WET CYLINDER

Hi,
First let me apalogize for not being around for a while. Last August my dream voyage (circumnavigation) ended rather quick (20 nautical miles off Cape May) after having problem with the brand new Groco head. My friend and I decided to return back to Deale (MD) even though we had a 5 gallon plastic bucket on board. It wasn’t very comfortable to use. To make a long story short planned Northern passage turned into a 9 days north to south Delmarva circumnavigation. When we returned back I took the head apart and found a small plactic shampoo bottle in it. "
Meantime my mother who lives in Turkey became ill and required 24/7 care. I got the boat hauled out at Herrington marina and several weeks later flew home. I am in a small town called Unye on the Black Sea coast. With my mom…
Since I didn’t know when I would go back I put CERYAN up for sale. A gentleman from SF is very much interested in her. He did invest a lot of time and effort to check her. After going through electronics and rigging inspection today he had the engine checked before the sea trial.
According to my agent the surveyor claims that “there is water and low compression in cylinder 3. Mechanic from Yanmar recommends the engine not be run until it has been fixed.” According to him the repair cost could be around $4.000 to 6.000.
I called an engineer friend of mine (he fixes marine diesels) and he said “Well the Yanmar guy will want to replace it but it is probably a bad head gasket and and maybe some head work which won’t be to bad”
Your suggestions and advice, as always, will be appreciated. More than the Yanmar guy…
Mehmet
CERYAN

Mehmet,
We had a similar problem with Itchen’s Yanmar 3GM30F in 2006 – there is a
rather full account in the archives if you do a search (“all dates” Itchen
overheating"). Bottom line was a slightly warped head causing loss of
coolant and overheating. Pulled the head, had a local machine shop do a
routine planing and while we were at it we also ground the valves and
serviced the injectors. Put all back together, re-torqued the head bolts at
50 hours, and it has run without a problem several years and many many
miles since then. Total cost was waaay under $4 - 6,000! Do not have the
invoices nearby, but I seem to recall a bit more or less than $1000,
perhaps as little as $800 including gaskets and parts. I did most of the
disassembly and reassembly tasks myself, with some help from an experienced
mechanic at the Ft. Pierce marina. The old head was in good enough shape
that it could be planed .005" and still maintain proper piston clearances
(I got a lot of good advice from a Yanmar help desk guru). Condition of the
head is an important possible variable. I agree with your friend’s advice
– my work was done by a good local auto machine shop and not a megayacht
marina service shop, so costs were extremely reasonable. I suppose if I
had gotten a marina flat-rate shop do all the work it might have added
another thousand or so to the cost.

Sorry to hear about your troubles and hope this is helpful, good luck,
Scott

On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 3:11 PM, BCC Forums bccforums@samlmorse.com wrote:

Frankly, in your situation, looking to sell the vessel, you don’t have much choice.

If there is a fault in the engine, the cost of stripping the engine, pulling and re-shimming the heads, and replacing the liners, and possibly the injectors, is very close to the cost of a new engine.

If you were intending to keep, and use, the vessel for yourself, then I might suggest that addressing the specific problem might, possibly, have a value. However, a new owner can have no faith in such a repair, and therefore has to discount the cost of the engine, expecting to have to replace it.

One thing you CAN do is run a compression test on that cylinder; if it fails, write off the cost of an engine, if it doesn’t fail, your potential buyer is looking to make money from you.

Mehmet,
I agree with John and Scott. If you were on scene and keeping the boat, you could pull the head yourself, get the head planed if necessary, replace the head gasket, have the injectors overhauled, and carry on. However if you were planning to head off around the world, you (or your prospective buyer) might decide you want to start out with new 3YM30F Yanmar. A couple of years ago I priced one and it was about $8000 (installation not included). I guess diesel mechanics charge around $100/hr, so a new engine will be very expensive if you hire out its installation.

In 1989 I replaced the head gasket on our 3GM30F after only 1000 hrs and the engine now has over 5000 hrs on it. I probably should have had the head planed but we were in Mexico, getting ready to head to the Marquesas.

I think your best option is to offer to reduce your price by the repair cost. The buyer can then decide whether to repair the engine (cheaply if he does most of the work himself) or buy a new engine.

Sorry that your plans had to be aborted.
Dan