Marine Truth

[Chief Engineer]

Boat has now been out of service for 5 weeks....New Mechanic and Helper have made two more "visits" to boat.....Boat was started briefly.....still smokes.

Originally Posted by Chief Engineer

Marine Truth........hmmmmmmm........you tell people the truth if they choose to ignore it...it's on them.

Case in point.

Person owns boat.....Gets "advice" from dock people about smoky exhaust

Has relative come down to adjust valves.......still smokes

Has a "friend" come down who has a boat just like it to "fiddle around"

Calls mechanic....mechanic gets history that boat has not moved in two seasons except for brief runs.....no appreciable warm up.

Mechanic learns that engine has been run at dock to charge batteries.

Engine smokes....valves were out of adjustment

Valves adjusted.....

One cylinder is found to be not firing....injectors were pulled and cleaned

Engine still smokes slighly.....one valve was a little tight. adjusted.

Took boat for seatrial....no smoke under load......until throttle was pushed to the max.....THS achieved at 3/4 throttle.

Advice given to customer was to RUN THE BOAT.....

Customer chose to bring another mechanic in who claimed that "compression was a couple hundred low"

The frikkin engine wouldn't run "a couple hundred low"

So the person ends up paying for two mechanics for three plus days and machining head and replacing valves.......while doing nothing to the rings or cylinder bores.

Oh well....................

[barnakiel]

Another kind of marine truth: instruction manuals. Raymarine - errors, errors, errors .... Standard Horizon - errors, errors, errors ...

What is so uniquely difficult in writing an understandable, correct manual?

Perhaps they do so on purpose then.

b.

[Chief Engineer]

There is an "800" number////that has clarified things


"Look for the simple things first", Chief.....................

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Talking before listening. My major fault when giving advice.

Apparently, most salesmen suffer from the same.

.

Now that's the Truth!

We are trained to listen first, but in my experience I find most of us are type A people and want to lead the conversion instead.

Except for the car guys those guys are the best whether you like them or not!

[S/V Alchemy]

Originally Posted by Johnathon123

I never trust anything that comes from only one source.

If I read the same information from at least 3 sources, I begin to think it may have half a grain of truth.

Have still been burnt but less often than some people.

That's a reasonable approach. Take the three-year drama of Rocna anchors, for instance. At first, I sensed mere disgruntlement at some of the advocates of the design. Then came a number of fairly nasty allegations, followed by independent testing.

At this stage, I feel I have enough information to clearly decide for myself as to the suitability of a particular piece of safety gear aboard our boat.

Given that the choice in this case is "holding fast or on the rocks", I don't begrudge the hours spent reading (and posting in) a sometimes rancorous debate. Gradually, a consensus view has emerged, and I feel that the higher standard of information I require for critical boat gear is justified.

Certainly, a byproduct of chasing down personal opinions, "credit where it's due" accolades, and various points of engineering interest have been educational, and that price is such a moving target as to be nearly irrelevant in the greater scheme. The right thing to buy, once discovered, for one's boat is just that, and if you can justify it, you buy it. If you can't, you try to get the best "second-tier" product you can afford.