Engine failures pose a question

[Nautical]

Ok I stand corrected, but I do remember somewhere in the past being on a maintainence course and the instructor saying that they were based on a van/truck block, maybe that was something else. Same thing applies though use it or loose it. Some poor sod has spent half his life designing that diesel to run long and hard for thousands of hours without fault and what do we do, stick it in a boat and leave it for yonks on end and then bitch when it breaks down

Honestly, every boat I have had that I cherished and molly cuddled gave problems, the stop gap ones that I did'nt give a hoot about and hammered all summer long never seemed to break down. The club used to have a launch with an old volvo and it was just abused beyond belief and never serviced yet it just kept going (until someone hit the pier with it and holed it, was'nt worth repairing so got scrapped but the engine is still in someones pride and joy still going).

 

[Renegade_Master]

"We all seem to have digressed from my original point however, and that is given the recent probs tcm had should we not be thankfull for twin engined boats."

We know marine engines are not as reliable as road engines for reasons made clear in these post, so..............back to original point above

 

[oldgit]

The old 40a puts out around 130 hp and by all accounts chugs on forever,think the problems started when the ever increasing amounts of power Volvo extracted from the block reduced the whole engines reliabilty.Excellent article giving the reasons why the legendary old low output diesel of yore became the high maintaince marine money pit of today here.Diesel Myths.Several other good pages on diesel reliabilty for any body not already aware of this excellent boaty site.

 

[rickp]

I believe it was a condition of entry to the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally that the boats have 2 engines (a main, and a wing). AIUI (from the DVD, so it could be wrong) the only Nordhavn that had its main engine stop, also had its wing engine stop for the same reason (a fuel issue). I'm not sure what conclusion you can draw from that /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Rick

 

[Its_Only_Money]

Surely in terms of testing most leisure boat designs would barely scrape past the "untested prototype" description in comparison to any other form of transport. You make a machine reliable by testing it until things break, then redesign or improve what broke and testing it again. I can't see any of the major leisure boat manufacturers doing this over any number of hulls and miles as there is too much pressure to get hull#2 out on sale.

Compare that to the 1000,000's of development miles that go into cars and you can start to see where the problem lies. Down to the 1st and subsequent owners to carry out the semi-destruction testing phase on their individual hull most of the time.

The RNLI manage to have reliable boats but then they have a testing and maintenance programme that would make private owners eyes water.....

 

[Its_Only_Money]

IMHO it wasn't the quest for more power per se that caused problems (after all the major components of the block seldom fail), but the increased speed capability that the extra power brought with it leads to more failures (of everything on the boat) due to the increased vibration/shaking that everything gets at higher speeds.

 

[tcm]

well okay, tho i think that

1 after the rebuild, it wd have beeen better to have a test run xchannel and back which i think wd have shown up most of the probs. But not the throttle, probably, so can't blame myself too much.

2 anyone with two engines really needs to be able to berth the thing on one. Just gettit alongside is fine, not park in difficult slot of course.

3 Anyone with one engine needs some means of propulsion with one less - outboard engine or sails or summink. I had loads of canvas and stuff and i reckn i cd have made a sort drifty bowthruster-assisted sail in the event of both engines failing offshore depending on the wind, and once inshore a tender lashed fore-aft would have got us in. If the saily thing didn't work for specific conditions (which i spose it probly wouldn't very well excpet as rubbishy thor heydahl style wafting downwind thing) i had 300m of warps plus 100m chain so could anchor in praps up to 200m or more, plus an offshore sea anchor to hold us against being sent out too far into the atlantic in really deep water.

4 Golden Arrow do the servicing and rebuilds on lots of RNLI lifeboats!

 

[KevB]

Ah, but the new BMW 1 series with 2 litre diesel is 160bhp = 80 per litre. I bet that doesn't require servicing every 100 hrs and goes wrong when it's pushed a bit.

 

[[2068]]

xactly. There has to be more to it than just bhp/litre, which would account for failures where pistons and crankshafts explode through the side of the block, which unless you were an unlucky early KAD42 owner, isn't that common.

What's needed is some analysis and real stats. We know about some of the causes, but how often ? how expensive ? which engines ?

starter set:
- fuel blockages / fractures
- inconsistant servicing (e.g. KAD44 valves)
- belts failing
- water in outdrive

Latest failure on KAD32 is that the starter sounds like woody woodpecker. Hoping that the solenoid is replaceable without having to get an exchange starter. Arrggghh.

dv.

 

[Lozzer]

Would have loved to see you tacking or gybing under jury rig..

what speed do you think you would have achieved and what would the steerage have been like.

One positive is that you GPM would have improved dramatically which means you could have started a new thread about how MOBOs can improve fuel effiency.

Your trip sounded like fun. Well done

 

[penfold]

It probably does akshully, 100 hrs equates to about 6000 miles or so, unless the BMW 1 is one of these weird modern things has 10,000 mile service intervals....

cheers,
David