TD Power Marine, Chinese Marine Diesel Engine

[oceannavigator]

Whew.Brings back unpleasant memories of a Chinese Yanmar clone engine I bought. 1/3 the price, ran about 10 hours and threw a rod. No parts available. Went out and bought the Yanmar next. Expensive lesson.

[pagu]

Hi Antonio,

I'm still learning about the gearbox and trying to figure out what is going on, but will offer my experience to date here.

The gear is TD-025, mechanical gearbox, fitted with the 385 engine is sold as TDME 385M. I bought two of these units.

At some point the gearbox on one engine has got hot and I suspect this happened early on, perhaps when running the engine in. As I expressed in earlier post, the paint changed colour. After just 100 hours the oil was black and possibly carbonated - though this is just my inexperienced guess as to the cause of the oil blackening and I have no way of having it tested here.

My first thought was the oil levels and I checked this, they're fine and I have changed the gear oil now at regular intervals and as far as I can tell, not related to the oil.

I thought perhaps water leak and I put this question to the factory and responded that would be 'impossible'. The gearbox has no cooling.

I now have a temperature gauge on the gear so can monitor it. Longest continuous run I've done since fitting this was two hours and the temperature reached 97 degrees C. I contacted the factory again and they have assured me this is normal temperature. I also contacted the company who makes the gear oil I've been using, Australian based Tru Blue Oils and they were SUPER HELPFUL getting back to me with information about the temperature tolerances of their oil - I had been wondering if the gear temp was too high for the oil I was using, but not so.

Aside the change in colour (I'll try and attach a pic at the end to illustrate) and also fact that gear oil is dirty after a relatively short time (last change was after just 70 hours) and the oil was black relatively to what I'm used to with oil in gearboxes changed after much higher hours, 200-300 hours - the gear is running fine. There is no noise, in fact it's as quiet as a mouse. No grit I can feel in the oil, in fact aside the temp and the oil, no evidence of problem - to my inexperienced eye anyway.

So, I still haven't worked out what is going on and or what went on, but my current theory is this: The gearbox got hot during the engines running in process. I understand that this is possible with mechanical gearboxes and the discolouration of the paint did occur early during the first 20 hours when I made 14 hour voyage home from the yard I had the engine fitted - albeit not exceeding 2000 RPM as per the manufacture's instruction for running in and the engine temp was fine, but I didn't monitor the gearbox. So perhaps that is what happened.

But why on only one gearbox? I have two of these engines and they were both fitted same places same time and made same trip home, same running hours. I guess perhaps if there were some small differences in the manufacturing, machining etc that might explain?

How to explain the subsequent black oil? During that period the gearbox ran very hot, oil carbonised and there is still residue of that in the gearbox, despite subsequent oil changes. I've been advised to get a hold of some engine flush and clean the gearbox out. I'll give that a try - when I can find some flushing agent. All of these kinds of things are hard to find in the Solomon Islands!

The second engine I had no problem with (incidentally all of the issues I've reported in this post have been on the one same engine) I'm soon putting that boat back into the water (I've been working on the fiberglass hull) so I'll put the temp gauge on that too for comparison.

So remains a bit of a mystery. The engine appears to be running fine, but in the back of my mind my confidence is a little shaken and I can't help but feel concerned that I'm going to get stranded at sea when the gearbox fails. But then again perhaps not and it will keep going and going just fine. In the meantime I always carry extra paddles and lots of water! Like coconuts, generally everything washes ashore here at eventually.

Will keep posting as gain more experience.

Wade
Gatokae
Solomon Islands

I've tried to attach a pic of the gear with it's discoloured paint here. I hope works.

[antonio iacona]

Hi mr. Pagu

Is possible that the friction inside the gearbox slip ?
This gearbox was disconnetted from the engine ? May it be not well in line with engine ?
When the gearbox is hot put it in neutral, is the propeller axle free to rotate ?
The gearbox can became hot, but if the paint change color I think is to hot.
Let me know more about this engine,
Antonio Iacona

[antonio iacona]

Hi mr. Pagu
Wath news about your engines TD POWER ?
They are still OK ?
Antonio

[pagu]

Originally Posted by antonio iacona

Hi mr. Pagu
Wath news about your engines TD POWER ?
They are still OK ?
Antonio

Hi Antonio,

The two engines are running well.

As per pervious posts: I'm still not sure why one gearbox got so hot. I'm monitoring it to try understand this. Otherwise the engines are running fine and serving me well.

If any news or information I'll post.

Wade

[Lepke]

I first saw these engines early in their import days as a commercial fisherman on the US West Coast. While I didn't own a China Diesel some fellow fishermen bought them for auxiliaries running a small generator or pumps. I also witnessed a couple going into small sailboats as mains. These experiences are probably 20 or more years old...and I grew up around big diesels. The first issue I saw was their paint system was not designed for marine use. The paint either flaked off or allowed corrosion thru the paint especially on steel but on other alloys. Because I know mechanics I was often consulted on engine problems and saw the results of heavy use on China Diesels. The whole starting/solenoid setup seemed to fail early. The main problem seemed to be an undersized solenoil and was partly solved by using a higher amp solenoid. Usually by this time the starter had burned out. On a fishing boat a auxiliary might be started several/many times a day. Alternators were changed early, too. Most were replaced with an American brand.
Besides the pump problems mentioned previously, the engines of that time wore out their bores faster than typical quality brands. The ones I've seen apart didn't have sleeves, so they had to be bored and sleeved in a rebuild. The insides of the sleeves were bored to match the pistons (so a double bore job). On a rebuild using American sleeves and rings the engine bores would last about as long as brand name engines. But the cost of a quality rebuild was about the cost of the original engine. Then there is the head, valves, injectors and injector pumps...
Lepke

[delcrest]

HI all,anyone know how these engines are doing. running / not running would be interested to know, thanks in advance

[antonio iacona]

20-09-2014

Hi mr. Pagu
Wath news about your engines TD POWER ?
How the gearbox?
They are still OK ?
Antonio

[pagu]

I had a few private enquires so thought I’d post an update.

The engines are going well. I sold one of my boats to a friend and he’s reporting good operation. If I feared the engines were ‘lemons’ and didn’t have confidence I wouldn’t have sold it to him!

I’m needing to replace the gearbox – but there is more to that story and I’ll get to in this post.

My point or aim when I kicked off this thread was to share my user experience with these engines. With that in mind I offer now something of a summery of my experience over 2000 hours off use (1000 on each engine) over 24 months of ownership and trial. Keep in mind, this is very subjective and my perspective and my circumstances here in the Solomon Islands are fairly unique. In short, what works for me of course doesn’t for everyone and visa versa.

In summary, despite the issues chronicled in this post and considering my circumstances here in the Solomon Islands, they have proven a good choice and I would do the same again.

Price.
Even with the cost of having to fix the issues caused by the faulty breather hose installation, the price still come out well ahead.

Reliability.
The engines have now done 1000 hours over the past 24 months, so relatively fairly new. However, once the teething issues solved, they have been 100% reliable. Time will tell more as they age and work more hours.

Back up and parts.
Overall, I feel that the factory dealt fairly with me. If buying through an established agent I imagine this should be even better. Main reason though I rate highly is that parts and expendables appear to be available from sources far and wide. Now this is something very important in a remote place like the Solomon Islands where the sourcing parts is something a quest of sometimes biblical-like scale. Working with a dealer here can backfire against you. It’s a small country so the dealerships are usually the sole avenue; in short they have an absolute monopoly with often poor service and terribly inflated prices. It appears that there are many parts for these engines that overlap with other diesels, particularly pumping equipment so rather ironically perhaps, I feel better supported, here in this remote location, with the knowledge I can relatively easily get parts and expendables from Australia and China. More so than if I were locked in with a dealership of a name engine.

The original issue with the faulty factory installed breather hose initially dented my faith and a left doubt about the overall construction of the engine. I felt pretty let down by this and BOTH engines failing before just 20 hours of use! Needless to say this caused some pretty major impact up front on my confidence. A shame, because otherwise I’d be offering a more glowing report. That said though, with the experience I’ve learned/gained I’d be confident purchasing again.

As for my problem with gearbox on one engine. I’ve concluded that more than likely has to do with the running gear than failure of the gearbox. I think that I would be unfair and quite probably just plain ignorant to point blame solely at the gear. The engines are installed in old boats that had done a huge workload before I bought them. The running gear is original and I don’t know its history but it will have worked hard. The prop shaft was pretty worn and I’ve since replaced it and added a plastic flexible coupling between the gear flange and flange on the shaft. Flexible Drive Couplings - Poly Flex Group Pty Ltd Perhaps if I had have installed an expensive name engine, the gear on that too would have been damaged and I would have been faced with replacing a $5000 gearbox rather than the $1000 bill I now face ………

Lastly, works for me, but the conditions here are relatively unique and if I were in a more industrialised country with many more choices and options, perhaps I'd choose different. I’m not sure. The engines were good choice for me with my circumstance and kind of boat here in the developing country. You know how these things are, there is no one solution for every application.

In short though, in my experience I think it fair to say despite a hard learning curve, I have found the engines good value. I’d buy em again.

Will post any more news.

I’m providing a link here to photos of the boats I’ve put the engines in and a video when I tested the engine after seizing and replacing the bearings.

TDME 385 Slideshow by pagu1 | Photobucket

[pagu]

The link to pics doesn't appear to be working. Try this.

http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/...pse3f41b42.jpg
http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3e3d796f.jpg
http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/...ps5f8a8621.jpg
http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/...psd7fa95b8.jpg
http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8c786c90.jpg
http://i1379.photobucket.com/albums/...ps423ddb27.jpg

[bobthebus]

I too have had this problem of my TD 332 Marine Power engine deciding to dump all the engine oil. This happened to my engine when it had done 115 hours of running. It took some time and a couple of re filling with engine oil to find out where the oil was coming out from. As the hand pump for emptying the sump had a long tube on it that was under water in the bilge, I was unable to see it coming out of there. Only when I was getting desperate did I take the end of the hose out of the bilge water and finally discover that the oil was leaking out of there. My solution was to remove the pump and block that pipe off. Now, however, I realise that I must look for the kinked pipe and at least make sure my breather is working properly.
I did contact the supplier of my engine and need I say, I IDN'T GET A REPLY !!!! ANDREW KNIGHT, WHERE WERE YOU ???
Pagu, you're not the only one. I'm sorry your engine seized, I was lucky as mine didn't. I noticed a slight change in the engine sound, looked at the oil pressure and noticed there was no pressure and turned the engine off right away. Returned to land on my auxiliary engine.
I'm truly Pis**d off with the after care of the supplier as this was my second issue with the engine, the other was minor but I still got no answer from ANDREW KNIGHT.
Bob.

[pagu]

Hi Bob, Sorry to read of your woes. I suggest to you that blocking the pump probably not best idea and better try find out why pressure builds up causing oil to be forced out the sump pump. As per my post; for me was caused by kinked breather hose. Once that was resolved not a problem since. How is breather hose on your engine? Might be clear when cold, but once the rubber hot and softer, might be enough to cause the hose wall to collapse and pinch. I had two engine, identical and set up in same kind of boats but this happened on one engine only. So there is some variability.

Once bitten twice shy: After I had this issue, the hose off the sump pump, I positioned that where clear and easy to see so easy to keep an eye on in the advent of oil being ejected out of. Never happened again, but gave me peace of mind to be able to simply and easily check at a glance. I suggest that rather than hose hidden in the bilge and any oil draining unseen.

[bobthebus]

Hi Pagu.
thanks for the advice. I will be looking at modifying the breather tube. But why didn't the suppliers answer my query about this happening ? The after sales service is non existent !
Bob.

[pagu]

Hi Bob, for sure I"d check that hose. It was easy and only a couple of $ to replace with something more suitable bought from an auto shop.

As for the after sales service on your engine - I've no idea sorry. I nought mine direct from factory in China. Where did you buy yours?

[bobthebus]

I bought mine from a company named " Marine Power" in the UK. Th proprietor is "Andrew Knight". Hope he reads this post !
Bob.