Reconditioned a legal term?

[Malabarista]

Suck it up, its too late, emulsified gear oil? hohum! why did you change the box? Do you trust your existing engineer? Ive seen to many tooth suckers showing off their so called knowledge.
Take the head off, check the bores, if it ran a year ago there shouldnt be much wrong with it. Standing from a year ago? Depending on what you did to conserve it it should be ok. Clean the bores if necessary, regrind the valves if necessary.
The bottom end? Most diesels are bullet proof.
Stu

Thanks Stu. I am far too trusting in matters of which I have no knowledge. however the marine engineers who examined the engine seemed to be sure that it was BER. I will be in touch with them today to see if they would be happy to write a report confirming the current state of the engine. I have been offered a 'health check' on it by Simon of French marine who I have met and dealt with successfully in the past. I think I have a lot of research to do before i make a final decision.

 

[PaulRainbow]

I have been offered a 'health check' on it by Simon of French marine who I have met and dealt with successfully in the past. I think I have a lot of research to do before i make a final decision.

Good start :encouragement:

 

[Malabarista]

Having now read your pre-purchase thread, I realise that the sea-water in the engine most probably dates back to the flooding incident.
The PO seemingly arranged and paid for someone to recover the engine from that event, work which now shows to have been poorly done.
The PO, at the time of sale, might have genuinely believed that the engine had been restored to good order, after all, you say that it ran well, though the sale term "reconditioned" is contentious.
In that case, any dispute may well be between the PO and the contractor who worked on the engine. Could that line of enquiry be followed up?

good morning again.
this is also my feeling as there was a certain amount of dispute between the two co-owners. the guy who took us for the sea trial (the only one of the two we met ) seemed like a 'proper' sailor and a nice guy. I find it difficult to believe he would knowingly be ripping us off as he invited us to his home and happily downloaded lots of photos and historical information for us onto a 'key'.
I have yet to contact him about this matter as I would like to be absolutely sure of my facts beforehand. (unless of course he is reading this)

 

[Malabarista]

As far as getting anything from the previous owner goes, i think Tranona is correct in his first post and i think the chances of getting anything are about zero. You have no recourse with the "mechanic" that did the work, his contract was with the PO. You motored the boat away a year ago, now you're saying the engine was faulty when you bought the boat, if the PO just shrugs his shoulders in court and says it was fine when you bought it, you drove it away, you must have flooded the engine, who's to say he's wrong ?

You motored the boat home, then subsequently replaced the gearbox, so i'm finding it very difficult to see how the bell housing being full of sea water could have happened prior to you buying the boat. That water must have got into the bell housing after you changed the gearbox, surely ?

So, you've sorted the gearbox, that's one job done. I would now remove the engine and disassemble it. Head off, sump off, crank out, etc. Access the damage and replace the unfixable bits, which may well not be too much. Spares should be easily obtainable and once rebuilt, the engine will likely be far better than anything secondhand.

hi Paul and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I may well have mistaken what I was looking at in the workshop, but I'm sure he said the flywheel was in there somewhere.......you are the second person to have suggested that maybe the engine is not so badly damaged as first thought so on the strength of this advice I will phone another engineer and get him to give me an opinion on it. this is why my first Port of call is the YBW think tank.....please don't all bugger off and go sailing or I will be up the proverbial creek.

 

[Malabarista]

it's a tough learning experience, but sounds like you have got to the bottom of it. I would bet the engine was just flushed and shined up as I said. Might still be saveable though if it is ok internally. Pop the head off and have a look. (if your engineer hasnt already done so) It is surprising how much a diesel can take and still come back from. You will probably need at least the flywheel refacing and ringing, and the ancilliaries attached to it, but all may not be lost. The BER part of thbe equation may be mostly labour - if you could do the work yourself you might be ok.

well there is certainly a scary thought......I reckon my skillset may stretch to servicing it and maybe fixing some of the ancilliaries or replacing them. the thought of proper surgery is daunting.....I know it's easy when you know how.....

 

[Lucky Duck]

Simon of French marine who I have met and dealt with successfully in the past. I think I have a lot of research to do before i make a final decision.

Good start :encouragement:

I spent a not inconsiderable amount of money having the Volvo on my last boat lifted, repaired and re-fitted. Not much later on that season the water pump seals needed replacing and it turned out it was dumping coolant out of the exhaust :disgust:

 

[solent clown]

well there is certainly a scary thought......I reckon my skillset may stretch to servicing it and maybe fixing some of the ancilliaries or replacing them. the thought of proper surgery is daunting.....I know it's easy when you know how.....

you are going to have a bill from them anyway, so have an honest chat about fixing it yourself - they probably wouldnt want to do it anyway without replacing almost everything just for liability reasons. You on the other hand, should be up to replacing the flywheel and other bits as long as the engine bores etc are OK. I would ask them to pop the head off for you and inspect. That shouldn't increase the bill by much if they haven't already done it, and will give you a realistic start point. But if it's total peace of mind you want then start saving...

 

[Tranona]

hi Tranona thanks again for your time. I am evidently a little hard of thinking. I had failed to see the difference between the small claims court and consumer rights act. apologies. the only evidence I have of the vendors claim is the details that were given to me by the broker. which were " Yanmar 4JH3TE (reconditioned) 2016"
I know that is a little light on content but everything else that was explained to me about the engine was verbal. I asked on this very forum for a little help with questions for owner from a first time buyer on the sea trial of which I received dozens.I diligently asked and received satisfactory (I assumed) answers. I failed to ask for receipts from the engine rebuild which is my lack of experience or the fact that my brain cell was doing a lonely cartwheel across the deck of my (maybe) new boat at the time. your advice is appreciated.

Presumably you will have to strip the engine down to find out what is salvageable. Not a big step to get an engineers report. If you are going to try and take action against the vendors you have to deal with the definition of "reconditioned" to determine what your expectations were and what the vendor is claiming when using the term. Suggest you look on www.fer.co.uk which is a well respected trade association. There is a definition of what they expect their members to do to an engine to claim that it is reconditioned or remanufactured. Also googling the term will get you a whole bunch of sites of firms who specialise in this work and you will be able to glean from them what they actually do in practice. My brother was a big player for many years in this business and I have a pretty good idea of the standards expected.

Starting from the definition you establish your report should reference back to that. For example, what sort of items should be checked and against what standard. For example piston, bores, bearings, valve guides etc should be within manufacturer's tolerance and if not replaced. Useful to have the Yanmar factory workshop manual to hand as this has all the key measurements in it. If you are using French Marine they will know all this.

The objective is to present the vendors and broker with a cast iron case that they misled you in their description so they will have to respond to that rather than have the advantage of making their own case first. If it gets to court you will have laid the ground rules on definition rather than have the court define it.

Most of this cost you will have to incur anyway, but as your bill for a new or even used engine is going to be in the region of £5-10k it is worth investing in building a sound and professional case.

 

[sailaboutvic]

I very surprise people are advise him that after a year he may have a chance of a claim .
Not only your given the guy fuses hopes , he is going to waste more money if he taken that route , already he is paying out for reports , he be better off using that money to get the engine fixed .

Question to everyone who think he as a claim , let's say your the previous owner and after a year the OP telling you he now has this engine problem and he only use the boat for a few hours , what would be your reply ? I guessing it be OH YA .

 

[duncan99210]

This thread here http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?471374-PITA-new-owners is a view from the other side of the fence (sellers perspective).

I think that the OP doesn't really have much of a case to start with and the interval between purchase and discovery is such that it further weakens an already weak case. I'd devote my energies and money to sorting out the engine and take a deep breath and forget chasing recompense from the seller.

 

[sailaboutvic]

This thread here http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?471374-PITA-new-owners is a view from the other side of the fence (sellers perspective).

I think that the OP doesn't really have much of a case to start with and the interval between purchase and discovery is such that it further weakens an already weak case. I'd devote my energies and money to sorting out the engine and take a deep breath and forget chasing recompense from the seller.

Good example Duncan .

There two side to every story and although I do feel for the OP but he had it surveyed or so he should had ,
If he has a problem he should be having it out with the surveyor , just because the broker listing say no damage ,
it doesn't mean it hasn't had any and been repaired .
I won't even go into what we spend on our lastest boat in the year we had it .
Come to think of it we don't know what he paid for it , for all any of us know it may had been well under the valve the boat worth .

 

[alant]

After a year of toiling on the boring bits (after work and weekends) I finally got around to the engine. Looks very lovely on the outside but after removing the air filter i noticed that there was a significant amount of rust on the turbo blades. I called in a marine engineer and together we looked around and came to the conclusion that the chances that this engine was ‘reconditioned in 2016’ ( as stated on the selling particulars) was virtually zero. So we hauled the engine out, put it on a test bench and it was thoroughly tested. Upon removing the flywheel cover my marine engineer was soaked by rusty seawater ( tasted) and as every bolt and nut he attempted to undo was either seized or very evidently undisturbed in recent years it appears that no way has it been ‘reconditioned’.
Some of you may remember that i bought the boat a little over a year ago. My question to you learned lot is …do i have any recourse against the seller after this much time?
I have been advised that the yanmar 4JH3TE engine is completely FUBARED and BER to boot. With secondhand/reconditioned and new engines costing large wedges of beer tokens i am interested in finding out if there is anything i can do apart from suck it up and start saving.
Thanks for reading
Dave

In all the gnashing of teeth, you seem to have forgotten the vendor, who may, with all good intentions have paid good money to someone to get said engine "reconditioned", so may be worth simply contacting him. He may then want to contact his "reconditioner" for redress, some of which may hopefully fall into your lap.

 

[Tranona]

I very surprise people are advise him that after a year he may have a chance of a claim .
Not only your given the guy fuses hopes , he is going to waste more money if he taken that route , already he is paying out for reports , he be better off using that money to get the engine fixed .

Question to everyone who think he as a claim , let's say your the previous owner and after a year the OP telling you he now has this engine problem and he only use the boat for a few hours , what would be your reply ? I guessing it be OH YA .

He won't know until he tries. While he will need to put some effort into preparing his case, little additional cost is involved as the engine needs to be stripped down. Also it is a clear cut issue. Either the engine has been reconditioned (however that is defined) or not. It does not seem to be a question of how well it has been done, but whether any work has been done at all and that should be easy to determine, even after a year. What he has to show is that the engine was not as described at the time he bought the boat, relying on the claim made by the vendor.

There will be case law to show that time is not an absolute barrier - I remember a case involving a house that was flooded and the new owners successfully sued the previous owner for claiming the house was not prone to flooding and there was no record of previous flooding. Inevitably the new owners found out after some years when it did indeed flood, and was able to show that there were flooding incidents during the previous owners time.

This is similar in that there is good evidence that the engine has only run 10 hours so its current condition in respect of reconditioning evidence is essentially the same as one year ago. So if the strip down does show no work done, then he has a case.

Always ifs and buts until the facts are established, but a pre emptive strike against the vendors with an opportunity to negotiate will put him in a good position to go to the Small Claims track, which is low cost. He then stands a chance of success if the vendors do not have good evidence that their claim about the engine was justified.

 

[Tranona]

In all the gnashing of teeth, you seem to have forgotten the vendor, who may, with all good intentions have paid good money to someone to get said engine "reconditioned", so may be worth simply contacting him. He may then want to contact his "reconditioner" for redress, some of which may hopefully fall into your lap.

That is not the OPs problem, neither can he take any action against this person. The vendors may well have paid somebody to do work which was not actually done, although there is no evidence from what the OP says that this is the case. It is the vendors who made the claim and are therefore responsible for the misrepresentation.

 

[earlybird]

AFAIK, for a private sale, if the vendor makes a statement that he reasonably believes to be true, then he can't be held to account if he is later shown to be wrong.
The history of this engine seems somewhat obscure, but I read in the OP's early thread that it was "new" in 2011 and currently had 344 hours, ie barely run-in. If that was the case, it seems to reinforce the speculation that the "reconditioning" was really recoverery from flooding, loose terminology but perhaps understandable for a person of little mechanical background.
In the OP's position, I'd contact the PO to tell him that he put the work out to a cowboy but prepare to bite the bullet and get the lump repaired

 

[wotayottie]

T

If any action could be taken, it would have to be for fraud or misrepresentation, both of which are difficult to prove in most cases and probably impossible after a year - whether the engine has been used or not. The failure is on the buyer's (or his professional advisers) side to check thoroughly that such an important claim was true.

quite correct though with some care a case might be made. for example, has the boat been in the water at all? if not how did salt water get in? Rust is irrelevant because things can rust just sat on the hard, but seized bolts that clearly havent been removed? That said you are going for "misrepresentation" and if the seller has in turn been deceived by the guy he gave the rebuilding job to, then you are on sticky wicket.

I believe ( I have never been there) that the small claims court does not allocate costs to the loser. In that case , why not try the court route? Nothing to lose but some spare time. And contrary to what some people will say, court decisions at the lowest levels can be capricious

 

[Lucky Duck]

If the case is deemed to have no reasonable possibility of succeeding then you can be made liable for the costs of the other party attending the court.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Before streering the OP to take this further , Let's get some fact right .

Dave OP said he seen photo of the engine lifted out , plus it's been re painted .
The marine engineer just by looking at the rust on the turbo blades came to the conclusion the engine wasn't reconditioned, he must be a very good engineer if he can tell that by looking at the turbo blades , or has he got X-ray eyes to see through the block , there was nothing said that the turbo was reconditioned .

The engineer tell him every "nut he attempted to undo was either seized or very evidently undisturbed " how would the engineer know this , if it's been repaired?.
Are the bolts tight because their been painted and not long been torque down ? .
Dave says he only used the engine no more then 10 miles , not wishing to say other wise but what evidence has he got , hour reading isn't going to mean much .

The engineer state he was covered in sea water when the engine was on the test bench and he remove the fly wheel cover , this one I find very hard to believe, bell housing are not sealed so any water would had leaked out if not while the engine was in place at less when it was moved about , anyone who's taken an engine out know very well they don't just come out without lots of pulling , pushing and tipping .

But most important of all is , there may not be no evidence of the engine been recommended, the guy may have payed a mate to do it ,
nothing to say it had to be done but a professional or he could had done it him self , the recondition could had been a matter of removing the head regrinding the valves in which case who to say it wasn't .

Dave is better off spending his hard earn cash with sorting out the engine much less stress , proving the engine had not had some kind of over haul is going to be very hard , after all there proof that the engine been remove , he seen the photos .

Dave I be careful your guys not pulling the wool over your eyes , the engine was running well , no signs other then the turbo blade rust ,
I been temped just to sort out the turbo .
It be interesting to see if your engineer is willing to back you up in court ?

 

[Normalfornorfolk]

Before you could argue in court whether or not it had been "reconditioned" you'd have to ascertain a definition of that word when applied to an engine. In reality it has no specific meaning at all so you're on a hiding to nothing. Painting could be claimed to be "reconditioning" and if the purchaser chooses to assume it was some kind of mechanical work without checking on the detail that's up to him. "Rebuilding" is a bit different as it implies dismantling and reassembling but even then makes no implication on the extent of the rebuild or anything to do with the quality or condition of the rebuilt engine imo. I doubt it legally even implies making good, it merely says dismantled and reassembled. Reconditioning has no such implication of dismantling in my view.

As ever in a private sale, unless you can prove misrepresentation ("I fitted new pistons" but hadn't had the head off) or fraud (the pistons fitted were worn out) the only rule that applies is caveat emptor.

 

[RichardS]

He won't know until he tries. While he will need to put some effort into preparing his case, little additional cost is involved as the engine needs to be stripped down. Also it is a clear cut issue. Either the engine has been reconditioned (however that is defined) or not. It does not seem to be a question of how well it has been done, but whether any work has been done at all and that should be easy to determine, even after a year. What he has to show is that the engine was not as described at the time he bought the boat, relying on the claim made by the vendor.

There will be case law to show that time is not an absolute barrier - I remember a case involving a house that was flooded and the new owners successfully sued the previous owner for claiming the house was not prone to flooding and there was no record of previous flooding. Inevitably the new owners found out after some years when it did indeed flood, and was able to show that there were flooding incidents during the previous owners time.

This is similar in that there is good evidence that the engine has only run 10 hours so its current condition in respect of reconditioning evidence is essentially the same as one year ago. So if the strip down does show no work done, then he has a case.

Always ifs and buts until the facts are established, but a pre emptive strike against the vendors with an opportunity to negotiate will put him in a good position to go to the Small Claims track, which is low cost. He then stands a chance of success if the vendors do not have good evidence that their claim about the engine was justified.

Errrrr ........ that's a bit of a curve ball.

I said yesterday that I agreed with Tranona's post #2 but T seems to have changed his thinking so now I don't.

Richard