Sole Diesel engines

colind3782

colind3782

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My 1988 Furia has a Sole Diesel Mini 34 engine. Just the other day it occurred to us that we don't know of any modern boats with Sole units fitted as standard. Sole Diesel still make and sell engines so where do they go?

Anyone know of modern production boats with Sole engines?
 
colind3782 said:
My 1988 Furia has a Sole Diesel Mini 34 engine. Just the other day it occurred to us that we don't know of any modern boats with Sole units fitted as standard. Sole Diesel still make and sell engines so where do they go?

Anyone know of modern production boats with Sole engines?
Click to expand...

Sole has never made much impression in the new boat market except in Spain. However years ago when they were making their own engines instead of marinising Japanese engines they were sold by Stuart Turner and were used in quite a few small volume boats such as Cornish Crabbers.

Nothing wrong with the engines, just that there is nothing distinctive and like many other similar brands concentrate on the replacement and small volume commercial boat market.
 
My 1931 wooden sloop has a Solé Mini 17. I have no idea when it was installed and the serial number is missing. It runs sweetly but spares are eyewateringly expensive.
 
When I wasn't sure about the state of the MD22 in the boat I was about to buy (after some years and a couple thousand miles I think I know it's okay - knock on wood), I researched potential replacement engines to get an idea of cost and effort involved. Turns out Solé had the only marine diesel around 50 HP (forgot how much it was exactly) that had the service side (fuel filter, glow plugs, injectors and injector pump, etc. - all but oil filter) on portside, same as the MD22. So if any serious misfortune should befall our engine, that's probably what I'd look at again first, as fitting an engine with the now common starboard service side would be very awkward indeed. The boatshow example looked good and the sales guy was saying all the right stuff (including agreeing that their logo looked a lot like Ford's :)

Looked it up, it was the MINI-62, a Mitsubishi based engine. There's a saildrive kit (by Technodrive) for it, the exhaust elbow is in roughly the same place and the raw water pump is in a much smarter place than on the MD22 (where it is right above the starter motor and the relais box - d'oh). Not sure about global spares availability though.

And the MD22 was very widely installed. Long may they last! :-)
 
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