trondhindenes
New Member
Hi all,
last week I was supposed to pick up a newly purchased sailboat. Altho the boat is from the 80s, a professionally overhauled Volvo Penta D2-40 with brand new saildrive/gearbox was installed in the summer of 2021. The boat has not been used after the new motor was installed, except for a trial run a few months back, where we used the engine to get to and from the dock.
3 hours into me motoring the boat from the seller to my home port, the motor stopped. We discovered that it would not stay in gear (the motor would stop immediately when put in gear), tho in idle it runs completely fine. After some troubleshooting, diving to inspect the prop etc, we discovered that there was absolutely no oil in the gearbox (!). We filled it as per the manual and noted (to our horror) that it took pretty close to 3 liters of oil - which is the total oil capacity of the unit.
The morning after we tried the motor again, and now we could put it in gear without it stopping. We only tried low rpms as the boat was still tied to the dock.
I agreed with the seller to haul the boat out, empty the oil we filled to inspect it for metal parts, and probably remove the saildrive unit and have it inspected.
Here comes the question(s), please bear in mind that this is my first "proper" sailboat with an inboard diesel engine
- We were quite surprised that the unit seemed to run fine after having filled oil. Is it possible that we were lucky and the unit has not suffered extensive damage? We have tried to inspect the oil thru the refill hole and cannot see any metal residue. My impression is that when a unit goes so hot that it seizes it's pretty much a death sentence so we were surprised to see it come back to life
- I'm unsure how much I should "push" the seller: This obviously comes out of his pocket so he might want to do the saildrive/gearbox inspection himself instead of having it done professionally (we're at a location on the planet where there's not a certified Volvo Penta rep on every street corner). He sees like he knows what he's doing but for the sake of my ease of mind I'd of course prefer to have a professional/certified VP mechanic weigh in
- I guess I'm looking for advice here. I'm worried that we'll find the oil looking good and everything seems good to go when I've in reality dramatically reduced the lifetime of my saildrive. I'm quite reluctant to try and reverse the sale but I need an engine/saildrive I can trust will be there for me when needed.
What would you do?
last week I was supposed to pick up a newly purchased sailboat. Altho the boat is from the 80s, a professionally overhauled Volvo Penta D2-40 with brand new saildrive/gearbox was installed in the summer of 2021. The boat has not been used after the new motor was installed, except for a trial run a few months back, where we used the engine to get to and from the dock.
3 hours into me motoring the boat from the seller to my home port, the motor stopped. We discovered that it would not stay in gear (the motor would stop immediately when put in gear), tho in idle it runs completely fine. After some troubleshooting, diving to inspect the prop etc, we discovered that there was absolutely no oil in the gearbox (!). We filled it as per the manual and noted (to our horror) that it took pretty close to 3 liters of oil - which is the total oil capacity of the unit.
The morning after we tried the motor again, and now we could put it in gear without it stopping. We only tried low rpms as the boat was still tied to the dock.
I agreed with the seller to haul the boat out, empty the oil we filled to inspect it for metal parts, and probably remove the saildrive unit and have it inspected.
Here comes the question(s), please bear in mind that this is my first "proper" sailboat with an inboard diesel engine
- We were quite surprised that the unit seemed to run fine after having filled oil. Is it possible that we were lucky and the unit has not suffered extensive damage? We have tried to inspect the oil thru the refill hole and cannot see any metal residue. My impression is that when a unit goes so hot that it seizes it's pretty much a death sentence so we were surprised to see it come back to life
- I'm unsure how much I should "push" the seller: This obviously comes out of his pocket so he might want to do the saildrive/gearbox inspection himself instead of having it done professionally (we're at a location on the planet where there's not a certified Volvo Penta rep on every street corner). He sees like he knows what he's doing but for the sake of my ease of mind I'd of course prefer to have a professional/certified VP mechanic weigh in
- I guess I'm looking for advice here. I'm worried that we'll find the oil looking good and everything seems good to go when I've in reality dramatically reduced the lifetime of my saildrive. I'm quite reluctant to try and reverse the sale but I need an engine/saildrive I can trust will be there for me when needed.
What would you do?
