Broken crankshaft

[petersea]

Kloudie,
Maybe after a documented failure due to a defect I may change my opinion however until then and depending on what the report says I still don't see and manufacture liability here. We have no first hand info on maintenance, repairs or maybe a hydro-lock scenario (other then what the prior owner says) on a eight to nine year old part that could have caused this failure. I would think that Yanmar would know of a defective batch of crankshaft as most engine of that age are well past the 190 hour mark. If GM or Ford had a 10 % failure rate so would have Yanmar had the same percentage just not the same number of parts. I would think Yanmar would have noticed a pattern. I can say that this is the only case of a broken crank that I can recall having heard , a very uncommon occurrence for this engine.I do believe that Yanmar would have covered this repair under warranty had it happened in the covered period.
As you suggested with Honda,( I am surprised that they did not honor a defective head gasket at 25000 miles...what was the warranty they were giving back in 76 ?) I doubt any manufacture would cover this crankshaft today so far past the warranty and with no know failure history.
Sometimes diesels suffer more problems with lack of use then with too much use, could be the case here......or simply the peril of buying used ?
I will hold any other thoughts until reworb has a confirmed report of defect. As I stated before I don't want to appear unsympathetic to his engine problem.

 

[kloudie1]

Exactly, Petersea.. I am talking about a failure that can be attributed to a verified defect in a part, the maintenance of which would have made no difference in the outcome.

 

[MitchM]

the first place i'd go is to beneteau who installed that engine in many of its boats. if beneteau has had no run of large numbers of this sort of (unusual) failure, i'd suspect a misuse by a previous owner or his marina staff. if the owner had not run the boat , and it was hard to start, it is possible that the marina staff cranked the engine with the raw water supply on, and got water into to mixing elbow which then hydrolocked.

 

[robertsapp]

Yanmar may say that the engine has been abused as it had only been run approximately 25 hours a year, and that was insufficient operation to keep the internal parts covered in an oil film.

 

[CPseudonym]

Was a survey of the vessel done? If so did you hire a Yanmar certified technician to perform a complete engine survey?

 

[reworb]

Thanks for all the replies. An update, Yanmar has contacted me and they apoligised for the poor email response from their customer service representative, they stated it was an inappropriate response for such an unusual problem and also stated they should have got back to me sooner when I wrote to the Company President.

From their prespective the failure of a crankshaft without any obvious cause i.e. hydro lock etc. is very unusual. They design crankshafts to last the useful life of the engine and should not just fail.

My previous assement of Yanmar has changed, they are concerned about their products and want to look at failures to understand those failures and use that information to improve future products. That was all I wanted them to do. All in all a first class outfit. I would recommend Yanmar to anyone. They have also told me they will offer me some help in resolving the issue.

The boat was surveyed before the purchase, no engine survey as neither of brokers nor the general surveyor, nor the marine mechanic who polished the fuel thought an engine survey was required as the engine ran so nice.

 

[FastOlson]

Plan B ?

Not sure how much more than the typical 1 cent that advice is worth on the internet, but I do know that a guy bought an older sailboat several seasons ago up in the Seattle area and...
the engine broke something major (crank or a rod, I do not recall which) shortly after purchase.
It was "catastrophic" failure - i.e. totaled the engine instantly - and his insurance company did pay for most of the new engine install.

L