I have been asked more than once how the Pacemaker ended up being prepared in a Marina in Newhaven, more than 140 miles from home and equally as far from where the boat was for sale in Norfolk. It was a pair of Volvo Penta V8 500s that first brought Peter Leonard Marine to my attention.
I had been searching the internet trying to ascertain how feasible it would be to re-engine my prospective purchase in the event that the current Volvo Penta AQ110s were not serviceable. As it turns out the option for new engines is limited by the fact that the smallest petrol engine available new from Mercruiser is now a V8, while Volvo make no petrol engines at all, so the search was coming round to finding a used or refurbished engine - or just to make it even more difficult, a pair of engines. I followed up an advert for a pair of rebuilt Volvo V8s to a marine enterprise I’d never heard of, and asked if a similar pair of 3.0 litre petrols was ever likely to arise. I got to speak to the boss, Peter Leonard Senior himself, and explained the reason I was enquiring, and to my surprise Peter had not only heard of Pacemakers, but during a fairly extensive career in the marine industry, had worked on them.
Peter’s enthusiasm for my new combo extended equally to the engines, and although providing me with a price for a pair of “remanufactured” Mercruisers and sterndrives, he encouraged me (rightly, I should add) to focus on originality with this classic, and to this end suggested an overhaul of the existing engines - after all, they had been witnessed motoring smoothly along the Broads, if only for about 30 minutes! but that 30 minutes was enough to demonstrate that there was something entirely worth saving.
Having visited the marina when the boat arrived, I was quietly confident that using someone both knowledgeable and enthusiastic for the impending project was the way to go, and that Peter Leonard was the person that fitted that description.
After what has to be said was a slow start (everyone in the marine industry seems to be totally overloaded at the moment), cylinder compression tests went ahead and a strip down of the port engine proved necessary. This seemed a minor set-back at the time and Peter dived in to the project, but worse was to follow with the discovery of a cracked block, however the rarity of the B1800 Volvo engine proved not be a problem and Peter hauled out a set of hen’s teeth from the back of a 40 foot container in the form of complete engine form an unfinished project of forty years, the parent vehicle, a Volvo P1800ES (think Roger Moore as Simon Templar, the Saint) was, I understand long since lost to an invasion of Haematite.
I had already asked that the “doughnut” seals on the outdrives be repaired requiring removal of the drives, and so with the engines now in pieces and the boat’s engine bay empty, it’s an understatement to say I was keen to see progress with my own eyes - I should add that this was definitely more out of interest and excitement rather than concern for the ongoing works. Once again, as I set off on another 280 mile round trip, I questioned the wisdom of my decisions, but the eager anticipation assured me again that I had done the right thing.
I have added some photographs to this piece, one of which shows Peter at work on my engine. Hopefully the next update will be all about completion of the work and a sea trial involving yet another day out to Peter Leonard Marine.