Hewitt and Booth pipecleaners take to the seas!
A few weeks ago we had a message from Richard who was rebuilding the engine on his motorboat.
‘ My Plymouth Pilot 18ft motorboat was built in 1974, with an inboard SABB 10hp single cylinder diesel engine. The engine is cooled by raw water pumped directly from beneath the hull. The engine’s waterways had become blocked with silt so removal of the cylinder head was necessary to clear them. In dismantling the rocker cover, the simple mechanism for lubricating the tappets and rockers was revealed to be four 3mm-diameter copper tubes feeding oil from a small reservoir on top. These tubes were augmented in distributing oil by pipe cleaners fed through and protruding from, the ends of the tubes. One further long curved tube, without pipe cleaner delivers squirts of oil to the inlet valve to assist starting. On removing the 40 year old pipe cleaners, they disintegrated.
An internet search for pipe cleaners immediately listed Hewitt & Booth and furthermore, their website included a section of pipe cleaners used as wicks, for distributing oil from open reservoirs to specific points in an engine. Just what I needed!’
