Re: Warranty parameters are grosly outdated.
Hi all
Warranties for commercial use are usually one year, parts three months. The question about time is because motors record time in their computer, some people may only use a commercial motor part of a season, for instance a guide outfitter, other people could use a motor for months of hard use in one season, for instance fishing halibut, then crab, then as tender etc. The time is recorded.
My business had four 90TLDI motors fail. Two on a freight boat, two on light skiffs.
The freight boat had other motor types on it before. I went to the 90TLDI's because I wanted to reduce fuel consumption, stay with 2 strokes, and the particular motor type I had been using was NLA because the manufaturer was developing 4 stroke engines.
The freight boat's twin engines are propped to 5600 rpm, run backed off to between 4400and 4800, depending on the load, the heavier the load the higher the rpm needed to snycronize the engines. One freight boat engine failed with me running it, another engine failed with a different operator. Both those motors also had the rod come through the block. We have made this run about 1000 times.
I mentioned in another part of this forum that the tohatsu reps were concerned, and may have mentioned that we went all through the various questions such as oil, rpm, abuse etc. with them, and came to a dead end.
My position on this now is that I wish that Tohatsu would have considered my business a good test, and looked at things like case cooling, air flow in, rod bearing cooling, and head cooling. I haven't heard anything from them for a long time. The TLDI engines do not have a high profile in the area where I work. I didn't expect the problems, and I don't see how the TLDI or similar systems are going to move ahead if E tec and DI 4 stroke motors prove out.
My other two TLDI motors just appear to have piston failure. Both were on light welded aluminum boats, both times with low pitch props, backed of. One failed slowly, it would run a little, die and start up, the person operating that boat is also a high time boat operator. The other engine just had the top of the piston grenade. Tohatsu reps wanted to look at these blocks but I said they couldn't take them unless I got them back, and they decided not to take them. The dealer took pictures and the failure was diagnosed as detonation. I haven't dismantled these blocks myself yet, but detonation is not what I suspect.
I can't access this forum for a few days. I guess if I had trusted Tohatsu to take the blocks and give me an analysis, some of the locked horns could have been averted, but my crew has hundreds of thousands of hours operating time and nobody liked the first go around where the basic questions about prop pitch, oil, and so on seemed to be focal points.
Anyway, this isn't your poblem, I hope this clears up the questions. I think the question of basing warranty on hours is a good one for the reasons I explained, thanks for the opinions. Cheers.
