BMW diesel

What are the thoughts on the BMW D150 6 cyl 135 hp diesel?

John McGeehan

nice engine....... for a car

Car or taxi engines are OK , tho marinizing parts replacement may be iffy.

Use the rule of thumb , no more than 1 hp taken for every 3 cubic inches of displacement , at cruise , and it will last OK.

I thinks some of the BMW diesels are badged under the Yanmar label.

I wouldn't touch them.

I know that's a strong opinion but it was formed many years ago when BMW put out a whole lot of stern drive and engine packages and then walked away leaving a whole lot of folk with a darn mess when it came to any service.

When the mess they made became untenable for the boat owner the option was literally junk the boat or pay for a swap to the Volvo Penta engine and stern drive.

If they tried to sell the boat with the BMW they took a complete bath.

The boats actually were a nice boat so the swap was done for many.

But I would not touch a BMW for a boat for any reason.

Was told Fiat are a better engine than BMW

Begining to sound like a witch hunt.

C lectric is always informative and every time I see his avatar something worthwhile is attached. Can't say anything for the other posts.

The only place I know to get parts for them is www.bmwmarine.com, V12 Engineering. I donated my old BMW D50-2 to them, so to keep others alive. They got it for free and they paid the shipping.

C lectric said:

When the mess they made became untenable for the boat owner the option was literally junk the boat or pay for a swap to the Volvo Penta engine and stern drive.

Click to expand...

I think a dead BMW compared to a new Volvo Penta would be about equal??

I can't speak to current BMW Marine diesels but I sure can back up what C lectric said.

I had 2 pairs of the gas BMW's in the 80's. A pair of 180's that failed and I replaced with a pair of 220's.

They did a marvelous job of marketing and at the time, a local builder was offering them as an option. I think there were 7 of us who went for the 180's.

They were awesome packages coupled with the BMW Z-Drives. Quietest, smoothest engines I ever ran and easy to work on as far as regular maintenance. The legs and shifting were also smooth and a joy to use.

So,what happened?
As I recall, sometime around the 300 or 400 hour mark, the OH cams distorted enough to slam a valve into the top of a piston. About the same time, prop shaft seals started to fail and we had strawberry shakes in our out drives.

BMW did a ton of warrantee work on them, but only after they could no longer blame operator abuse. Mine was one of the catastrophes. They blamed a bad batch of cams and assured everyone all was well. They replaced one of my engines under warrantee.The second one was beyond just a new cam so they agreed to settle on it as well. I opted to pay the difference and upgraded to 220's.

There was one other failure ahead of me and the rest were about to crash as well and this was a tiny market. Everybody got at least new cams and prop shafts.

When the second batch of cams and prop seals started failing, they had no excuses other than "maybe they could not withstand the constant high revs." and we should all just slow down.???

By this time Merc had taken over and they would not do anything for anyone. Some folks repowered and some of us just took the bath.

One of the biggest problems was lack of BMW marine techs and nobody else would touch them. I would be suspect of that now as well, especially away from major centers.

It was a long time ago and they were gas I/O but I would not go anywhere near them again.
Ever!

They were standard engines in Lord Nelson Victory Tugs for a while. Search their user group on Yahoo.

Car marinizations in boats , just highlights the boat assemblers desire for CHEAP!

FF said:

Car marinizations in boats , just highlights the boat assemblers desire for CHEAP!

Click to expand...

If you want to marinize a BMW, how long does it have to marinate?

Engines designed for cars don't belong in boats IMO. Cars run low load most of the time.
Bus, truck, earthmovers all have one thing in common, frequent heavy loads, again and again. Engines developed for those markets have worked well in boats provided the marinization was properly done and they were not hopped up beyond all recognition.


A wide spread and experienced dealer and repair network is a requirement.
I will stick to major heavy duty makers in order to not be a pioneer.

FF said:

Car marinizations in boats , just highlights the boat assemblers desire for CHEAP!

Click to expand...

My BMW engine was actually a marinization of a Hatz industrial diesel engine common in compressors. Doubt it was cheap.

I think they got into a market that didn't really match where the company was going. This was the early 80s, the era of the e21 and e30 car platforms, and skyrocketing sales.

Northern Spy said:

My BMW engine was actually a marinization of a Hatz industrial diesel engine common in compressors.

Click to expand...

Many Haatz engines are good engines, but for some reason, they won't sell to American Markets... Perhaps that was the cause?

They have a very good 3-phase 50hz small genset but no 60hz / single phase options and absolutely no desire to market into the US.

I watched a couple of YouTube videos of the BMW D50 running and felt strangely nostalgic for it's unique sound, and briefly regretted repowering.

stubones99 said:

Many Haatz engines are good engines, but for some reason, they won't sell to American Markets... Perhaps that was the cause?

They have a very good 3-phase 50hz small genset but no 60hz / single phase options and absolutely no desire to market into the US.

Click to expand...

Building the support network required for proper entry into a new market is an expensive major decision for any company.

The BMW 6cyl diesels of the 1980's were made by VM motors in Italy , one of the largest diesel engine makers in the world. Now making very highly rated diesels for The american pickup truck market, the ram Eco-diesel.
Their latest marine engines have been designed with almost no external hoses to reduce leaking from hose failure issues.What a good idea! Proper designing not just maranizing.
VM motors got bought and sold again and again , see wiki.
BMW got out of the marine diesel Market and sold the 6 cyl to mercruiser who marketed it in the early 1990's . But they gave up when sales were not what they wanted.
The basic engines are great, maranization is always the issue, and the parts availability of older engine a real problem, same with most older engines.

I would be interested in anybody experience with the mercruiser 180hp turbo engine of the early 1990's , I'm looking at a boat with one of these engines but worry about parts a lot! Let alone finding somebody to work on it.
Warren

One day you will be putting your boat on the market and if you have an unusual engine or an unusual boat, you will be waiting a long time for a buyer to come along and he will be sure to offer far ess than you were hopeing to get. The internet has made it easy for everyone to quickly learn about the pros and cons of everything that there are no uninformed buyers out thre anymore. I would recommend searching for a good deal on a well maintained mainstream boat in order to prevent you from doing this in the future.

That's a great point @stanfromhell

I agree, the use of a car modern car engine would be a poor choice for a marine engine, marine engines frequently run at 80-100% for extended periods of time car engines rarely run that hard for but short periods. Car Engines that get used in marine applications are usually de rated so that WOT power is closer to 50-75% of what the the engine produced in a car application.

For clarification the BMW marine Diesel engines of the 1980's were proper marine engines, not using engines from their car line but from various manufacturers producing Diesel engines made for the hi torque requirements of marine use.
( common choices are tractor and off road equipment for the base doner engine).
They defiantly had some design flaws, like undersized heat exchangers,as they were trying to produce engines to meet the new cleaner regulations and ultimately got out of the marine engine business. mercruiser bought up their larger product line because they thought they were good products and continued to sell them for many years in various versions, but not much in the USA.
The BMW gas engines I know nothing about and would want to investigate their origins before comment but I don't consider gas engines the right sort of engines for the Trawler forum or most trawlers.

Most any engine can be marinized to operate in a boat.

With keel cooling and a dry exhaust stack the cost is very low.

The only hassle is the engine advertised HP has zero to do with boat use.

The simple rule of thumb is to divide the engine displacement in cubic inches by 3 and use that as your operating HP rating.

Well sure, you can make any engine to run as a marine engine BUT to get the torque requirements and reliability to run at WOT for extended periods you need to use engines that were designed to do that. All car engines rarely get to run at WOT for very long but tractors and off road equipment are often run very hard for long periods, just like boat engines, hence why they are usually the doner engine of choice for Diesel marine engines . Like Lehmans based on Fordsen tractor engines. ( gas engines are a completely different story). The huge expense in installing or reengineing a boat means it make more sense to use the proper sort of engine and not any engine, they are not all created the same!

stubones99 said:

Many Haatz engines are good engines, but for some reason, they won't sell to American Markets... Perhaps that was the cause?

They have a very good 3-phase 50hz small genset but no 60hz / single phase options and absolutely no desire to market into the US.

Click to expand...

Libra, the new boat from Europe, is equipped with one of these Hatz 3 phase gennies set up in three phase. I am still trying to figure out what runs on three phase on this boat, (dryer?) but good to hear that this unit has a good reputation.

If you use the BMW 3.0 litre 6 you can re-chip it to give more torque low down.

Car engine In trawler

Irish Rambler said:

If you use the BMW 3.0 litre 6 you can re-chip it to give more torque low down.

Click to expand...

I take you point and it will probably work for a car, but boat engines need to be designed differently. The base engine needs to be a lot heavier castings with larger bearing to take the continuous loads, so many other differences that you see in off road equipment engines.
The modern can engine is being designed for light weight , small spaces, fast revving for a responsive and quick acceleration. But rarely run at WOT for more that a few seconds. These modern engines are amazing compared to the old engines of the 70'S and 80's ( electronic fuel injection helps greatly here). These are not the requirements of a trawler boat engine.
The modern diesel have come a long long way too, the fuel injection systems are night and day compared to the older systems but the engines still have to be designed for continuous high load use.
One example is oil pressure , if you have low oil pressure in a car you can baby it for ever and keep rolling , the worst that will happen is you have to call AAA If the engine goes , but in a boat if you low oil pressure at a high load it's all over very quickly.
A modern Car engine would be a very poor choice for a heavy boat engine.

klee wyck said:

Libra, the new boat from Europe, is equipped with one of these Hatz 3 phase gennies set up in three phase. I am still trying to figure out what runs on three phase on this boat, (dryer?) but good to hear that this unit has a good reputation.

Click to expand...

Its a bit off thread, but....Any 3 phase generator can feed single phase loads.

warren,
Our boat engines don't need much torque. At least non-planing vessels. And most here hardly ever run over 50% load. And many never run at WOT .. ever. Even though they should for very short periods of time.

In the 50 to 2000 HP range diesels designed for genset duty are well suited for commercial boat use - or better said continuous duty. Take these same engines and add raw water inter coolers, more air induction contrivances, bigger fuel pumps, more cooling capacity, different engine internals etc and you can double the horsepower for planing boat use. Other non genset diesels can and and do work, the cost to marinize though is usually a show stopper.

The most advanced smaller diesels are destined for automotive and light trucks. Millions per year in fact. The puny recreational boat market is hardly worth the time for but a few intrepid diesel engine makers. The efforts to certify and legalize these engines for us few boat guys is daunting and expensive. One engine worth watching for is the new 5 liter Cummins. It seems right sized for fast boat application, sure be nice to see it in a 200 HP marine version.