Hire Boat Engine Lifetime

[andyg]

After a recent visit to the broads, I noticed a few hire boats with quite smokey engines, one that was partially bad, was chucking out quite a lot of blue smoke at ranworth. From a very well respected yard, I just got to wondering, how long does a hire boats engine last..

[Wussername]

Decades. As do the boats.

A bit like grandads broom. One hundred years old. Three new handles and ten new heads and a treasured part of our glorious Sarah Tich.

Andrew

 

[JanetAnne]

Still got my original.... BMC 1500 (1964). We know its the original because old Herby Woods used to stick the engine manufacturers plate in the engine bay with the engine number on it. Mine is still there and the numbers match.

[BroadScot]

1 hour ago, JanetAnne said:

Still got my original.... BMC 1500 (1964). We know its the original because old Herby Woods used to stick the engine manufacturers plate in the engine bay with the engine number on it. Mine is still there and the numbers match.

I was into my second year of my apprenticeship then !! Good old BMC 1500, quiet compared to the Leyland Thornycroft !

Iain

[Viking23]

5000 hours plus have been mentioned, for a diesel  many a lot more. hwever for a petrol much less.

But who knows how many hours a hire craft has done in any one year?

If a hire craft does say 4 hours a day over say 200 days, that's 800 hours, so would need say 4-6 oil and filter change about 4-5 times a season. 

So for  5000 hours would equate to just over 6 years for a complete rebuild.

One thing that kills and damages engines the most is running them for long periods without a load, the bores get glazed and then they start to burn oil, a complete rebuild and honing of the cylinders can recover the engine.

So if you wanted an excuse not to run engines at moorings, at last we have a justifiable reason. lol

 

Now I would guess the broads engines have exceeded the 5000 hours by a long chalk, and seem to be going strong, probably down to the over engineering of the 60's technology. 

I wonder if you will see the later lower emission engines achieving anywhere near this figure.

Plenty of conflicting information on the internet, mostly because how long an engine lasts depends on many things.

[MauriceMynah]

I would have expected 10,000 hours minimum!

 

[BroadAmbition]

If not more than that.      I hope it is well over the 5'000 mark as has been suggested, ours is currently at around 2'300-ish which means we are approaching half life expectancy if the 5'000 guide is correct.  Our Beta still looks inside (If not exterior) and performs like brand new.  I know it's not abused like some hire boat engines and is always serviced thoroughly and on time as per manufactures guidlines

Griff

[JanetAnne]

This is Mystic Melody. She has twin BMC Commodores (3.8ltr). She was built in the 70's. Her engines hour meters show just under 1700hrs on starboard and 1850 odd on port (this one makes hot water). That's her total running in over 40 years. The engines are, as you would expect, like new.

[Guest]

Ah, but was she ever a hire boat? (see topic title!!)

[JanetAnne]

It was more as a comparison really. And its the only boat we have with hour meters

[Baitrunner]

Didnt get used much then?

Engines are like women - treat them gently, lube them up regularly and expect the odd glitch now and again. 

And don't forget. It's the end of the Forum Loving Day. Sorry but can't get emojis!

[Chelsea14Ian]

I know  far more about cooking then engines,however  one things for sure  they need looking after and we'll maintained

[TheQ]

Many of the broads boats engines are run very slowly for a long time, ( for water heating etc) that's not good for burning off the soot. so when they are given a blast everyone gets to see it!!.

My old BMC 1500 had been in a boat since 1969, but had 3 coats of different coloured paint on it suggesting at least 2 major rebuilds. It wasn't looked after well by at least one previous owner, it had garden hose being used for coolant lines.... I just couldn't put it through a rebuild again, so had it put out of it's misery...

[Viking23]

8 hours ago, BroadAmbition said:

If not more than that.      I hope it is well over the 5'000 mark as has been suggested, ours is currently at around 2'300-ish which means we are approaching half life expectancy if the 5'000 guide is correct.  Our Beta still looks inside (If not exterior) and performs like brand new.  I know it's not abused like some hire boat engines and is always serviced thoroughly and on time as per manufactures guidlines

Griff

Hi Griff, I found this website that estimates the life of a boat diesel engine is 5000 hours, ok it's an American website, but an engine is an engine. 

I was shocked to read about petrol engines being a lot less at 1500 hours.

see http://www.boatsafe.com/nauticalknowhow/enginelife.htm

I then thought what about the abused petrol outboards, now on another thread, I found that the larger outboard engines 100 hp + and more especially the 225 hp the life is considerably less before a major overhaul is required.

What about my Honda 15 ? it was secondhand when I bought it and I recon it has done over 1000 hours since I've had it. It runs smooth, no smoke no fouled plugs, doesn't burn oil, starts first time. I have regularly serviced it, oil change with honda oil every 100 hours, usually late autumn. New impeller this week, and now needs a new thermostat  the more you check, the more you find lol

So as long as you look after it, and deal with any issues as you go, and put in some form of overheat protection, this is what kills some engines, lack of cooling, the engine should last a lot longer than 5000 hours.

A good thrashing now and again, get those pistons moving to their limit, breaks off the carbon that forms at the top of the cylinders, lol but caution, if the engine has been run by Miss Daisy for 20 years then a good thrashing might kill it. Actually, having hirers thrash those old engines in the 60's has probably helped to extend their lives lol.

Never take full power from an engine unless it is warm, it doesn't mean that you should spend 40 minutes on the mooring warming it up, it's better for the engine to start and go, and don't exceed half throttle, until warm.

Mind you at broads speeds this shouldn't be a problem.

Hope it helps,

Richard

[Timbo]

Royal Tudor is on her second engine I believe. Currently a BMC 1.5 for most of her lifetime. Now this is only conjecture, perhaps someone could help here, but I think when she was built in 1960 she had a petrol engine. I'm basing this on what people have said when they notice than she still has operational electric 'bilge blowers' fans and ventilation? I'm also basing it on the fact that the engine sits just proud of the cockpit floor with the bay covers having had modifications to accommodate the cap on top of the engine.

[MauriceMynah]

It is far from unknown for a diesel engined vehicle to do over 500,000 miles. Lets face it, these days it's the body that fails on the modern car. so, how many hours would it take for a vehicle to do half a million hours? well if we were to say an average speed of 50mph (and that's a high average) then we get to my 10,000 hours.

My engine does about two hours to the gallon of diesel, and I seem to average 250 hours a year. it had done about 2000 hours when I bought it, and I've had it for four years. ....So, I reckon...

I have only 7000 hours running left, which will give me only another 28 years, by which time I'll be 90.

In that time it will consume 3500 gallons of diesel (which I make at a cost of £1.12 per gallon)  costing £3920.

I will have travelled about 31150 miles, consumed an almost infinate number of pints of beer and had 72 barbeques.

AND, at the end of all that, my boat will still be a bit grubby, it'll still have a selection of odd (but nearly matching) fenders and I might just have got round to repairing the damage I did when I hit Potter Heigham bridge. And what a lovely time I will have had.

 

[Vaughan]

1 hour ago, Timbo said:

Royal Tudor is on her second engine I believe.

She would most probably have been built with a petrol engine and this might have been the good old Morris Navigator which was the main one in the 50s. These were superseded by the Morris Vedette or the Ford Watermota, which was the 100E Anglia engine. Almost always on a Parsons gearbox.

Glad to hear she also had bilge blowers - most of them didn't! When the Jenner Group was running in the late 60s I would guess more than a third of them still had petrol engines. As we were starting to fit gas fridges by then, this led to a rather volatile atmosphere!

I am just going out to do the shopping for lunch and when I come back I will do a post on actual engine hours and engine life. This might encourage you, and I am sure it will make MM chuckle!

[BroadScot]

With regard to engine hours, Astons boats had a hours timer on I think all their boats on the dash. It was the first thing they checked when you returned from your holiday.Then they refueled before you moored up,in the basin.

Iain

[Bound2Please]

20 minutes ago, MauriceMynah said:

AND, at the end of all that, my boat will still be a bit grubby, it'll still have a selection of odd (but nearly matching) fenders and I might just have got round to repairing the damage I did when I hit Potter Heigham bridge. And what a lovely time I will have had.

 

You will still be the same John as well at the end of all of that.................. keep it up mate

Charlie

[Vaughan]

11 hours ago, Viking23 said:

One thing that kills and damages engines the most is running them for long periods without a load, the bores get glazed and then they start to burn oil, a complete rebuild and honing of the cylinders can recover the engine.

So if you wanted an excuse not to run engines at moorings, at last we have a justifiable reason. lol

I fully agree and this is why I have been banging on about it for weeks now!

White smoke from an old 1.5 was probably because the injector pump was too far advanced but nowadays, it comes from un-burned fuel due to lack of compression caused by glazing of the bores because the blasted thing has been run for too long on moorings!

[JanetAnne]

Martham Boats used to advise running the engine in gear when making hot water whilst moored. Possibly they still do?

[Vaughan]

All hire boat engines in France have an hour meter, as we charge for fuel by the hour (another reason not to run it on moorings) so I can give you some pretty exact figures. An average season is 700 hours but I suspect this is less on the Broads as the boats are not cruising so far.

The old Perky 4107 and BMC 1.5 have plenty of meat in the cylinders and so they can be re - bored 3 times and each time you will have pretty much a new engine. The 4107 has wet liners, so the whole bore can be easily replaced. Most hire yards reckoned an engine should be re-built every 7 years, so with my 8 boats at Womack I would do one every winter.

More modern engines such as Beta or Nanni - which is the same Kubota engine - can be re-built but the cost of the parts and labour is more than a factory exchange unit, especially as this comes complete with heat exchanger, water pump, starter and alternator!

There are two essential things for the life of an engine :

1/. Change the oil regularly. On the Perkins this was every 100 hours, or every 3 weeks on hire. With the Nanni you can get away with every 300 hours. Change the filter every 2nd oil change. This may sound casual, but marine engines don't collect a lot of impurities. The viscosity of the oil is more important.

2/. Check your weed filters and don't overheat it! If you allow an engine to cook up, or even seize up, then you have wrecked it. At the least you will have bent the cylinder head. Equally, you will damage them if they run too cool (running on moorings again) so make sure it is running at the manufacturer's optimum temperature.

The Nanni or Beta will last a very long time. I told my senior management that they ought to be changed every 9000 hours for reliability but for accountants sitting in head offices on a computer 1000 miles away, preventive maintenance has too much "impact on the bottom line". By the time I left, nearly half the engines were chugging along happily with over 12,000 hours on the clock. For all I know, they are still going!

So don't worry Griff, you have hardly run it in yet! Just look up the manual for the recommended oil change period, as I forget.

Maurice, I once did some similar figures to yours for our board, and I worked out that 9000 hours on a boat engine represents 750,000 miles driven in a family car. And a hire car at that!

 

 

[Vaughan]

Just thought of something else.

Always change the oil in the Autumn before you lay the boat up. Old diesel oil is acidic, so don't leave it there in the sump for 6 months, eating away at the journals of your crankshaft.

[Wussername]

I can remember one well known boatyard which had an engineer on each section, who in turn had two or three little helpers. The latter had oily rags but weren't allowed spanners and stuff. The engineer considered himself very important and in extreme circumstances a "laying on of hands" was carried out. They rarely if ever broke down.

 

Andrew

[LondonRascal]

I’ve got a bit of time this morning so that means a long essay reply is forming in my mind...

Personally speaking I think it really comes down to the engine type (not just age and number of hours).  In the original post, it was mentioned a ‘well respected yard’ – now there are several that I would see as respectable, but here is something to consider.

Slowly over a period of several years, Richardson’s began to re-engine a lot of their boats – removing BMC engines (in some boats rather chunky 2.2 litre variants) and replaced with engines from Nanni. You can often tell which has newer engines in, for the instrument cluster and dials was likewise changed.

In contrast Herbert Woods take a different approach preferring to ‘keep the old girls going’ having a wide range of BMC’s and Perkin engines, along with some 1990’s Nanni’s and of course their new builds with the most up to date of engines. 

I think this says a great deal that with the right attention, regular oil changes and spare parts even boats run week in and out through the year can be kept going reliably with older engines – but they will smoke more, they will also not be as smooth running and generally as quiet (though exhaust noise has a lot to do with what sort of water lock they have in their exhaust system.)

It is of course hard to be sure how many hours hire boat engines really do – even if the boat is fitted with an hour metre it may have had an engine change at some point in its life and the meter have been left to carry on counting.  

However a boat that I think did have a genuine ‘high hour’ engine was Mystic Horizon which if memory serves had done some 8,000 hours on the meter. The only issue was at high RPMs such as when going over Breydon the oil pressure would drop rapidly, the temperature would rise and some smoke would be visible.   Clearly the engine was not in the best of health, but despite this at normal cruising RPM’s it would be fine and not a bit of smoke would show and starting the engine was never an issue. Perhaps the low oil pressure at higher revs was as a result of some worn bearings and crankshaft journals, but the quick stop option which worked was a dose of STP Oil Treatment which also made the engine a lot smoother. 

The slippery stuff!

One of the key things to keeping an engine going is regular oil and filter changes – indeed I personally think the older the engine gets the more often the oil should be changed – perhaps half the recommended interval that the engine manufacture states for oil is literally the life blood of an engine.

While not relevant if you’re running a BMC or Perkins, certainly in more modern engines I feel running fully synthetic oil is better.  Both mineral and fully synthetic oil are made from crude oil that comes from the ground but, the difference is that synthetic oil are made from more advanced refining processes and are of a higher purity and quality than conventional mineral oils which means they offer a better level of protection especially where smaller tolerances are expected in more modern engineered engines – not to mention the oil change intervals can be extended with fully synthetic oil. 

Smoke signals?

Black smoke is the result of engine overload, a restricted air supply or improperly burned particles of excess fuel which are then blown out the exhaust.

Blue smoke is formed by combustion of the engine's own lubricating oil. This can be the result of worn piston rings, valve guides, or oil seals or excess oil in the crankcase or even just too much oil put over the air filter element. 

White smoke indicates either water vapor from dirty fuel, a water leak into the cylinder or atomized - but completely unburned fuel. Air in the fuel can also cause white smoke

Diesel fuel engine killer! 

Not that it affects most of us river users – but I thought I would draw this to people’s attention because it potentially can destroy fuel injector system. 

The problem is Common Rail diesel engines – usually only found in high power offshore engines, but now being found in new lower powered marine engines. The reason why is there are millions of High Pressure Common Rail Engines (HPCR engines) in service in cars and lorries around the world, which would suggest there is no problem with them – and there is not. 

However, because of the incredibly tight tolerances necessary in the fuel supply system of these engines combined with the fact us boaters fill up with fuel of variable cleanliness and chemical properties from areas which may not see as much throughput of fresh fuel and cleanliness check as a petrol station’s forecourt pumps, we then frequently let the fuel sit in the boat tanks for months – maybe over a year – and then expect it to be as good as fresh fuel and have this fuel pass through the engine and think it will be all ok. 

At one time diesel fuel contained up to 40,000 parts per million (ppm) of Sulphur. In recent times what is known as Ultra Low Sulphur diesel contains as little as 10ppm of Sulphur. The process of removing Sulphur from diesel fuel reduces its lubrication properties, which are essential to injection pump and injector life.

The latest generation of small (40hp or more) Yanmar engines are now High Pressure Common Rail. It therefore makes sense that in time Nanni and Beta Marine to name but two will move to using these engines on the basis of reduces emotions and better performance.

Whereas the pressure in conventional injection systems rarely exceed 5,000 psi, it is not uncommon to see 30,000 psi on High Pressure Common Rail engines, with some as high as 40,000 psi.

These kinds of pressures require orifice sizes, clearances and machining tolerances to within 1 to 3 microns. A micron is a millionth of a meter. To put this in perspective, a human hair is around 80 microns thick so we are talking about very tiny stuff. 

Think about it - fluids at these pressures are capable of acting like ‘water jet cutters’ especially if there is even microscopic hard particle contamination in the fuel. That is easy to imagine as sediment in the tank be it on your boat, or the tank the fuel has come from being broken down to the microscopic level. 

The result of such contamination will be scoring of the injection pump and injector components. For conventional (low pressure) fuel injection systems the critical particle size to cause abrasive wear is about 6-7 microns. That is not an issue because you can have fuel filters which catch and filter out particles in this size range. However, with High Pressure Common Rail injection, the critical particle size is approximately 2-3 microns. Absolute fuel cleanliness is essential to engine life therefore.

Traditional fuel filter elements are not adequate for High Pressure Common Rail engines. The filtration industry does not currently have a way to test filters with ‘sediment’ (if you want to call it that) suitable for calibrating instruments below 4 microns – in other words, the smallest particle detection and counting level is actually above the size of the most damaging particles for High Pressure Common Rail engines.

The only good news is that changes changes in emissions and engine efficiency standards, in particular with the expected Euro 7 requirements for car and lorry diesels, will lead diesel engine manufacturers to demand higher-efficiency filters that will then find their way into marine filtration systems. That is the hope anyway.

It however may be that the Euro 7 standard will be too high and costly for engine manufactures to economically meet – which might well see the rapid decline of the diesel engine here and in Europe and the rise of the petrol engine which do burn cleaner, even VW could not keep it under wraps that diesel engines are inherently ‘dirty’ – what this means for the marine industry remains to be seen.