Reconditioned a legal term?

Tranona said:
There does not have to be a "legal definition" - whatever that means.
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It means that some words and phrases are defined in law and some aren't. For example

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or

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Sometime the definitions are changed - this is from the Interpretation Act 1978

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In general, where a word does not have a specific legal definition it is assumed to have its meaning in normal use. So no, there doesn't have to be a legal definition, but if there is it trumps any other.
 
There was nothing wrong with the engine, it flooded. All that was required to "re-condition" it was to revert it to it's original state. Drain everything, clean, check, re-paint. There would have been no need for crank grinding, cylinder boring or anything else if it was done straight away.

There is plenty of evidence that this work was done. There are pictures of the engine being removed from the boat, it has clearly been painted and it was in running order when the OP bought the boat. The surveyor, whilst not carrying out an engine survey as such, didn't see anything wrong with it, he checked the oil, no water in there one resumes. The OP considered that the engine was running OK. The engine got the boat back to the OP's home berth.
 
I think we all playing on words . Recon/ overhaul

The OP engine was working when he brought the boat , there was no signs of it not working how it should ,
there is signs that it's been removed and repainted at the very less . Which suggest some kind of work has been done .
Although no one wish to say it , an good working engine has been remove just for the sake of it on the say of an engineer ,
Who other then the OP know if the guy is diesel qualified or just a guy with a box of tools , I think most of us know the type of guy I mean .
I guess that Dave as now lost some confidence in the guy or the guy as not got the qualification to write a report that would stand up in court if the need arise ,
So to spend more money asking another company to take over the report .
This may be a case where poor Dave as been at the very less bad advise to remove the engine .
Dave as now paid out to have the engine removed , he paid the first engineer to pull it part , he now passed or going to pass it on to another company who going to charge him for a report then more cost to put it all back to gather .
all money he could be useing else where .
 
sailaboutvic said:
I think we all playing on words . Recon/ overhaul

The OP engine was working when he brought the boat , there was no signs of it not working how it should ,
there is signs that it's been removed and repainted at the very less . Which suggest some kind of work has been done .
Although no one wish to say it , an good working engine has been remove just for the sake of it on the say of an engineer ,
Who other then the OP know if the guy is diesel qualified or just a guy with a box of tools , I think most of us know the type of guy I mean .
I guess that Dave as now lost some confidence in the guy or the guy as not got the qualification to write a report that would stand up in court if the need arise ,
So to spend more money asking another company to take over the report .
This may be a case where poor Dave as been at the very less bad advise to remove the engine .
Dave as now paid out to have the engine removed , he paid the first engineer to pull it part , he now passed or going to pass it on to another company who going to charge him for a report then more cost to put it all back to gather .
all money he could be useing else where .
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+1 I'm afraid!
 
PaulRainbow said:
There was nothing wrong with the engine, it flooded. All that was required to "re-condition" it was to revert it to it's original state. Drain everything, clean, check, re-paint. There would have been no need for crank grinding, cylinder boring or anything else if it was done straight away.

There is plenty of evidence that this work was done. There are pictures of the engine being removed from the boat, it has clearly been painted and it was in running order when the OP bought the boat. The surveyor, whilst not carrying out an engine survey as such, didn't see anything wrong with it, he checked the oil, no water in there one resumes. The OP considered that the engine was running OK. The engine got the boat back to the OP's home berth.
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I know most of this thread is devoted to what " reconditioned" means and I have to say that I totally disagree with this.

If my engine developed a fault ( including being immersed) and an engineer repaired it back to its previous state, I would say it had been repaired not reconditioned.

Reconditioned (to me, and many other contributors) implies that the engine has been dismantled and clearances, ie crank, little ends, valves etc had been checked and where necessary restored for a long period of future use.

Having said this, my opinion is that the OP is on to a loser.
 
davidej said:
I know most of this thread is devoted to what " reconditioned" means and I have to say that I totally disagree with this.

If my engine developed a fault ( including being immersed) and an engineer repaired it back to its previous state, I would say it had been repaired not reconditioned.

Reconditioned (to me, and many other contributors) implies that the engine has been dismantled and clearances, ie crank, little ends, valves etc had been checked and where necessary restored for a long period of future use.

Having said this, my opinion is that the OP is on to a loser.
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I've already said what my personal opinion is for a reconditioned engine, but that's just my opinion. My idea of a reconditioned engine would be more in line with a re-manufactured engine, which doe have a definition. "Reconditioned" has no hard and fast definition, for instance

http://www.jgparts.co.uk/bulletins/rebuilt-reconditioned-remanufactured-engines.htm

They give the opinion that "A reconditioned engine is one which has been stripped or disassembled, cleaned and may have some damaged parts replaced before being rebuilt."

How about a dictionary definition : https://www.thefreedictionary.com/reconditioned

A Google search will turn up a few examples of whatever anyone thinks "reconditioned" means, therefore the word is meaningless. That's my point regarding any chance of legal action in this case. If the previous owner of the boat thinks that draining, servicing, cleaning and painting is "reconditioning" then he can say it's "reconditioned".

If i was reconditioning an engine it would be done to totally different standards, as i said in an earlier post, otherwise it would be, as you say, "repaired".
 
davidej said:
...Reconditioned (to me, and many other contributors) implies that the engine has been dismantled and clearances, ie crank, little ends, valves etc had been checked and where necessary restored for a long period of future use...
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The point is that without a specification or list of work done "reconditioned" doesn't imply anything.
 
There is a colloquial mean to reconditioning an engine, which tends to involve rebores and crank grinds etc.
That's largely because the engines taken in by this trade are high mileage units needing this work.
If the engine in question was low hours, there would not have been any merit in doing any of that.

Another issue, how long would a private seller be expected to keep evidence relating to the condition of something he's sold?
If you sell a house/boat/car how long do you keep old paperwork in case the buyer comes back with a query?
 
Maybe Malabarsta could give us a few more details .
Was the engine working without any issues when you motored home ?
If it was , what made you remove the engine ?
If it wasn't , why wait a year before getting someone to look at it .
Was the boat in the water or on the hard between the time you got it home and found the rust on the blades .
Didn't you preparing the engine for long time out of use ?
Was the engineer who advise you to remove the engine an qualified engineer ?.
How far did he strip the engine ?
What did he find if he indeed strip the engine fully ( did he remove the valves and check the seating , did he measure the bores , did he check the rings gap, big end shells and crank , was the head gasket replaced?
Only when we have the answer to these question can we say if any work did take place on the engine and what .
 
lw395 said:
Another issue, how long would a private seller be expected to keep evidence relating to the condition of something he's sold?
If you sell a house/boat/car how long do you keep old paperwork in case the buyer comes back with a query?
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Good point , unless it for new equipment then I don't keep receipt long , some time till I reach the first bin , other wise till the warranty run s out .

The PO may not have any receipt, if in the case he had the job done for cash ,or a mate did it for him .

Also if PO happen to have the same knowledge as the OP ( not know much about engine ) the repair may only had a ( playing on words ) overhaul but the words use to him by the engineer was recon which in deed lead him to use the same words on the listing
Maybe if the OP wanted to know exactly what the recon involved he or his surveyor should had ask the question .

If I was buying a yacht that said Its had new rigging , I be wanting to know if that included all the bottle screws and deck fitting .
 
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lw395 said:
If you sell a house/boat/car how long do you keep old paperwork in case the buyer comes back with a query?
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I've sold houses several times, and in every case I've ensured that all relevant documentation went to the new owner; I didn't retain anything. On at least one occasion, the buyer's solicitor pretty much insisted on it - though I would have done it anyway.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I've sold houses several times, and in every case I've ensured that all relevant documentation went to the new owner; I didn't retain anything. On at least one occasion, the buyer's solicitor pretty much insisted on it - though I would have done it anyway.
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+1 Buying a house is tied up fairly thoroughly by the Solicitors who if nothiong else will want to cover themselves against exactly this sort of claim. Selling a boat is rarely in the same league, and even if a broker or agent was involved, seeing an passing over all documentation is unlikely to be insisted on. Generally speaking I pass on whatever paperwork I have available. If somebody came back a year later asking questions, I would simply refer them to the file, as any records I hadnt passed over would either have been dumped long since, or if important sent on to last known address of the buyer.

I suspect a court might take a sympathetic view to that unless there was clear evidence I had misrepresented what i had sold.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I've sold houses several times, and in every case I've ensured that all relevant documentation went to the new owner; I didn't retain anything. On at least one occasion, the buyer's solicitor pretty much insisted on it - though I would have done it anyway.
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Similar here, should we have kept copies in case a buyer got awkward a year or more later?
 
I just come across your thread , before you brought the boat , there 17 pages , time and time again you where advise to check into the engine history ,.
the was lots of conflict info about when the engine was put in , replace even what was done to it , which the OP was fully awhere off.
This alone should had set off bells ringing ,
That was the time to get and engineer report .
Why now question the engine history ?
 
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Tranona said:
While both this and your previous post are correct (except that Small Claims limit is now £10k), we really do not know enough about the details of the case.
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Why then Tara did you rush to be first to post with absolutist advice that could leave the OP £1000's poorer?
 
Poor old OP, seems he must follow the advice of one of three highly tribal partisan camps.

  1. On one side we have the Pro Trade tribe who believe private yacht owners should not perturb their cosy £80 per hour world with unreasonable expectations of honesty or competence. Their advice is give us more money to fix your yacht.
  3. Tribe no.2 is comprised of expert yacht owners who rush to demonstrate they are wise and the OP is a Numpty.
  5. Tribe-3 the rational thinkers.
What most contributors to this thread have overlooked is that the OP can pursue multiple options, both legal and mechanical restoration. His case is very simple and should not be personally exhausting to present in a small claims court. (a) Is there evidence of any prior reconditioning? (b) If none, what was the purpose of painting the engine other than to perpetuate a deception and fraud against the OP.

I doubt the award will be large since the OP seems to have triggered his own comedy of ownership errors post purchase. I reckon £1000 to £4000 depending on the mood of the judge on the day. Maybe the judge will be a yacht owner and harbour a dislike of the British marine trade.
 
sailaboutvic said:
Going back to posting 1# it doesn't sound that there was any thing wrong with the engine , at no point has the OP said there was a problem or the engine stop working .
By what he says , he spend a best part of the year working on other part of the boat , and when he got to working on the engine he found there rust problem ,

This is what the op say,

" 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. "

This is why I said it strange that anyone would pull an engine out just because of some rust on the blades , even more strange why any good engineer would suggest it ,

I can understand him stripping the turbo , But removing the engine ,

It just doesn't sound right to me , as if someone was trying to find fault with it to make a claim .

Even if French Marine after stripping it says the engine have signs of wear , it still doesn't mean the guy or who ever worked on the engine hasn't reconditioned it to a state they felt was work as it should . .
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hi the engine was removed from the boat to ascertain whether it had been actually reconditioned (as advertised ) or not. this was not in an attempt to sue somebody but in an attempt to ensure that the engine would continue to function. we had lost faith in the donk after it's many failings. these were...
1. during the sea trial the morse control for the engine was found to be stiff and not engaging the gear properly. this temporarily fixed by the PO.
2. when the boat was being lifted out for the survey the ignition key snapped off in the barrel as it was very rusted.
3. when it was being put back onto a finger berth after the survey and wash down the morse control failed completely and had to be repaired by a fitter in the marina. we were advised that the control itself had failed as there was an unusually stiff gearbox.
4. whilst motoring down the Hamble to take her to her new home the morse control cable failed and we were forced to attach a mole wrench to the gearbox itself to change gear.
5. just off Brighton we attempted to start the engine and the gearbox seized.
6. A marine engineer examined the gearbox after we put into Eastbourne and pronounced it to be FUBARED due to the presence of sea water and subsequent corrosion. We replaced the gearbox with a reconditioned unit from French marine.
7. The fitter who replaced the gearbox failed to secure it properly to the prop shaft and it became disconnected in the lock at Eastbourne. (not really an engine problem per se but included in this list to demonstrate why we had lost faith in the whole damn thing.)
8. Upon our arrival off Camber and preparing to enter the river the engine failed due to the starter motor seizing.
9. The rusty state of all the ancillaries including what looked like rust on the turbo blades but after receiving further information on here now seems to be some other contamination.
10. the worn state of the engine mounts.

these all combined led me to suspect that we would need to recondition the engine ourselves. this is why I wanted it removed to see if there were any way we would be able to get it to a state where we could start to have trust in it again. (or replace it with something else)
my original question on this forum was prompted by the marine engineer who said that there was absolutely no way that the engine could have been reconditioned a year ago.
he also mentioned to me that it had been resprayed badly and with little care to overspray.
I felt that after our fairly expensive failings with the engine we had been misinformed (well lied to) about the engine having been reconned to anybodies understanding of that term which seemed to vary wildly depending on with whom we spoke.
thus the post.
 
I would imagine the purpose of painting the engine was the normal one, to stop it going rusty after cleaning/degreasing it, and to make it look acceptable and easy to keep clean.
Entirely normal sound practice and in no way ever an indicator of internal work.

Maybe the judge might award the OP something. I haven't seen the way the boat and engine were originally represented to him.
The law in the UK can be a bit capricious as they say.
 
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