby engineers but Martyn is a senior engineer for RNLI in Poole so these older engines are, well, just a little more basic than he's used to.

They had two similar engines one of which they wanted to keep for themselves when they get around to building their own narrowboat. That's got to be a good sign. After quite a chat on the phone the reason they like these engines is that for three cylinders they're quite compact, they've got a nice long stroke so I'm expecting a lovely engine note, and nobody will guess what engine it is. In fact I've done quite a lot of digging and I've managed to find one narrowboat with the two cylinder version and two with this three cylinder version, one of which has had some rebuild work done by Marine Power Services and one was supplied by them to a Thames hotel boat which has happily just turned the 15,000 hour point (that's about 30 years for us at the moment). 

The other thing  we prefer about this motor that a lot of traditionalist won't approve of is the fact that we're retaining the bell housing on the rear end rather than having the traditional exposed flywheel. We would have to have had a decent amount of caging around an exposed flywheel (as we will for the alternator belts and pulleys at the front end) to avoid having a completely squished patterdale terrier. 

So the engine we've chosen is a 1960 Dorman built not far from the canalside ​in Stafford. It spent it's life in a Jones crane possibly starting life as a navy crane going by the colour of first of four thick layers of paint that Geoff had to scrape off before applying our chosen RAL 7010 Tarpaulin grey.

Married to the engine will be a pair of compact Iskra 175A alternators at the front and a PRM 280 hydraulic gearbox. That'll all be rotating a two inch prop shaft ending with a twenty four inch compensated (over sized bats) propeller from Crowther

Some pics from Marine Power Services

Thats it straight from the crane

And its first coat of paint