58’ Hatteras detroit diesel 8v92TI with serious engine problems

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I've watched all 3 episodes. I just don't see how a qualified mechanic could have missed all that damage on the engine survey.
 
Boat was just purchased. Here’s the ad for it:

www.denisonyachtsales.com

58 Hatteras Endless Love 1978 Saint Louis | Denison Yacht Sales

The Beautiful and Spacious Hatteras 58 Motor Yacht is famous for her full-beam Salon and Master. The Hatteras 58 set the standard for larger production motor yachts. The galley-up four staterooms and ...
www.denisonyachtsales.com

The videos are a very interesting look at an in frame rebuild. Didn’t think it was possible, but these guys make it look (relatively) easy.
 
I've been watching with morbid curiosity and wondering how they missed the condition of that engine. The listing says the engines had only 2000 hours. Is that really plausible? Could a coolant leak have caused all that damage after they sailed it away? The worn camshaft and stuck rings at the very least had to be existing problems. Did the buyers get snookered here?
 
Woohoo, great excuse to re-power :)

A couple of little 6bt's would work perfectly for an 8-9 knot cruise.
 
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The damage they are showing didn’t just happen since they bought the boat. All the broken rings and the cam wear took some time to happen.
 
Mako said:
Woohoo, great excuse to re-power :)

A couple of little 6bt's would would perfect for an 8-9 knot cruise.
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I had the exact same thought.
 
Comodave said:
The damage they are showing didn’t just happen since they bought the boat. All the broken rings and the cam wear took some time to happen.
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So I figured. So how could their surveyor have missed it? Even if the coolant breach hadn't manifested yet, shouldn't the metals from all the disintegrating parts have shown up in the oil sample? Even if it ran, shouldn't it have been rough and smoky from the blow-by and poor compression?
 
Maybe they didn’t have an engine survey? Didn’t notice if they said one way or the other.
 
Mako said:
Woohoo, great excuse to re-power :)

A couple of little 6bt's would work perfectly for an 8-9 knot cruise.
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Sounds really good but the cost would be way more than rebuilding the Detroit.
 
Comodave said:
Sounds really good but the cost would be way more than rebuilding the Detroit.
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Like how much? Looks like a reconditioned 6BT is about $20k. So a pair of those plus the labor would be maybe $60k to repower? If you got half that back in the value of the boat would you start to break even on rebuilding the Detroits? No idea (thank goodness) what something like this costs. Somebody thought it made enough sense to do it on Gus’s old Hatteras.
 
According to my mechanic, the Detroits are going to run about 10k per cylinder to rebuild.
 
mmullins said:
According to my mechanic, the Detroits are going to run about 10k per cylinder to rebuild.
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Wow! Looks like the owner is pitching in on the work with Bus Grease Monkey guy, so maybe not costing full retail, but even so seems like throwing good money after bad compared to a repower.
 
Sababa said:
Wow! Looks like the owner is pitching in on the work with Bus Grease Monkey guy, so maybe not costing full retail, but even so seems like throwing good money after bad compared to a repower.
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Your vision come to fruition: Yacht Details
 
Sababa said:
Like how much? Looks like a reconditioned 6BT is about $20k. So a pair of those plus the labor would be maybe $60k to repower?
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Watching them hump a single head up the stairs tells me the labor for replacement engines is a LOT more than $10k/engine. $10k doesn't go far with a mechanic these days. Maybe 60-hours. And that doesn't include all the doo-dads for the install. Guessing the original exhausts are 10-12 inch diameter?

Really adds up fast. An in-frame rebuild is definitely possible.

Peter
 
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This one has to top the list of "problems found after survey"

Amazing.
 
mvweebles said:
Watching them hump a single head up the stairs tells me the labor for replacement engines is a LOT more than $10k/engine. $10k doesn't go far with a mechanic these days. Maybe 60-hours. And that doesn't include all the doo-dads for the install. Guessing the original exhausts are 10-12 inch diameter?

Really adds up fast. An in-frame rebuild is definitely possible.

Peter
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It was 10k per CYLINDER. 80-100k for an 8v92.
 
My brother had insurance rebuild his pair of 8v92’s after his hattaras 52 convertible was stolen and run hard. I told him he was pretty lucky the insurance stepped up, those had quite a few hours on them chasing gamefish in Florida.
He showed me the bill and though I don’t remember the amount, it was staggering.
 
mmullins said:
It was 10k per CYLINDER. 80-100k for an 8v92.
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My only contact with topic was a couple of years ago when I got a quote for $160-180k to repower a Tolly 57 I was looking at with new John Deeres. The engines were $60k a pop and much bigger and more complex than a 6BTA. (I ultimately passed on the project and bought newer boat with low hour QSM11s.) But based on that one data point at least, I can’t imagine it would cost anything like the $160k mmullins’s mechanic estimates for the rebuild to put some reconditioned 6BTAs in that Hatteras.
 
Sababa said:
My only contact with topic was a couple of years ago when I got a quote for $160-180k to repower a Tolly 57 I was looking at with new John Deeres. The engines were $60k a pop and much bigger and more complex than a 6BTA. (I ultimately passed on the project and bought newer boat with low hour QSM11s.) But based on that one data point at least, I can’t imagine it would cost anything like the $160k mmullins’s mechanic estimates for the rebuild to put some reconditioned 6BTAs in that Hatteras.
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The same mechanic (who is a hard core Detroit fan) actually recommended using replacement Cummins because they can be obtained at moderate expense and are very dependable.
 
I've been watching the series and had a few thoughts:
  1. If I had bought that boat I would be going after the surveyor and previous owner, the price for this boat and ad tells a very different story than the internals of the engine. Someone got taken.... Hard to believe there was a proper engine survey done.
  2. How many Detroit gurus are there still working who can take on a job like this in-situ? I'm not afraid to turn a wrench, but these in frame rebuilds look pretty difficult to do.
  3. I cringe when I see them tromping around on the carpet with greasy shoes and lugging parts up the stairs and dropping cylinders on the hardwood floor. The owner seems to be there, but putting down some protection would seem prudent unless you were planning to rip all the carpet out.
  4. How could you possibly clean out all the grit from the engine block while it's in the boat? I would want to be sure every bit of grit was blasted out of the block.
  5. I don't even want to know how much this will cost, it's got to be depressing for the owner.
 
But he's making big utube bucks...

Yeah, that engine. Roller cams and both the rollers and the cam are shot. No oil for a long time? As bad as the cylinders and that piston look, the cam looks worse.
 
The other part to understand is that Bus Grease Monkey probably lives 3 or 4 hours from there. Per diem for 2 or 3 people adds up along with salaries maybe a week of time and atleast two trips from home.

Doing an in frame rebuild of a Detroit has been interesting so far. Note to self, never buy a boat that you can't relatively easily remove the engine from. While I've always liked a challenging project, I'm good just watching this one.

So I watched several of his other videos. Like many on YouTube, he needs someone to edit an hour down to 25 minutes.

The other take away is that I would rather be working in my clean engine room than the drive train of a buss with all the oil and road grime.

Ted
 
As far as a repower goes there is so much more than just the cost of the new engines. As to $20K for a rebuilt 6BT, that is what they were quoting me 20+ years ago. I have not checked on price recently but I expect they have gone up. There is transmission, engine mounts, exhaust, wiring, gauges and cleanup of the engine room, cause why not if you have the engines out? Then there is the Hatteras dual engine rooms so each room will have to be cut open to get access to the engines. It is an almost endless list of work at $100+ per hour. Would I love to repower if it were my boat, yes but it would likely cost what he paid for the boat. There are always unexpected things to fix or replace. Ever watch some of Tony Athens repower videos? They always find things that weren’t expected, some minor and some major.
 
I quickly looked at the add and watched the videos. I would really like to know the back story on the purchase of the boat. Easy for me to say, how could you not tell the difference between the two engines? What did they actually see and what test were actually performed.

Is this a purposeful YouTube disaster or did someone get shafted. It’s possible that the seller nailed the perfect time to sell. Since the video’s are from the rebuilder it sure appears that the buyer was hosed but the add made the boat look in top condition.

I find I have more questions than answers on this one.

The in frame rebuild won’t be cheap. $80,000 would be a good estimate. Thinking you could repower for less than $120,000 is showing a lack of understanding what’s involved.
 
But I'll bet the broker said the engines were in perfect condition!
 
A few points:

I can't imagine a decent diesel mechanic signing off on the engines with a full RPM load test. There would have to be some noise relative to stuck and broken piston rings and chipped pistons.

Further, what about the oil analysis? Metal numbers had to be through the roof. Stuck and broken piston rings, scratched liners, chipped pistons, pitted cam shaft, and worn rollers on the injectors had to be leaving aluminum and iron in the oil. Also would expect to see trace antifreeze in the oil.

This makes an excellent case for doing oil analysis during survey. Even if an oil change had been done recently, after an extensive sea trial, sampling the oil would show high trace metals from residue being stirred up. Oil analysis should always be done after running the engine underway as opposed to having sat for days or weeks.

Ted
 
There's something missing in this story. I found it on the Hatteras forum. So, between YouTube and boating forums, this story is probably pretty well circulated. My question is, why isn't the buyer making a very public fuss? Has he lawyered up? Is he just very low key, easy going and just says "que sera sera?" Or, did he skimp on the engine survey based on the overall condition of the boat and previous knowledge of Detroit engines? If I paid a mechanic for a thorough engine survey, I would be raising holy you-know-what. I know surveyors, mechanics, etc. have liability clauses in their contracts to protect them from lawsuits. But, this would be gross incompetence on the part of the mechanic. I have never had a mechanical survey performed and have found big ticket repairs later on. But, I can't say whether they would have prevented me from buying the boats. And, none of them were as catastrophic as this.
 
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