STB
Guru
Hi all,
Some may remember my prior post about swapping my port 6.354(M) engine for a reman after a chronic low-oil pressure issue and the finding of metal in the oil. For those who didn't see the post, I've reposted some more details later. The reman came from a small but 40+ year old legacy Perkins dealer (Neither S&W nor TAD, just one that happened to have the engine on the shelf ready to go). Here is the update.
Getting the seller to pick up my core was as much fun as getting them to send out the engine. After getting it, they made noises by phone about the crank sounding "dead" and sending it and the block out to be checked. Today they report in email:
-- "Main bore is out .002 inches. Cylinder block CAN NOT be line bored. Cylinder block is NOT USABLE."
-- "Bad - #4 Main Journal cracked".
-- Amount of core credit issued $0.00
To my knowledge of that engine, 0.002" off on the main bore is rebuildable by taking 0.001 off of the crown and 0.001 off of the block, and thereby not putting the idler gear out of tolerance. But, I'm not a rebuilder. And, it surprises me that the #4 journal was cracked, as #5 was the one where we found the debris, not #4. But, again, could be.
But, what about the brand new intake and exhaust manifolds (their originals, as I kept my old ones to match coolers), their newly rebuilt injector pump (I kept mine as they sent a different one than they were supposed to), the recently rebuilt injectors, the 110hrs since rebuilt head, the oil pump, oil pressure relief valve, water pump, and other minor salvage like oil pan, valve cover, fuel lines, etc, etc, etc, etc?
Well, they apparently intend to keep both my full $4000 core deposit -- and my full engine.
For the curious, nope, I don't intended to let them keep both my engine and my money. I've asked them again to provide a return on my core deposit for the usable parts -- or to let me know when I can pick up the whole engine. In the end, I feel confident I'll get a reasonable core refund, or the engine back and then, well, I guess I'd take it from there. This doesn't seem like it'll be a fun ride for anyone involved.
We had a great holiday on the boat, which was the reason I was on a tight schedule. But, well, if I'd waited for S&W to rebuild one of their cores, or send mine to them or TAD, I suspect I'd be $4000 richer right now (Well, $6000 if you count the $2000 for expedited shipping) and not still spending time on a broke engine that's already been hauled away. Patience pays. As the old saying goes, "Let my life be an example to you."
For those who missed my earlier post...
When I bought my boat, it was in the late-middle of a complete refit. Most of the "individual big-ticket items" had been done. But, there was a lot to do to finalize their installation and testing, and then all of the rest. The boat was bought at an appropriate price to take the inevitable lumps that come along with the risk of that situation.
Among the problems that I discovered as I went through the boat (not my mechanical inspector, who found it to be perfect, of course), was that the port engine had the wrong sender (single station vs double station), and other wiring problems so, in reality, the oil pressure wasn't dropping from 70psi to 30psi hot-to-cold, it was dropping from 45psi to 15psi hot-to-cold. I had assumed the relief valve was stuck partially open, or there was a leak between it and the pump or the pump and the pipe; or there was less likely an issue with the idler gear. On the outside, I thought the crankshaft might have been polished or turned and the wrong sized bearings installed during the rebuild.
These things required lifting the engine up a couple of feet to get underneath, so I couldn't do them myself. It took 6 months to find a good mechanic and then 1.5 years to get him out with the A-frame he needed to lift the engine up to get under the oil pan. The skilled trade worker shortage is real.
During that time I got heavily, heavily waked, the engine shut down, it was hard to initially restart, but then returned to perfectly normal operation, was an easy start, made full RPM under load, all cylinders fired, and ran clean and smooth. Unfortunately, metal was found in the oil. And, when the pan was finally dropped and metal was found embedded in the lower bearings and in the pan. I decided to replace or rebuild the engine. There wasn't much choice for trustable reliability.
I had a month until family was to celebrate Christmas on the boat, so it was game on. There was no time to have one rebuilt, the folks I know at S&W had cores, but no fully built 6.354 NAs on the shelf and TAD had neither engines nor cores. But, I found a reman on the shelf at a small legacy Perkins dealer in SoCal. I paid $8500 for it, plus $750 round-trip shipping, plus another $2k for it to be shipped 3-days, in time to get installed before Christmas. They also charged another $4,000 core deposit.
Well, they were rough to deal with from the moment the wire transfer went through. It didn't ship on time. They wouldn't provide a tracking number. And, when it arrived, it had a different injector pump than was expected, so I had to keep my old ones and old fuel lines. It was also bone-dry, without even an oil pump prime, with fresh builder's grease inside, and they were supposed to run it first. Despite that, once installed, it ran like a charm. I've never felt or heard a 6.354 run so smoothly. And, other than the need to tighten up an inspection plate and valve cover and things like that, it was perfect. I figured they were just a swamped family business -- all is well that ends well, right? Christmas was had on a running boat. That was all that mattered.
Wrestling with them to get my old engine returned to them for core credit was, well, as much fun as getting the new one shipped. Eventually it got shipped, they got it, and they told me that the crank "sounded dead" so they sent it out to be dye tested and that they sent the engine block out to have the main bore inspected.
Today they report in email:
-- "Main bore is out .002 inches. Cylinder block CAN NOT be line bored. Cylinder block is NOT USABLE."
-- "Bad - #4 Main Journal cracked".
-- Amount of core credit issued $0.00
To my knowledge of that engine, 0.002" off on the main bore is rebuildable by taking 0.001 off of the crown and 0.001 off of the block, and thereby not putting the idler gear out of tolerance. But, I'm not a rebuilder. And, it surprises me that the #4 journal was cracked, as #5 was the one where we found the debris, not #4. But, again, could be.
But, what about the brand new intake and exhaust manifolds (their originals, as I kept my old ones to match coolers), their newly rebuilt injector pump (I kept mine as theirs was the wrong model), the recently rebuilt injectors, the 110hrs since rebuilt head, the oil pump, oil pressure relief valve, water pump, and other minor salvage like oil pan, valve cover, fuel lines, etc, etc, etc, etc?
Well, they apparently intend to keep both my full $4000 core deposit -- and my full engine.
We had a great holiday on the boat. But, if I'd waited for S&W to rebuild one of their cores, or send them or TAD my old one to be rebuild and suffered the down time, I suspect I'd be $4000 richer right now (Well, $6000 if you count the $2000 for expedited shipping). Patience pays. As the old saying goes, "Let my life be an example to you."
For the curious, nope, I don't intended to let them keep both my engine and my money. I've asked them again to provide a return on my core deposit for the usable parts -- or to let me know when I can pick up the whole engine. In the end, I feel confident I'll get a reasonable core refund, or the engine back and then, well, I guess I'd take it from there. But, that end may be a long time in coming. Sigh.
Some may remember my prior post about swapping my port 6.354(M) engine for a reman after a chronic low-oil pressure issue and the finding of metal in the oil. For those who didn't see the post, I've reposted some more details later. The reman came from a small but 40+ year old legacy Perkins dealer (Neither S&W nor TAD, just one that happened to have the engine on the shelf ready to go). Here is the update.
Getting the seller to pick up my core was as much fun as getting them to send out the engine. After getting it, they made noises by phone about the crank sounding "dead" and sending it and the block out to be checked. Today they report in email:
-- "Main bore is out .002 inches. Cylinder block CAN NOT be line bored. Cylinder block is NOT USABLE."
-- "Bad - #4 Main Journal cracked".
-- Amount of core credit issued $0.00
To my knowledge of that engine, 0.002" off on the main bore is rebuildable by taking 0.001 off of the crown and 0.001 off of the block, and thereby not putting the idler gear out of tolerance. But, I'm not a rebuilder. And, it surprises me that the #4 journal was cracked, as #5 was the one where we found the debris, not #4. But, again, could be.
But, what about the brand new intake and exhaust manifolds (their originals, as I kept my old ones to match coolers), their newly rebuilt injector pump (I kept mine as they sent a different one than they were supposed to), the recently rebuilt injectors, the 110hrs since rebuilt head, the oil pump, oil pressure relief valve, water pump, and other minor salvage like oil pan, valve cover, fuel lines, etc, etc, etc, etc?
Well, they apparently intend to keep both my full $4000 core deposit -- and my full engine.
For the curious, nope, I don't intended to let them keep both my engine and my money. I've asked them again to provide a return on my core deposit for the usable parts -- or to let me know when I can pick up the whole engine. In the end, I feel confident I'll get a reasonable core refund, or the engine back and then, well, I guess I'd take it from there. This doesn't seem like it'll be a fun ride for anyone involved.
We had a great holiday on the boat, which was the reason I was on a tight schedule. But, well, if I'd waited for S&W to rebuild one of their cores, or send mine to them or TAD, I suspect I'd be $4000 richer right now (Well, $6000 if you count the $2000 for expedited shipping) and not still spending time on a broke engine that's already been hauled away. Patience pays. As the old saying goes, "Let my life be an example to you."
For those who missed my earlier post...
When I bought my boat, it was in the late-middle of a complete refit. Most of the "individual big-ticket items" had been done. But, there was a lot to do to finalize their installation and testing, and then all of the rest. The boat was bought at an appropriate price to take the inevitable lumps that come along with the risk of that situation.
Among the problems that I discovered as I went through the boat (not my mechanical inspector, who found it to be perfect, of course), was that the port engine had the wrong sender (single station vs double station), and other wiring problems so, in reality, the oil pressure wasn't dropping from 70psi to 30psi hot-to-cold, it was dropping from 45psi to 15psi hot-to-cold. I had assumed the relief valve was stuck partially open, or there was a leak between it and the pump or the pump and the pipe; or there was less likely an issue with the idler gear. On the outside, I thought the crankshaft might have been polished or turned and the wrong sized bearings installed during the rebuild.
These things required lifting the engine up a couple of feet to get underneath, so I couldn't do them myself. It took 6 months to find a good mechanic and then 1.5 years to get him out with the A-frame he needed to lift the engine up to get under the oil pan. The skilled trade worker shortage is real.
During that time I got heavily, heavily waked, the engine shut down, it was hard to initially restart, but then returned to perfectly normal operation, was an easy start, made full RPM under load, all cylinders fired, and ran clean and smooth. Unfortunately, metal was found in the oil. And, when the pan was finally dropped and metal was found embedded in the lower bearings and in the pan. I decided to replace or rebuild the engine. There wasn't much choice for trustable reliability.
I had a month until family was to celebrate Christmas on the boat, so it was game on. There was no time to have one rebuilt, the folks I know at S&W had cores, but no fully built 6.354 NAs on the shelf and TAD had neither engines nor cores. But, I found a reman on the shelf at a small legacy Perkins dealer in SoCal. I paid $8500 for it, plus $750 round-trip shipping, plus another $2k for it to be shipped 3-days, in time to get installed before Christmas. They also charged another $4,000 core deposit.
Well, they were rough to deal with from the moment the wire transfer went through. It didn't ship on time. They wouldn't provide a tracking number. And, when it arrived, it had a different injector pump than was expected, so I had to keep my old ones and old fuel lines. It was also bone-dry, without even an oil pump prime, with fresh builder's grease inside, and they were supposed to run it first. Despite that, once installed, it ran like a charm. I've never felt or heard a 6.354 run so smoothly. And, other than the need to tighten up an inspection plate and valve cover and things like that, it was perfect. I figured they were just a swamped family business -- all is well that ends well, right? Christmas was had on a running boat. That was all that mattered.
Wrestling with them to get my old engine returned to them for core credit was, well, as much fun as getting the new one shipped. Eventually it got shipped, they got it, and they told me that the crank "sounded dead" so they sent it out to be dye tested and that they sent the engine block out to have the main bore inspected.
Today they report in email:
-- "Main bore is out .002 inches. Cylinder block CAN NOT be line bored. Cylinder block is NOT USABLE."
-- "Bad - #4 Main Journal cracked".
-- Amount of core credit issued $0.00
To my knowledge of that engine, 0.002" off on the main bore is rebuildable by taking 0.001 off of the crown and 0.001 off of the block, and thereby not putting the idler gear out of tolerance. But, I'm not a rebuilder. And, it surprises me that the #4 journal was cracked, as #5 was the one where we found the debris, not #4. But, again, could be.
But, what about the brand new intake and exhaust manifolds (their originals, as I kept my old ones to match coolers), their newly rebuilt injector pump (I kept mine as theirs was the wrong model), the recently rebuilt injectors, the 110hrs since rebuilt head, the oil pump, oil pressure relief valve, water pump, and other minor salvage like oil pan, valve cover, fuel lines, etc, etc, etc, etc?
Well, they apparently intend to keep both my full $4000 core deposit -- and my full engine.
We had a great holiday on the boat. But, if I'd waited for S&W to rebuild one of their cores, or send them or TAD my old one to be rebuild and suffered the down time, I suspect I'd be $4000 richer right now (Well, $6000 if you count the $2000 for expedited shipping). Patience pays. As the old saying goes, "Let my life be an example to you."
For the curious, nope, I don't intended to let them keep both my engine and my money. I've asked them again to provide a return on my core deposit for the usable parts -- or to let me know when I can pick up the whole engine. In the end, I feel confident I'll get a reasonable core refund, or the engine back and then, well, I guess I'd take it from there. But, that end may be a long time in coming. Sigh.
