FL 120 overhaul

Any idea how much it costs to do a complete overhaul of a Ford Lehman120? Did any of you have experience in doing it? Trying to scope out the project.

A few years ago I looked at it and it was $10K just for the rebuild by Bomac Marine on the East Coast.

http://www.bomacmarine.com/pdf/remanufactured-lehman-ford.pdf

On the West Coast I know Harbor Marine, Everett WA also does and sells rebuilt FL120s. If you talk to them, I'd be curious what they charge.

Engines & Generators : Harbor Marine

All depends on what is wrong with the engine. None fail in the exact same way. Give more details on what happened to it.

Get a drop in from American Diesel, they will exchange your old one as a core. Ship it to your yard for a swap out.

Nothing happened to my engine. I'm just about done with most of the projects I had on the list to bring my boat where I want it. The last thing would be to overhaul the engine to have a complete "new boat". Lol
When I bought the boat the hour meter read 2,500 but it never worked so I don't know for sure how many hours are on my engine. I installed a new meter and clocked about 1,000 hours sinces. So at least I have 3,500 hours. Not that much but I wouldn't mind having a the job job for peace of mind if it's not too expensive.

I was going to have the engine in my Mustang rebuilt once. I found it was cheaper to buy rebuilt. So if Ebay is any guide as well as the above post 10K sounds about right.

Why not repower? There's many obvious answers to that but I managed to bring that about economically. And I bought an engine through a commercial supplier that services the fishing industry in Alaska. Still happy w the direction I took but I did get lucky on several accounts.

If an engine was fairly modern w thin wall cast block and a good reputation rebuilding would seem more attractive. But people like the FL. Sometimes I wonder why and have some answers but if one can have a new engine for not much more money ..... why not? Mostly the answers I hear is that the FL is most often retained because of convenience. Is that it? Of course over half of the FL powered trawlers are twins hugely increasing the Repower cost.

Many could benefit from smaller engines. Perhaps a different old engine like a pair of Perkins 80hp engines may make sense .. especially if exhaust and other accessory locations paired up to be very similar. I wonder if anybody has attempted to find such a favorable engine?

Maybe w fotomans boat .. epically being a single it may be just simply less trouble and more inexpensive to keep the old Ford. I think the rebuilt FL at Harbor Marine is $10K. Probably w trade in.

If there is nothing wrong with your engine and it runs fine why waste the money on a needless rebuild. That engine will more than likely run for thousands of more hours as is.

Spend the money on food, fuel, drink and dockage and go cruising.

Industrial Engines, Delta, BC

Canadian Dollar.......

Although, I actually completely agree with Bill.

Capt.Bill11 said:

If there is nothing wrong with your engine and it runs fine why waste the money on a needless rebuild. That engine will more than likely run for thousands of more hours as is.

Click to expand...

There is something to the notion of if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

We seriously thought about repowering our old GB a number of years ago. At that time we would have used a pair of new NA Luggers of about 150 hp.

While the thought of new, efficient, quiet(er), smooth(er), less-polluting motors was very attractive, in the end we simply couldn't make a viable cost case for doing this with a 1973 boat. So we decided to continue to care for the old FL120s in the best way possible with the proper servicing, maintenance, and operation and simply keep using them. The significant amount of money we would have spent repowering this boat eventually went toward a completely different boating project.

If you still really want to spend more money on improving your boat look at changing your motor mounts to these,

Metalastik Cushyfloat Vibration Isolator | Parts | Trelleborg | Product Lines


And your coupling to one of these,

Marine Transmissions, Velvet Drive, Paragon, marine transmission parts, <marine transmissions>

Makes for a very smooth running boat.

Another approach to get the engine in the best condition possible is to replace all the hang ons with new parts. This would include:

1. Raw water pump
2. Alternator and belts
3. Hoses
4. Exhaust elbow
5. Transmission cooler

Also, have the engine heat exchanger cleaned (ultrasonic) and inspected. Find a Lehman users manual and have all the 1000/1500 hour servicings done.

Good luck

All great input. I have to agree that a10k price tag makes it a bit difficult to justify. Then there's the possibility of repowering that becomes attractive. Not sure I'm willing to spend that much money. If it was around let's say 4-5k to rebuilt, maybe. But more than that it becomes too expensive for something that is not broken. I'm already doing all the maintenance I can do myself (changed all the hoses, coolers, cleaned the heat exchanger, belt, etc.) and had a guy to come last year and adjust the valves.

I think what would make more sense would be to take the engine out next Fall and bring it in the garage to work on everything I can do myself plus change the engine mounts and repaint the bilge. I could also install a drain plug for the oil.

There is a valid argument to take an old engine with high or unknown hours and do a complete teardown, inspection and "freshen up". Many times I have torn down an engine for one reason, like high oil use, and found other things like partially wiped bearings, worn down cams, broken compression rings, head gaskets cooked between cylinders, corroded valve stems, etc, etc. None of these was giving symptoms at the time.

While apart, things like oil seals and gaskets get renewed, everything cleaned, nozzles checked, valves ground or lapped, hone bores with new rings, water jackets cleaned, etc.

Whether it is worth it considering cost vs. reliability, usually not. Most engines on teardown are actually fine, aside from whatever reason motivated the teardown.

Regarding cost, it is almost all labor. If you know engines, you can do it yourself in the shop over the winter and cost is limited to parts, which are not that expensive. Crane to get it out and in, yard time, etc, add up.

If you pay someone to do this, it will be very expensive. $10k would be on the low side for a turn key project.

One option would be to send it out to one of the Ford specialists for a go-through, probably better results than a local non-specialist.

I would suggest running it as is and see what you've got. Sounds like you have not really put the boat in service yet. So the engine is an unknown. Log some hours and see how it goes.

Edit: See you logged 1000hrs. If no issues in that time, just roll with it

Oil analysis???

How about the tranny? In many cases, the tranny is a better candidate for rebuild than an engine.

$10,000.00 to rebuild an old engine seems a bit nuts to me but I'm sure part of that is being behiend the curve re the cost of living. Can't believe we're spending $80 mo just for stupid TV and almost $300 for moorage.

In a way I think Ski's idea is very good but ...
1. You run the very high risk of draging your feet and in a year or more finding an old engine in pices at home and the boat going downhill at the marina.
2. Or you say .. I better get a new this or new that and have a mechanic out to do this or that and deep into it and find it's not worth re-fleshing or re- building.
3. Working on large machinery is dangerous. Changing engine mounts on my car years ago a mechanic lost his fingers ... and his livelihood.

Speaking of engine mounts check out PolyFlex. And I agree w Donsan re the trans also.

Eric-- Regarding costs, as you well know from your own experience the major component in projects like rebuilding an engine is time. Your time or a mechanic's time. And yard and shop labor rates in our harbor, as an example, are at or slightly above $100 an hour.

Here's what the $10K gets you. I would do this over putting a new engine in with parts being readily available. With a new engine you have a running gear to mess with, engine mounts, wire harness, new prop, etc. The rebuild is a pull out and then drop in. Pretty easy to me.

Machine Work and Parts
[FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman][FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman]Exhaust Manifold
Exhaust Elbow
Bore Block
Grind and Polish Crank
Reconditioned Connecting Rods
R&R Wrist Pin Bushings
New Pistons/Rings/Pins
New Main Bearings
New Rod Bearings
New Cam Bearings
New Cam Thrust Washers
New Front and Rear Seals
Remanufacture Your Raw Water Pump with Gaskets
New Fuel Lift Pump with gasket
New Circulating Fresh Water Pump with Gasket
New Thermostat and Gasket
New Valves
Grind Seats
New Injector Tips
Remanufactured Injection Pump
New Engine Oil Cooler
New Water Hoses (all)
New Heat Exchanger
New Oil Lines
New Starter
Engine Painted Red

[/FONT][/FONT]

Larry M,
I'm glad you listed parts as a "rebuild" w new pistons is a lot closer to a new engine. With new parts like that a $10K rebuild sounds a lot better. Bore and hone is way different too. Thanks.

But Larry if you just rebuild the engine a lot of the propulshion system remains old. Tanks are then a question as many or most boats require one pull the engine to pull the tanks.

Greetings,
Mr. F. I think I know where you're coming from. Start afresh with knowns so you won't worry about unknowns. I hear ya' BUT, I would suggest two things. 1) Have a Lehman mechanic give the engine the full inspection treatment. Compression, boroscope the cylinders and whatever else he/she can do to give you as accurate an assessment as humanly possible of the condition of the engine as it is NOW. 1a) Have all the peripherals (water pump, injection pump, starter motor etc.) serviced and/or rebuilt, give everything a nice coat of paint and enjoy.
OR
2) Proceed with your plan of the engine spending the winter in your garage and go through it yourself. Add in 1a) as above and enjoy.
All that being said, it is not uncommon for Lehmans to run for 10K+ hours with no problems. As to a re-power? Myself, I'd still stick with the Lehman.

manyboats said:

Larry M,
I'm glad you listed parts as a "rebuild" w new pistons is a lot closer to a new engine. With new parts like that a $10K rebuild sounds a lot better. Bore and hone is way different too. Thanks.

But Larry if you just rebuild the engine a lot of the propulshion system remains old. Tanks are then a question as many or most boats require one pull the engine to pull the tanks.

Click to expand...

Actually I would spend the money on new tanks.

what_barnacles said:

Actually I would spend the money on new tanks.

Click to expand...

+1

Barnacles,
That's what I did but on of my two tanks had started leaking years past. Was moving to Alaska. Wanted new engine, new tanks and rebuilt trans. On reflection now I see this clearly as an advantage for single engine. Affordability wise.

Larry M said:

Here's what the $10K gets you. I would do this over putting a new engine in with parts being readily available. With a new engine you have a running gear to mess with, engine mounts, wire harness, new prop, etc. The rebuild is a pull out and then drop in. Pretty easy to me.

Machine Work and Parts
[FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman][FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman]Exhaust Manifold
Exhaust Elbow
Bore Block
Grind and Polish Crank
Reconditioned Connecting Rods
R&R Wrist Pin Bushings
New Pistons/Rings/Pins
New Main Bearings
New Rod Bearings
New Cam Bearings
New Cam Thrust Washers
New Front and Rear Seals
Remanufacture Your Raw Water Pump with Gaskets
New Fuel Lift Pump with gasket
New Circulating Fresh Water Pump with Gasket
New Thermostat and Gasket
New Valves
Grind Seats
New Injector Tips
Remanufactured Injection Pump
New Engine Oil Cooler
New Water Hoses (all)
New Heat Exchanger
New Oil Lines
New Starter
Engine Painted Red

[/FONT][/FONT]

Click to expand...

That would qualify as a premium reconditioning job to me- oil lines/ starter/ lift pump/ exhaust elbow. I could see value in something that thorough.

You should add engine mounts to that list. They are only good for about 10 years. In some cases less.

Capt.Bill11 said:

You should add engine mounts to that list. They are only good for about 10 years. In some cases less.

Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Our boat still had its original mounts when we bought it. So they were 25 years old at that point. The engine surveyor as well as the friend we took with us to California to check out the boat and who until his retirement a few years ago was the head of the engineering department at Alaska Marine Diesel aka Northern Lights/Lugger said they were getting tired but were still serviceable.

Five years later we had the mounts changed. The diesel shop that did the work said the new ones would probably be good for 25-30 years. That was 12 yeaes ago and the mounts still look the same and have (to the eye) the same metal to metal clearance they had when they were installed.

Marin said:

Not necessarily. Our boat still had its original mounts when we bought it. So they were 25 years old at that point. The engine surveyor as well as the friend we took with us to California to check out the boat and who until his retirement a few years ago was the head of the engineering department at Alaska Marine Diesel aka Northern Lights/Lugger said they were getting tired but were still serviceable.

Five years later we had the mounts changed. The diesel shop that did the work said the new ones would probably be good for 25-30 years. That was 12 yeaes ago and the mounts still look the same and have (to the eye) the same metal to metal clearance they had when they were installed.

Click to expand...

Yeah, looking at them, that's a definitive test.

My experts would beg to differ with yours.

The soft Yanmar rubber mounts need changing every several years or even annually. According to Yanmar 10 years ago.

Surely you can renew peripherals without pulling the engine out. I can`t see the point in fixing things which are not broken, but if you pull the engine to clean/paint the bilge I guess rebuilding it while it`s out makes some sense, as does doing the tanks. Could depend how long you plan keeping the boat, your usage, and where you think the existing engine, and the tanks, are in remaining life expectancy.