Although I have owned powerboats for over 30 years, I am new to this forum.
I am considering the purchase of a 2000 boat powered by MAN 610 diesels. Years ago a broker spoke poorly about them. I didn’t question his reasons. An internet search raised comments about them being expensive to maintain. Another said they were Mangernades. One thread gave a price of $12,000 for a 2000 hour service, which is about twice what I paid for a similar Hino service. Another thread said parts were hard to come by. Yet I understand most Fleming are powered by MAN engines, which is a positive testament.
Does anyone have an opinion on these engines, and their maintenance and parts supply.
Some searching suggests you're meaning the MAN 2866LE401 engines, 610-hp.
We have MAN engines, but not that one... so can only comment generally.
Ref expensive to maintain:
1) Yes, could be, during the warranty period, because MAN dictates specific service intervals, some of which are best performed by certified MAN techs and might require specialized tools and/or software (latter probably not, on older diesels). A 2000-hour service, if still in warranty, could be a boatload of labor hours.
2) After the warranty period, maybe yes, maybe no, depending on who does what work. If you hire MAN techs for everything, it'll be expensive... but pretty much the same as it would be with every other brand of engines in the same size range. If you do some of the work yourself -- oil/filter changes, etc. -- not all that expensive for the stuff you do, only expensive for out of the ordinary stuff you might hire a MAN tech to do. A 2000-hour service, after warranty but with tech doing everything, could be a boatload of labor hours. Probably same for any similar size engine.
3) Depends on engine size. Before we bought this boat, I looked at service for similar size CAT and MTU diesels... and MAN is not the most expensive among those for ~15L engines. Might even have been the least expensive of those (can't remember where I left my notes on all that). Fluid amounts increase as engine size increases, so there's that, though. (I think our current engines take about twice the amount of oil the Cummins 8.3s needed; not a MAN thing, just a size thing.)
4) As engines get larger, parts get heavier... (whether the engine room grows or not)... so some of the work we've had done was best performed by two techs... to deal with component size, weight, and access. Not a MAN thing, per se, but can come into play depending on actual engine. Looks like the 2866LE401 is 11.9L, so not tiny... but then might depend on size of the engine room around it...
Ref MAN-grenades: I've read references like that but... they all seem to have been about BIG engines in BIG sportfishers that were often being run on the pins all the time. Not sure any brand/model of engine will always survive that kind of treatment...
Ref parts availability: haven't noticed any difficulties for parts I've dealt with myself, and we also just recently had some more majorly out-of-the-ordinary work done... and our MAN guys got parts for that immediately. Performance Diesel in Texas is the distributor for the U.S. East Coast, parts usually arrive next day or two. (Not sure who your distributor would be...)
Ref Fleming installs: yes, apparently some of the newer deliveries are coming with MAN I6-800s, said to be bullet-proof. Guessing in the 58s and 65s. I'd also guess the larger boats are powered with something bigger, maybe MAN, maybe not. Research can probably speak to that. Apparently Fleming has used several different engines over the years, though.
You might do a focused search specifically on 2866LE401 engines and see what commentary exists out there. And check out likely MAN techs for your area (think Performance Diesel has a look-up on their site, but might only be for U.S.). We haven't had any difficulty finding MAN service guys...
-Chris
