Modern Engine life expectancy

I recently went to see a 27' fibreglass fishing vessel here that I helped to build 14 years ago.
She was fitted then with a John Deere 4045TFM engine, and subsequently averaged around 1,000 - 1,200 hours a year after that. I was told that the engine was overhauled 4 years ago, and a new ZF gearbox had been fitted the year before, but otherwise the engine is working well, and probably would have at least 15,000 hours on the clock now (if it was still working).

Changing tack slightly, to Cummins engines, and re the Tall Ships Youth Trust brig 'Stavros' - she has 3 x Cummins generators (with a fourth up forward as the emergency generator). They usually had two in operation at one time when she was in the Caribbean (it was always a struggle to keep the ship cool enough during the day, with the air con going full blast), and I remember noting that one of the generators had 22,000 hours on the clock when the vessel was only about 4 years old, and I think that they had only ever done routine servicing on these generators.
OK, I know that generators lead an easier life than propulsion engines, but even still, I thought that was pretty good going.
 
DAKA said:
Alright I know there are forum members with 30 year old engines still running sweet as a nut with clouds of pollution but how long should we expect a Tier III modern marine engine to last ?
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Hang on there DAKA, US EPA Tier III introduction is not until Jan 2013!
 
I think the CMD dropped the VM range for the VW range as they sell in US and are already compliant but could be wrong.
I assume the D3 will evolve along with the car engines.

Several years ago people were saying the new car engines will not last long in a marine environment and we do seem to be seeing posts with engines being replaced early, it cant be good for the environment to waste engines in this way.
Perhaps there have always been early failures and I am too young to realize but I dont recall anyone having to replace TAMD41 or 63P before its 20th birthday ????????
 
DAKA said:
I think the CMD dropped the VM range for the VW range as they sell in US and are already compliant but could be wrong.
I assume the D3 will evolve along with the car engines.

Several years ago people were saying the new car engines will not last long in a marine environment and we do seem to be seeing posts with engines being replaced early, it cant be good for the environment to waste engines in this way.
Perhaps there have always been early failures and I am too young to realize but I dont recall anyone having to replace TAMD41 or 63P before its 20th birthday ????????
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I have zero affection for 41's or 63's which Volvo spent years trying to ditch, so I do not see them as good examples of the generation, however not a Green engine man so my bias is declared.

No doubt that VW have a FAR better emissions strategy than VM, however just using an automotive strategy be it Euro or EPA is not the answer, because as I have said before test cycles are completely different. The Volvo press release on revised D3 was a masterpiece of shooting both feet off, marine boating press appear technically inept, or too dumb to understand press releases that they just read PR stuff, just cut and paste.

Already declared that I am no lover of any 'Light Duty Auto' engine in marine applications, I still require convincing.

Releasing products ahead of the legislation is never smart as there is a likely fuel consumption trade off due to engine operation on the retarded timing table which we will not get back until Tier IV, however with possibility of added cost and complexity of SCR aftertreatment. At Tier III the best engine designs will bearly feel the bump, inadequate ones will peanalise the owners wallet.

I await Tier III spec sheets with interest.
 
I reckon in 4 years time it will increase the value of the older more reliable engines.
Who wants to buy a 4-8 year old boat that is due for a pair of new engines @ £40 000 and heaps of hassle.(some manufacturers only offer 2 years warranty, is that the supposed to represent life expectancy)
May as well buy a boat 10-20 years old with reliable but smoky engines.
 
Nope!

Legislation NOT retrospective. Not unless member of balmy army declares Solent a London style LEZ.

However certain areas in Holland and Belgium issue fixed penalties to smokey vessels following a verbal warning, watch this space....................
 
DAKA said:
I reckon in 4 years time it will increase the value of the older more reliable engines.
Who wants to buy a 4-8 year old boat that is due for a pair of new engines @ £40 000 and heaps of hassle.(some manufacturers only offer 2 years warranty, is that the supposed to represent life expectancy)
May as well buy a boat 10-20 years old with reliable but smoky engines.
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I have no clue where the myth that old engines are more durable and reliable than modern engines, OK D3 and Yanmar BY did the industry no favors, however they are only little puddle jumpers. Modern trends indicate vast improvement in durability and reliability.

Cummins B Vs QSB or Volvo 60 Series Vs D6 no contest, Volvo 60 Series, whack the throttles on the old slug and you have time to roll a fag before the boost comes in, and engine gets its act together.

I have been involved with a number of re-powers where the sheer antisocial start up charcteristics of some older engines has led to complaints from bertholders.

Scrapped ASBO for people, could use all the left over forms to issue AntiSocialBoatOrders.
 
I was pretty disgusted with the treatment i got from volvo when i had to replace a D6 370hp at 2yrs old and almost exactly 1000 hours when they said its not faulty manufacture its wear and tear
 
I don’t know how much a new engine last but 20 years ago I was working in a work shop overhauling diesel engines. At that time 10 to 20 000h was common on engines in 4-6liter class. Some of them were smoking but most of them had no visible smoke. The engines that were smoking was high rated engines with low compression ration (1:11.5)

Most of the short lifetime is due to corrosion and poor treatment by owner. It’s still possible today to make a clean reliable marine engine. Problem is to find a good base engine. Most diesels of today are made for emissions down to below 1 g/nox pr kwh. That means exhausts recirculation. To avoid particles you need high pressure injection. This is increasing complexity and you need more skills and spare parts onboard if the engine stops. Else you need to tow the boat to nearest workshop.

I have a 17 years 4000rpm 2.5liter 130hp engine in my boat. Its doing 30knots and I even use it for water skiing. Some 3500h, no smoke, no wear, no electronics, no cost, no problems.
 
crust said:
I was pretty disgusted with the treatment i got from volvo when i had to replace a D6 370hp at 2yrs old and almost exactly 1000 hours when they said its not faulty manufacture its wear and tear
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My sincere apologies however these kind of comments are rarely supported by the true facts there is always more to reports such as this. I visited Deutz during development phase of engine and is is a sound design.

Wear out and failure are two totally different modes. If engine was used for leasure duty cycle 1,000 hours in two years sounds like you have a lot of spare time on your hands I would be particulary interested in the engines duty cycle. What was % engine load when ECU downloaded.

If engine showed signs of 'wear out' why was not the sister engine similarly affected.

I am asked to arbitrate on many occasions, once I start digging stories start to change.
 
Late starter

thanks for your comments and interest have to say am in the company of posters who have far more knowledge than i as far as engines go have no wish to bore all you excellent people with pages of detail suffice to say a few details and would value your guidance and comments

Almost from day one new engines were plagued with alarm messages on the engine manage ment system slowly as time passed and volvo on board frequently upgrading software (and being told that every time engines were stopped then restarted this reset everything and errors were no longer apparent (one minute you have a problem which to minimise damage reduces you to 1500 revs then you dont?)
Briefly story goes we were in brittany when error message comes up fuel problem port engine and reduces us to 1500 revs so we divert to jersey and spent three fruitless days having volvo engineers doing various remedial work (filters were the obvious ones )
out for sea trials only to find alarms and again reduced revs in the end we opted as time was a factor to come back to s coast at 1500revs on arriving at destination tried cruising revs 2700 ish as nearly home and everything returned to normal!
more investigations, no one could isolate what prob was, all volvo people with diagnostics etc and much money !!
the saga continues , as some time later we were returning from a day out and had been using lowish revs for a couple of hours so just before we had to slow down went up to 3000revs briefly and bang!! alarms and stop engine immediately!
again volvo involvement, deduced we had blown a core plug out of the block which immediately pressured up the fresh water system and overheated due to loss of coolant
further investigation and strip down revealed we had three core plugs go at once and the fault was eventually found to be the injector seating in the copper sleeve in the block was defective as it blew a hole clean out of the sleeve thereby admitting combustion gases into the fresh water system I have to say i am no engineer and this has taken many months to get to the facts with surveyors etc volvo were completely in denial even though to comply with warranty engines were serviced at 200 hour intervals at a cost in excess of £2000 a time
we are just so disgusted with volvo management hiding behind their dealers so we could not even hold a conversation with them
to the extent we were told unofficialy that if they gave us any names or numbers at volvo they were in danger of losing their dealership ??
So where do we go from here? the engine is completely stripped down!
 
80 Vp D4 and D6 have blown here in Norway. Volvo started to investigate in 2007. Still they don’t know the reason. Most of the engines have been replaced free of charge in Norway. Volvo claim the Norwegian fuel and recomended a fuel additive in 2009. It did not help!

Its a tread on a Norwegian boat forum that have 3200post about the problem!
http://baatplassen.no/i/topic/32015-troebbel-med-volvo-penta-d-serie/

Maybe Google translate?
 
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crust said:
Late starter

thanks for your comments and interest have to say am in the company of posters who have far more knowledge than i as far as engines go have no wish to bore all you excellent people with pages of detail suffice to say a few details and would value your guidance and comments

Almost from day one new engines were plagued with alarm messages on the engine manage ment system slowly as time passed and volvo on board frequently upgrading software (and being told that every time engines were stopped then restarted this reset everything and errors were no longer apparent (one minute you have a problem which to minimise damage reduces you to 1500 revs then you dont?)
Briefly story goes we were in brittany when error message comes up fuel problem port engine and reduces us to 1500 revs so we divert to jersey and spent three fruitless days having volvo engineers doing various remedial work (filters were the obvious ones )
out for sea trials only to find alarms and again reduced revs in the end we opted as time was a factor to come back to s coast at 1500revs on arriving at destination tried cruising revs 2700 ish as nearly home and everything returned to normal!
more investigations, no one could isolate what prob was, all volvo people with diagnostics etc and much money !!
the saga continues , as some time later we were returning from a day out and had been using lowish revs for a couple of hours so just before we had to slow down went up to 3000revs briefly and bang!! alarms and stop engine immediately!
again volvo involvement, deduced we had blown a core plug out of the block which immediately pressured up the fresh water system and overheated due to loss of coolant
further investigation and strip down revealed we had three core plugs go at once and the fault was eventually found to be the injector seating in the copper sleeve in the block was defective as it blew a hole clean out of the sleeve thereby admitting combustion gases into the fresh water system I have to say i am no engineer and this has taken many months to get to the facts with surveyors etc volvo were completely in denial even though to comply with warranty engines were serviced at 200 hour intervals at a cost in excess of £2000 a time
we are just so disgusted with volvo management hiding behind their dealers so we could not even hold a conversation with them
to the extent we were told unofficialy that if they gave us any names or numbers at volvo they were in danger of losing their dealership ??
So where do we go from here? the engine is completely stripped down!
Click to expand...

Crust,

Thank you for giving everybody the heads up and this is just the stuff I love to become involved with.

#1 Yacht surveyors are generally hopeless when involved with engine disputes and rarely understand much of the tecnology. In the US they have separate engine surveyors, both good and bad.

#2 Pretty meaningless to most owners because they suffer the pain regardless, however this is exactly what I was talking about. Discussion thread was about durability, yours is 100% reliability issue NOT durability (wear and tear).

#3 Failure of the copper injector sleeve causing overpressure of cooling system blowing out core plugs is a known failure mode. Regardless of hours Volvo are liable, no if's or buts. Cause and solution have allegedly been discovered as problems appear to have now gone away. Somebody needs to take up the cudgels by demanding disclosure under freedom of infomation. However Volvo tend to rely on market dominace and owners desire to go boating and not fighting.

#4 Builder of vessel would be interesting..........wiring issues seem to have a similar thread, Volvo guys looking in say "oh yes seen that many times in a so and so".

#5 Manufacturer arrogance needs nailing. I was recently involved in an early life engine failure. Volvo would not provide an engineering report but alluded to the fact that they MAY have made contribution had the engines not been maintained out of warranty (5 years old) by non franchised Volvo technician. We soon put them straight on that score. Limiting customer access to key management appears to be ingraned in the culture here, certainly not the way they operate in the U.S.

#6 Volvo new engine sign off procedures are at best sloppy, and may builders have also learned how to duck below the radar. Basic installation guidelines are also poor, have seen a pair of D9's with just Racor 1000MA's but met guidelines, utter madness!

#6 You have not mentioned your duty cycle, not 100% relavant to your failure, but just part of having enquiring mind.

Good luck!
 
Many thanks for replies so far
late starter
not sure what you mean about duty cycle if its general use of engine the answer would be up and down the range of revs ie out surveying for shipwrecks/fishing ground at 6-8kn and cruising about 2800 ish giving 20+ kn boat is rodman so spanish wiring looks, up to a very high spec incidentally are you saying base engine is deutz?

ulyden
your image made interesting reading, one cracked sleeve very distinctive star shape in no2
can anyone advise how to get the norwegian thread translated
again many thanks to all
 
Crust...
in respect to the Norwegian thread ... This contains loads of speculation by both Volvo and non-Volvo owners, so contain a lot of subjective opinions etc. I have made one or two posts in there, but the thread became emotive rather than factual, and I lost interest...

However, the volume of posts in the thread is an indication of how strong people feel about the lack of support and information from the manufacturer. Think you can use Google Translate for a gist translation, but please be prepared for a fair bit of rubbish translation as sentence structures etc., between Norwegian and English differs and the translation engines are rubbish at handling that amongst others.

You should be able of finding relevant information in English by searching for "injector failure" and your engine...

Good luck!!
 
FWIW over many years of driving a managing high mileage company cars (and small fleets) my experience is that broken or worn out engines are very very rare. When I say "engine" I am meaning the block, crank, pistons etc... and not the peripheral bits like hoses, gearbox, alternators, cooling etc.... which fail quite a lot.

That suggest to me the the core engine from a car is very reliable, so I can't see any obvious reason why putting in a boat should make it all of a sudden become unrelaiable. I am assuming of course that it's a properley engineered installation.
 
Divemaster1 said:
Crust...
in respect to the Norwegian thread ... This contains loads of speculation by both Volvo and non-Volvo owners, so contain a lot of subjective opinions etc. I have made one or two posts in there, but the thread became emotive rather than factual, and I lost interest...

Good luck!!
Click to expand...

Point was the strong focus on these problems in Norwegian marked.
So Volvo can’t say this is a thing they never have seen or that’s coursed by wear and tear! Most new engines get this problem and Volvo claim they don’t know the reason after 5years of investigations. To read thru this tread is pointless, most people have a lot of meanings but nobody have a solution to avoid this thing.

Norwegian magazines have had a lot of articles about this problem. One windy boat that was tested had to change two engines during test.

http://www.batmagasinet.no/baatweb/...5BED5B0A05F44B33C1257618004828C5?OpenDocument

http://www.batmagasinet.no/baatweb/...C011B6D4B8E3D8D9C125761800482A32?OpenDocument

http://www.batmagasinet.no/baatweb/cms.nsf/($All)/F408070048650DA3C125780F00358B8E?OpenDocument

To asteven221 I also drive a lot. I have never worn out a car engine. But a boat engine often have bigger challenges like running 90% speed for hours and run for hours above the car propeller curve! A car accelerate maybe 30-60sekonds. A over propped boat might get overloaded several hours!
 
D6 Defects

thanks for your further replies the plot thickens
divemaster1
google translation gave me the gist, super, thanks

ulyden
reading onward although there are no dates mentioned (i think?) I am in the right ball park timing wise as the boat is coming up for 5 year survey in march which puts it at 2006 delivered to us and engine probably delivered to rodman in spain before that? so it was clearly one of the early engines and makes the connection that being a brit boat from a spanish builder is not confined to norwegian -scandanavian builds but the era it was produced in?
any further info on copper sleeve -injector failure resulting in loss coolant and engine failure from any source would be most appreciated

on a different note my IT skills are limited and all abbreviations like FWIW are probably in a dictionary somewhere but could someone, point me in the right direction without creasing up too much!
 
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