New to Forum with Question

[Theo]

Hello All-
I am new to this forum and hope I'm doing it correctly! A bit about me. My name is Ted and I currently live in Navarre, Fl. Until this spring I owned and lived aboard for 4 yrs (6 mos out of each yr) a 32 ft Sedan Bridge Marinette with twin 318 Marine Chryslers. It was a great boat but was time to sell it. Well I'm now looking at a 1986 40 ft. Aft cabin Mainship, with two turbocharged 8.2 liter Allison (Detroit) diesels. From my limited research this was Detroit's attempt to build a 4 stroke (instead of their normal 2) diesel. I know many went into buses and other road vehicles and later went into some boats as well. The early ones I know had head gasket, cooling, and a few other problems. BUT it appears the later models had these problems resolved? Yes/No? So my question to whoever has info on these motors is the 1986 version a better 8.2 then earlier ones? Also any comments regarding these motors would be appreciated. Thanks a bunch and looking forward to any comments!
Thanks! Ted

 

[Comodave]

Welcome aboard. I like that boat, nice layout. I would suggest joining Boatdiesel.com for the engine info. I think it costs $25 per year. I don’t think that there are a lot of those particular engines out there, but I may be wrong. Good luck.

 

[DavidM]

I did a little Google and boatdiesel research on those engines for a friend a while back. As you note there were problems with head gasket failure probably caused by either weak head bolts (fixed with better metallurgy and higher torque) or coolant failure from the aft cylinder. The latter was fixed with a coolant vent kit.

As noted above, boatdiesel has a wealth of info and that will lead you to a guy whose name I can't remember who is the expert on these engines and can help you with the head bolt and coolant fixes.

But if you run them lightly, say at half load or less, you probably won't have any problems even if you don't do the fixes.

David

 

[Bacchus]

The
Welcome aboard TF