Engine Survey

[Equinox]

Is it possible to have a sea water cooled diesel engine surveyed when the yacht itself is standing on the hard? The yacht I am interested in has been ashore for nearly a year and I would obviously like to know that the engine is operational and so I was thinking about having an engine survey done. Does anybody have an idea if this is possbile and what it might cost?

 

[BarryH]

Most surveyors will want to run the engine up at some point. Get the engine oil anylised as this will show up a whole heap of info that the eye misses.

OK, to hell with it. Unbolt it and we'll use it as an anchor!

 

[hutch]

Disconnect the seawater inlet hose and connect it to a fresh water hose. You will probably need to amke up a connection using different size reducers! Otherwise, put the end in a bucket which is refilled from a fresh water supply! Watch out that the exhaust doesn't blow oily gases and water all over your neighbour!

Also send a sample of the oil to be analysed as already suggested.

 

[longjohnsilver]

Phone Finnings on 0113 328 2289 for oil analysis kit. Cost about 20 quid.

 

[VMALLOWS]

What do these oil analyses actually tell you? After all my (diesel) car is 14 years old but I can't imagine anyone thinking of doing an oil analysis. What would it tell me about a 20 year old BUKH?

 

[Thresher]

I had my engine surveyed when I bought my boat. It cost about £100. It was out of the water and the surveyor ran the engine for 30 secs, just long enough to measure the oil pressure. Any longer than that would have damaged it. He checked the battery condition as well but that was about it.

 

[jleaworthy]

It's fairly easy to arrange cooling water - I've even used a watering can to pour water into an open topped filter (with sea cock closed) in order to run an engine. However, the main problem is that you cannot put the engine under load so it will never warm up properly nor show any of those problems which appear only when the going is getting tough. By all means run up the engine but it won't tell you a lot.

 

[Twister_Ken]

It\'s a tough job, but someone\'s got to do it.

Mmmm. £100 for 30sec work!

How can I get a job like that?

Yours, Bruce Luce-Sox, QC.

 

[Equinox]

Thanks for the advice chaps, it's always good to hear other peoples opinions.

 

[andy_wilson]

Oil Survey

Heat and stir oil thoroughly before taking sample.

Iron, copper, tin, lead, chromium, and gawd knows what other metals, with ppm figures, to indicate engine wear areas and factors.

Silicon (dust ingress).

Soot levels.

Water contamination.

Fuel contamination.

The above three can indicate under / over... fuelling / loading / cooling etc.

State that the oil is in (eg whether needs changing).

You need to know hours since last change, and brand / grade if possible.

It goes on. Best tenner I ever spent (actually the last one I did was £7.00 + VAT I think but they have put the price up since then.

 

[vyv_cox]

A one-off lubricant test tells you nothing. We monitor oil condition in a wide range of equipment and it is only useful if used for trending. We rarely bother with diesel engines because the planned maintenance interval (i.e. oil change) is so short that it is unjustifiable. We would take samples from gas engines at every oil change but otherwise there is little point.

 

[airbubble]

Impossible to do out of the water. Even for a lub oil analysis the engine has to be run hard for some minutes before you take out the sample, otherwise that's another waste of money and effort as we've seen an example of earlier on this post.

 

[airbubble]

sorry Vyv, nowadays i disagree. e.g here in the NL we have MARTEST who do a very sensible analysis on one-off tests as they run them against a database of values found and specific oil-make caracteristics. Sometimes I rely totally on their results, and it has never gotten me or any customer of mine in trouble.