New engines could be a problem

Javelin

Javelin

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www.southwoldboatyard.co.uk
In or out of the EU the fact is the new EU emission laws are going to directly effect us here and its happening now.

We tried to order a replacement Barras engine (Yanmar) today to be told its no longer available, replaced by a common rail unit.

Certain manufacturers are winding down if not stopping production of the low pressure diesel engines as they will not be able to meet the new regs.
That means the adoption of the common-rail high pressure fuel systems.

The issue with the new engines is they require spotless fuel and filtration will need to be much finer than is currently the case.
Not an issue for cars as you'll cycle a tank in a month or so but in a boat that diesel could be a year or so old and is far more likely to have crud in it which will bung up the very fine fuel lines in double quick time.

I'm just repeating info I've gleaned from conversations today, perhaps there's a guru on here that has more info...........
 
Javelin said:
In or out of the EU the fact is the new EU emission laws are going to directly effect us here and its happening now.

We tried to order a replacement Barras engine (Yanmar) today to be told its no longer available, replaced by a common rail unit.

Certain manufacturers are winding down if not stopping production of the low pressure diesel engines as they will not be able to meet the new regs.
That means the adoption of the common-rail high pressure fuel systems.

The issue with the new engines is they require spotless fuel and filtration will need to be much finer than is currently the case.
Not an issue for cars as you'll cycle a tank in a month or so but in a boat that diesel could be a year or so old and is far more likely to have crud in it which will bung up the very fine fuel lines in double quick time.

I'm just repeating info I've gleaned from conversations today, perhaps there's a guru on here that has more info...........
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One of the msin differences are injector sizes. Imagine a ball point pen refill and a human hair. Older diesel injectors are like refills injected at fairly low pressure. New injectors are like hair injected at very high pressure
 
talking to the local engineer, reckon he should buy up and refurb older engines for resale. Even the RNLI lifeboat fell off a wave and went into limp mode.....
 
I was looking at an American yacht and wondered why they had switched from Yanmar engines to Volkswagen perhaps you have given the answer.
 
Cheesey69 said:
More than that, these engines requires electronic control and various sensors so stepping up a level of complication.
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Once you get electronics involved in small boats engines, it against the ethos of what it is about. The emmissions may be a bit dirty, but are so low on the scale as to be un-noticable in the general statistics. While big ships pump out huge amounts of pollutients, but the are 'protected' from controls.
 
Onia said:
Are you saying we can no longer buy old diesel engine types? So no more Bukh engines then?
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Probably not as boats having to conform to whatever the latest CE regs are will undoubtably have low emission engines as part of their specification so once the OE market switches over the old engine will cease to be produced.
 
Smaller, lighter, more efficient, more power, ruggedised electronics. Got to be better than the old technology.
 
We can get the "old fashioned" Beta engines for the foreseeable future as these are essentially Kubota engines that have been marinised for marine use.
I guess the others, Volvo, Vetus, Yanmar etc will have to come up with something.

Unless of course we all go electric ??
 
Sneaky Pete said:
Low pressure like 3000psi, that is more than enough to put the diesel through the skin and into the blood stream. New generation diesels which are now being proposed pump in the region of 44,000 psi.
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This is what the engineer told me: injector pressures are so high and nozzles so small that they get eroded and need changing sooner, plus modern fuels are hygroscopic.
 
Javelin said:
We can get the "old fashioned" Beta engines for the foreseeable future as these are essentially Kubota engines that have been marinised for marine use.
I guess the others, Volvo, Vetus, Yanmar etc will have to come up with something.

Unless of course we all go electric ??
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They are all like Beta (at least in the smaller under 40hp range) based on simple low output industrial diesels - Perkins Mitsubishi, Yanmars own. Expect to see the larger hp engines go to common rail first.
 
If environmental reasons are the justification then expect the exhaust system will require all the associated components to ensure clean emissions.
 
I dont have any problem with commom fuel rail engines. The electronics that control these are reliable. How you marinise these parts to deal with a salt environment will need careful thought but I am sure it is possible. The point is, I think the move to highly controlled electronic fuel delivery is unneccesary on small auxiliary yacht engines. It just adds complexity that none of us need. The general move to electronic controlled fuel delivery is to ensure perfect fuel metering and hence no exhaust smoke as the fuel supply is varied to meet load. This generally means in vehicle applications the abilty to perfectly meter the fuel as the throttle position is varied. In reality, none of us use our auxiliary engines in this way. On passage they tend to be set at the same revs for many hours so dont need the perfect fuel metering associated with varying revs and load.
 
Until automation leads to unmanned shipping, there will still be ships' lifeboats, so there will still be a need for small diesels that can sit dormant for long periods and then work reliably.
 
Kelpie said:
Until automation leads to unmanned shipping, there will still be ships' lifeboats, so there will still be a need for small diesels that can sit dormant for long periods and then work reliably.
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Any of the new breed of engines can do this. We park cars up for 8 months over the UK winter. When we return in June they never fail to start first time. For me the problem with these new breed of engines will be the inability to fix them when they do go wrong. When things go wrong we will be faced with swapping put pcbs that cost hundreds of pounds until we find the one that has failed. This is already the case on some small diesel gensets.
 
Norwegian government has announced ban on sales of new road cars with IC engines from 2025 (and France and UK from 2040). The road car market will probably be all electric before 2025, given rapidity of progress. The boat market will not be far behind. So even your "complicated" common-rail motors are at the end of their lifecycles in marine leisure market.

I can't wait for a viable electric replacement for my smelly old diesel engine.
 
Ric said:
Norwegian government has announced ban on sales of new road cars with IC engines from 2025 (and France and UK from 2040). The road car market will probably be all electric before 2025, given rapidity of progress. The boat market will not be far behind. So even your "complicated" common-rail motors are at the end of their lifecycles in marine leisure market.

I can't wait for a viable electric replacement for my smelly old diesel engine.
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Since most small boat engines these days are derived from industrial engines I suspect the all electric boat will be some way behind. First you have to make excavators, dumpers, refrigerated truck cooling, standby generators all electric to remove the need to produce these engines in the first place. These are all larger markets than auxiliary yacht engines so will drive the production requirement for this type of engine. How viable would it be to remove a 20 hp yacht engine and install an electric alternative. I cant see that happening for a very long time on safety grounds alone
 
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