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I know there are a few of us on here so I'm hoping someone may be able to help. 

We still have a share in a Pat Buckle boat on which the cooling has become marginal. Ten years ago we had a (too big) engine fitted and spent the following season suffering from overheating. Over the following winter the skin tank was modified by Devizes marina according to a design spec produced and used by Calcutt boats. 

My question is does anyone know what Calcutt boats modifications involved. At the time I thought they were enlarging the skin tank but they may have been putting baffles in. Is Roger Preen still involved with Calcutt boats? If so, I will give them a call.

 

 

 

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I don't know what happened to your boat skin tank  but we had a share for many years in Copperkins, also an ex OwnerShips boat built by Pat Buckle. When we had over heating problems we got Streethay (where we moored) to open up the skin tank and they found there were no baffles in it! they installed baffles and enlarged the tank and that was the end of our over heating. 

Hope you get your problem fixed

haggis

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We had a share in Symphony, also a Pat Buckle. We had overheating problems when the original engine was replaced with a Nanni, even though we had specifically asked for a Beta!

The overheating was solved by adding an extra skin tank over the other side and plumbing the two in series.

Steve

 

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15 hours ago, haggis said:

I don't know what happened to your boat skin tank  but we had a share for many years in Copperkins, also an ex OwnerShips boat built by Pat Buckle. When we had over heating problems we got Streethay (where we moored) to open up the skin tank and they found there were no baffles in it! they installed baffles and enlarged the tank and that was the end of our over heating. 

Hope you get your problem fixed

haggis

And I believe Copperkins has now had an external keel cooling pipe added.

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7 minutes ago, David Mack said:

And I believe Copperkins has now had an external keel cooling pipe added.

Ah, I didn't know that. Although we see her often (Kelpie moors at Streethay too), we are not part owners any more.

haggis

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Well, the boat I am concerned with is Steelaway. We had a Nanni too but we didn't have a second tank fitted. I am wondering if baffles were welded in. I was asking because the temperature is starting to rise again. One offer of help for £1K involves installing baffles but there's no point wasting the money if it has already been done. I shall try to get in touch with Roger at Calcutt. 

In the meantime I have just spent £10 on a cheap inspection camera so that might provide some clues. 

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As Copperkins didn't have baffles, it is likely that Pat Buckle didn't put them in skin tanks. When CK had her baffles put in, the tank was also extended to about twice the original size. This was quite obvious as it took up a lot more room in the engine area. Before this was done we had an "interesting" trip across the Ribble link. In preparation all boards were lifted to allow air to circulate but she very quickly started to overheat as we battled our way down the Douglas. Peter (Scott) and I spent the trip getting pails of river water via the side hatch and throwing them over the skin tank. Iain, who was steering, had a sauna all the way across. For the return trip Iain attached the water hose to a cold tap and we just kept spraying the tank. We must do the trip again when I can actually see more than the engine bay on the journey :-)

haggis

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Perhaps you should have been hosing the engine! The camera has arrived so it will be interesting to see what it reveals. Our current boat has been across the ribble link without problems but then it isn't a Buckle creation. I remember talking to someone about Steelaway and he remarked that we were lucky to have tongue AND groove.

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  • 3 weeks later...

The camera didn't reveal much because I couldn't manipulate it well enough. 

An attempt to contact Roger Preen at Calcutt was successful though. He informs me that some Pat Buckle boats had baffles in the tank and some didn't. His modification is to introduce baffle plates so I have to assume this has already been done to Steelaway. We have a bill for £600 so I can't imagine what else they might have done.

He has suggested it is important to make sure that the skin tank does not get blacked to allow maximum heat transfer and he would also recommend using a flushing agent to remove limescale and similar every 12 months. We have never done the latter so that has got to be wouth a try especially considering the cooling system has been topped up frequently and often using water from a hardwater area.  

 

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2 hours ago, Cheshire cat said:

The camera didn't reveal much because I couldn't manipulate it well enough. 

An attempt to contact Roger Preen at Calcutt was successful though. He informs me that some Pat Buckle boats had baffles in the tank and some didn't. His modification is to introduce baffle plates so I have to assume this has already been done to Steelaway. We have a bill for £600 so I can't imagine what else they might have done.

He has suggested it is important to make sure that the skin tank does not get blacked to allow maximum heat transfer and he would also recommend using a flushing agent to remove limescale and similar every 12 months. We have never done the latter so that has got to be wouth a try especially considering the cooling system has been topped up frequently and often using water from a hardwater area.  

 

I believe some boats were modded by cutting out the swim to reveal the innards of the skin tank with a larger tank plus baffles being welded in place exterior to the swim. The other side of the swim was not modded. However, this did not seem to affect handling.



 

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13 hours ago, Cheshire cat said:

The camera didn't reveal much because I couldn't manipulate it well enough. 

An attempt to contact Roger Preen at Calcutt was successful though. He informs me that some Pat Buckle boats had baffles in the tank and some didn't. His modification is to introduce baffle plates so I have to assume this has already been done to Steelaway. We have a bill for £600 so I can't imagine what else they might have done.

He has suggested it is important to make sure that the skin tank does not get blacked to allow maximum heat transfer and he would also recommend using a flushing agent to remove limescale and similar every 12 months. We have never done the latter so that has got to be wouth a try especially considering the cooling system has been topped up frequently and often using water from a hardwater area.  

 

Pat used two different steel fabricators to produce his shells, or certainly did when I had my first boat built by him in the early 90s (I think Copperkins, mentioned by Haggis was built in the same era) so I reckon it would depend on which of the two he used for Steelaway's build. Most early Ownership boats had names starting with O or S taken from OwnerShips. I cannot remember the names of the two fabricators that he used now but the one that we used (a father and son family business) later went bust and I was also advised by Pat not to pay anything up front to them as they were notoriously iffy financially. The other, I heard, got up to practices like cutting the bow off one nearly finished boat and attaching it to the part completed shell of another to convince the second customer that progress really was being made on their boat. Later Pat used a completely different fabricator to produce all his shells I believe.

We never had any cooling problems with our boat using a BMC 1.8 but I did hear that the people that we sold it to had to improve/modify the cooling years later.

Roger

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I think the two hull builders were Andicraft and PKB Dark Steel.

This is our skin tank. I think the bit that stands proud on the outside of the swim is an addition welded on when the replacement engine showed a tendency to overheat. Brilliant idea to weld the anode to the skin tank!!!DSC_0056.JPG.a4e45dc3848167cdec9c80458d8dfbd8.JPGMost of the skin tank was originally inset into the engine bay. You can just see it on the right.

boat 003.JPG

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2 minutes ago, Cheshire cat said:

I think the two hull builders were Andicraft and PKB Dark Steel.

This is our skin tank. I think the bit that stands proud on the outside of the swim is an addition welded on when the replacement engine showed a tendency to overheat. Brilliant idea to weld the anode to the skin tank!!!Most of the skin tank was originally inset into the engine bay. You can just see it on the right.

 

Thanks for the pictures. This was what I was trying to describe as the Calcutt skin tank mod ...

 

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20 hours ago, Allan(nb Albert) said:

Thanks for the pictures. This was what I was trying to describe as the Calcutt skin tank mod ...

 

Well thankyou for confirming I am looking at a modified tank. I think by now it has been blacked at least four or five times and has never been flushed so that's the first and cheapest thing to try to restore cooling capability.

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