Friday 9 March 2012

River Canal Rescue Stole My WD40! (Allegedly)

On the way back from visiting Sarah on Chertsey at Stretton I stopped at Gnosall. Came in to the bank, tied up, pushed the engine stop and. . .nothing happened! Pushed it again - still nothing. Then I noticed that the instrument panel was dead - no rev. counter, no ammeter, no nothing. I thought maybe one of the toggle switches at the battery had got knocked, but no they were both "on" although when I turned them "off" the panel came back to life and I was able to stop the engine!
Puzzled, I returned the toggles to "on" and started and stopped the engine two or three times. With everything working properly I decided it was just one of those things" and I'd get someone at Norbury Wharf to have a look at it sometime.
When it was time to leave I turned the engine on, checked the panel was live and set off, but as soon as I put it into gear the panel went dead and, sure enough, the engine stop didn't work. However, this time fiddling with the battery switches had no effect and I was unable to stop the engine. Well, I thought, I could switch it off at the fuel cock, but then it might not start again so time to call out River Canal Rescue.
RCR was its usual efficient self. Call answered within seconds - and by a real person, engineer on the scene within the hour and problem solved within a couple of minutes. All it was was a speck of dirt inside a connector box that I didn't even know was there and all it took was a squirt of WD40  ("always the first place to look on an Isuzu" according to the RCR man).
It was only after they'd gone and I was tidying things away prior to departure that I realised that my WD40 was nowhere to be seen.
Still, it was a small price to pay!

1 comment:

No Direction said...

You got off light losing a can of lube after a visit, Halfie lost a Prop.