Increasingly confused

[Bergman]

I always thought Diesel engines were reliable.

I've had several diesel cars over the years and never yet had an engine fail. This despite amateur servicing and benign neglect.

On these forums hardly a day goes by without someone having engine problems, invariably with diesels, can't remember a petrol problem (except outboards - which don't count).

For arguments sake lets say 2% of boating population post on here. If we extrapolate then every day somthing like 50 marine diesels fail.

This can't be right

Why are boat engines so unreliable?

 

[Guest]

Got to be lack of use I reckon

Is there a marine diesel that is designed solely for marine use ? in respect that they run rarely and when they do not under much load ?

I admit to being a Mondeo Man. I have had it from new ( in 1995) it has done 164,000 miles and I have only really spent small amounts on servicing. It is still on it's original clutch and I only replaced the battery last month. Modern machinery is BRILLIANT !.

But, I use it every day.

 

[chippie]

Re: Got to be lack of use I reckon

I think that one of the reasons that your mondeo is so reliable is that you are using it often, not leaving it sitting around in salty air and then using it for relatively short periods. The fishing boats in the harbour where I moor my boat on average dont seem to have the troubles that yachties do. The difference that I see is the amount of use that the respective boats get.

Mery Christmas

 

[Rowana]

Re: Got to be lack of use I reckon

Agree with all the comments re lack of use. Also the TYPE of use is important. Diesel engines work best when under a fair bit of load. I had an old farmer friend once who bought one of the latest and biggest tractors around. We had a long and heated discussion (over a few low-fliers), and I pointed out that he didn't have any large implements for his new toy, and the soil on his farm was fairly light and sandy, and he was just wasting money, and would have trouble ahead.

Of course, he was the farmer, and didn't listen to me. Two years later, this beast was burning oil at a fearsome rate!!

Result - He bought a slightly smaller tractor & a bigger plough, and now has no bother.

So the message is, when you DO run the engine, for god's sake, give it something to do. It will suffer far more from lack of use.

 

[ccscott49]

Low weight, high power, modern matrine diesels are producing far more power than they were ever designed to do, so they fail, also the enviroment they are askwed to work in and the duty cycle they are expected to perform. This is all condusive to failures. Marine diesels rarely work hard enough, in pleasure boats, commercial ones do, they have less failures, but they are also more conservative with the power requirements and they fit big natrually aspirated diesels. When you start slapping turbos, superchargers, intercoolers, oil cooled pistons etc on diesel engines, reliabilty starts to fall, even in automotive engines, however the automotive engine is designed as that and will amnage to take the abuse reaped on them, it's expected and designed in. Not so converted truck engines in boats, they are a mismash of add ons.