How many Engine Hours is Too many?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Capn Jimbo

My dear Russian grandfather smoked heavily his whole life, loved his dark pumpernickel bread laden with thick smears of bacon lard every day.. . .

Ha, ha. That was salo. I bet he was actually Ukrainian, no? Or from the Don River valley?

[MAJICDAN]

I am not a fan of sail drives or the new light duty diesels.
I have owned several, and have always had problems.
The sail drives are very hard to service or repair, the boat has to be hauled.
The motors are too stressed to get every last turbocharged horsepower possible.
I have always preferred straight inboards and a heavy duty diesel.
My current cruising sailboat has a single 6 cyl perkins 354 diesel which only makes 120 HP. It has over 20,000 hours on this rebuild, and the compression still tests out as very good. Other than bolt on items, it has not had any problems after going around the world twice.

[kas_1611]

Originally Posted by MAJICDAN

I am not a fan of sail drives or the new light duty diesels.
I have owned several, and have always had problems.
The sail drives are very hard to service or repair, the boat has to be hauled.
The motors are too stressed to get every last turbocharged horsepower possible.
I have always preferred straight inboards and a heavy duty diesel.
My current cruising sailboat has a single 6 cyl perkins 354 diesel which only makes 120 HP. It has over 20,000 hours on this rebuild, and the compression still tests out as very good. Other than bolt on items, it has not had any problems after going around the world twice.

Who said anything about turbocharged? My VP D2-40 is a 1.5litre (92 cubic americans) 4 cylinder lump that has never had a turbo ever in it's design. It is based on a Perkins, cast iron block. No one in their right mind should want to put a turbo on a sailing engine, turbos are for performance boats that want to do double digit speeds and the engines are designed for the compression ratios.

While I agree that VP are a pain in the butt when it comes to spares, being on the expensive side, that has nothing to do with their overall performance. I've ditched the VP air filter on my engine and replaced with a K&N washable one that was actually less than the VP original and will last years.

Like any engine proper maintenance at the proper intervals will reduce the risk of any engine problems to as low as reasonably practicable. Ex charter boats with high engine hours should have had their engines and sail drives serviced regularly and should have everything checked out before they put them on the market. Charter companies don't want engine failures while the boat is on hire.