- Now, it doesn't matter if you're buying
a little 300-horsepower diesel or a pair of 1500-horsepowers
in a, you know, 70, 80-foot boat.
(upbeat music)
Today we're gonna go through our seven steps to follow
when buying a used marine diesel engine.
If you follow these steps, all the principles hold true
and you'll have the best chance going forward to buy
a good engine.
Step one, service history.
I feel like I'm always harping on on this one,
but it's something you can do without even being
onboard the boat.
You request the history and you have a look for firstly,
if it's regular, and secondly, has the owner been doing
scheduled maintenance or breakdown maintenance?
If you see a heap of receipts for some
breakdown maintenance, you're gonna know that
there's something going on in that engine bay
that isn't supposed to be.
If you see regular servicing at regular intervals,
as per the service manual, you're gonna be onto a winner.
Every single engine will have a owner's manual
and in that owner's manual, you can find
the regular servicing intervals.
Find out when the engine oil's meant to be changed,
when the cooling system needs to be done,
and what the manufacturer recommends and when.
Step two is assessing the engine for external corrosion.
Now this involves actually getting on the boat
and looking in the engine bay.
Have a look around in areas that aren't quite easy
to access, get your phone out, use the camera and the flash.
Typically, I would start at the bottom of the engine
and have a look for tide lines, corrosion to the sump,
and then work my way up.
As you work your way up, you might see things
that have leaked and dripped down and these are all things
you need to take into consideration so you can get
a general idea on the condition of the external side
of the engine.
Number three is external leaks on the engine.
Now this involves getting in the engine bay whilst
the engines are running under load and looking around.
I understand that's not always possible on some boats,
but where possible, you need to do this.
Have a look at things like hoses, aftercoolers,
heat exchanges, water pumps, anywhere you can see a stain
or a corrosion stain, have a look around that area
and you might be surprised with where water
is actually currently still leaking out of.
Step number four is completing a satisfactory sea trial
and checking that the engines achieve their rated RPM.
Most manufacturers will have a plaque on
the engine somewhere saying this engine makes
this much horsepower at this RPM.
When the boat's built from the factory,
they match the propellers to the engine
and the hull so that the engine can achieve these speeds.
If you don't achieve this speed,
you've likely got either an external factor,
things like barnacles or growth on the bottom of the boat,
or an internal problem with the engine,
things like turbos, injectors, et cetera, et cetera,
that needs to be further investigated.
The first thing before you even start the sea trial
is to make sure that the engine alarm works,
'cause when all of this is going on,
you need to be alerted if something happens like
an over temp or a low oil pressure.
Throughout the sea trial, you need to be looking at a number
of other things too, such as the oil pressure,
if there's any vibration, are there any strange sounds?
Is there any water leaking, which was in the last step?
And lastly, if there's any smoke that shouldn't be there.
Number five is checking the engine temperature.
Now this will be done on the sea trial, but it's important
you first find out what the manufacturer recommends
the engine runs at, and secondly, that it does run at that.
A lot of people drag out their cooling system service,
which in turn puts more wear on the engine because
it's running at higher temperatures that
it's not designed to do.
Number six is blow-by.
Now on most diesels, you can just pop a rocker cover cap
and visually see how much blow-by the engine has.
In twin-engine setups, you're gonna have an engine on
the other side to compare it to and you'll straight away
be able to tell if it's excessive.
Before you go doing expensive diagnostics finding out
the cause of the blow-by, it's important you start
with something simple, like a breather,
so that you're not wasting time on things that can be fixed
a lot easier.
So the last piece to this puzzle, number seven,
is taking engine oil samples.
It's important if you're gonna consider doing this
that you know when the oil was last changed,
because you might be sampling fresh oil
that's not gonna tell you anything.
Ideally, the oil's been in there for at least a year
and you've got some history of how many hours
it's been ran for.
I don't know how many times I've been surprised,
but if you have no service history and you take
an oil sample and you find salt water in the engine,
you'll be grateful that you took that oil sample.
Lastly, I think it's important that you consider all
of these things relative to the age of the boat.
Now, if you're buying a 20-year-old boat,
there's likely gonna be some of these things showing up
and it's important that you put them into perspective,
because if you don't buy this boat and you go
and look at another 20-year-old boat,
you're gonna have a different set of the same problems.
Now there's just one last thing I need you to do,
step number eight, which is annihilate the subscribe
and like button.
If you guys get on board and give it a hit,
I'll keep putting out content and we can keep talking about
boats and engines.