Sole Diesel..... are these OK?

[Shearwater]

Am looking at buying a pre-used motor boat and keep coming across Sole as a maker of diesels in the adverts. Are these engines generally OK, are spares easy to get and fit? Are they better than some...worse than others? Any horrors?

 

[nimbusgb]

Dunno but thanks for the steer. They seem to have dealers all over Europe. Actually the motors are Mitsubishi based. ( Japanese reliability, if they're anything like Toyotas they'll run forever /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif )

 

[charles_reed]

Don't know from personal experience, but they're made in India and marinised by a company in Spain, so I'd be a little suspicious of their QAS

 

[Latestarter1]

'Don't know from personal experience, but they're made in India and marinised by a company in Spain, so I'd be a little suspicious of their QAS'

Dangerous conjecture. They have been around for years, Stuart Turner even sold them as Stuart Sole in the 70's. ALWAYS Japanese Mitsubishi engines in the small range and some Nissan and Deutz in high ratings. The quality of the Sole marinisation stuff is also good.

Mitsubishi diesels from various marinisers pretty much own the inland waterways narrow boat market.

 

[maxi77]

The market in India for small industrial type diesels is enormous, they are used for pumping water in every village power generation etc etc. If I was in the market for such an engine knowing what works well in India would be a good indicator. As for QAS I would rate India as capable as any one else in that area, and probably better than some

 

[rob2]

I bought a boat three years ago with a Sole mini-14 fitted. Original fitment 1986. It is a Mitsubishi diesel marinised by Sole. I noted it had a newish exhaust bend fitted and in the first couple of days ran in to some trouble due to time expired diesel hoses - allowing the engine to suck in air. But in terms of reliability and such it has been just fine. Spares are available from Diamond Diesel - I thought a bit expensive, but compared with any other they're about normal!

 

[Shearwater]

Thank you to all for your answers, and I note particularly re number of pots - hadn't thought about that. I'll go a-googling for Sole but if you know how many pots there are in the 50 hp engine, I'd be pleased to know....... presumably the continental expression 'c.v.' means 'h.p.' directly, as in 1 = 1?

 

[30boat]

C,V. Cheval Vapeur, Steam horse in direct translation.It means HP.