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A Conundrum, without an Answer

6K views 50 replies 24 participants last post by  wind_magic 
#1 ·
Tally ho .. again .. After my sometimes squabbly Engine-Less
sailing question, I felt a followup was in order. Recently, I
began to look at sailboats; again. I sold my last boat well over
a year ago, and I needed some time off. I looked at a few for sale
postings, the usual. What I found was a number of very worthy
sailboats, boats with quality hulls, sound decks, good rigging and sails,
blah blah .. that the owners are offering but .. the big BUT:: these boats
all have the old Atomic 4 gasoline engine, and the owners all told me
with some prodding that the engines have "issues". So, basically, the
boats do not have working engines. I few calls to repower engine folks,
or boatyards, and to get a general idea of what a repower might cost?
Many thousands of dollars. In every case, the cost of a replacement
engine was much more than the boat was/is worth. Its not the take out
of the old AT4 that is expensive, it is the cost of the new engine, the associated parts such as muffler/exhaust/bed/fuel tank .. and the placing
of the new engine in place, hook ups, etc. I am not a fan of outboard engines, especially on larger boats. So: what is the answer? Short of
spending $12,000 dollars on a boat that is only worth $10,000, is there an answer? It is a shame and very disheartening for the owners of these boats, that they can not sell them. Also, as a potential purchaser, I feel
dirty telling the owner of an otherwise quality sailboat that his boat is not even worth $100 dollars. A marine surveyor I spoke with was blunt "the boat is worthless without a quality diesel engine". How does one tell the seller, without sounding like a total jerk, that the boat he is asking $10,000 dollars for is not worth $100 dollars? I sent an outline of what the surveyor told me to one seller, and I included that I was not trying to steal his boat or come off sounding like a jerk .. but what can one do. Oh.. well.
 
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#2 ·
There are plenty of great boats with good diesels in them and they are not all that expensive. Like a classic car, we don't put money into them based on getting it back.. because it's not gonna happen! We do it because we love the , car, boat, house, etc. if you find one you really love then yes! do a repower! You can save 5-10 k if you do it yourself.
 
#3 ·
Given how many Atomic 4 engines are out there still, I wouldn't say that the engine itself is a problem. Any engine that is neglected, whether it is diesel or gasoline, is going to be an issue. Re-building an Atomic 4 that hasn't been too badly neglected isn't that big a deal, as they are relatively simple engines.

As for what to tell the owners of these boats... tell them the truth... some will hate you for it, but others will thank you for it and may even agree with you.
 
#4 ·
Agree with sailingdog, it's not the engine, it's the lack of maintenance.
Regardless of anyone's opinion, you simply can't build and sell 'junk' engines for 40 years.
If you feed it >>FRESH<< clean, dry, gasoline, and keep oil in the crankcase, it will last forever. Run old dirty/watery gas in it, or run chronically low on oil and you WILL have problems.

Ken.
 
#5 ·
Moyer Marine, the guru of the AT4 charges aprox $4,000 to rebuild an
old Atomic 4. For a short block rebuld, aprox $2500. And there is still the
take out, drop in, and accessories such as exhaust, shaft, cutless, coupling..
If the engine has always been raw water cooled, the engine block may be worn out. So, it adds up to lots of money. What drives me a little nuts, is that the boats, our boats, are SAILBOATS. The whole idea is to use the wonder of wind to send us along. And here are these wonderful, magical sailboats, with very stout hulls, solid decks, good rigging and hardware, multiple sails .. but they are sitting because :: the engine. The engine that is called the AUXILIARY .. Some company needs to come up with a El Cheapo motor, either electric or gas [propane] that can be handle easily, attached to an existing shaft easily, and used just for the harbor area, docking/grabbing the mooring. The motor must be very light. I suspect if one removes the alternator, starter motor, trans, whatevers the engine shouldn't weigh much.. maybe 30-40 lbs. Since the motor would be very light, an attachment to the existing bed should be easy. With maybe a flexable attachment to line up the shaft and coupling.. vola.. This would not be good for a sailor who wants to motor for long distances.. but it would be a good solution to the boats that are presently sitting at docks, on the hard, wherever that can't get sold because on the old bad engine and the expense of replacement. With the electric cars? Couldn't some of that technology be put to use in this application? Tell me where I'm wrong.. I must be missing something.. or, and if the motor is electric.. you would be able to remove the fuel tank, and fuel.. much lighter.. although the added batteries may add weight.. You would not have a huge amount of horse power, just enough to park the yacht.. It would be also/engineless/sailing .hahahah
 
#7 ·
Jasper Windvane,

The electric concept is interesting. There is actually at least 1 company out there that makes a kit to convert your boat to electric propulsion.

Having built 3 electric cars and 1 hybrid, I really like electric propulsion but the design must be carefully weighed. Here is my take:

Motor- There are plenty of powerful AC and DC motors out there. I think that for a 30' boat, you would need at least 10kw (13.5hp) continuous rating. This would put the motor weight around 100lbs plus some mounting. The biggest problem is that most motors in this power range are running between 4k and 10k rpm. Your max shaft rpm should be closer to 1k rpm so you would need to do a lot of gearing or a belt or chain drive. Generally belts/chains are limited to about 5:1 gearing in single stage so you would have to pick your motor carefully.

Controller- Again, there are lots of controllers out on the market both AC and DC. You need to make sure the controller is really well sealed otherwise it will corrode and stop functioning quickly. Also, you need to deal with RF interference from it. If you are interested in charging while sailing, going with an AC unit that has regenerative capabilities could be nice.

Batteries- I would think that the minimum amount of charge should be able to drive the boat for at least 2 hours which is 20kwhrs. This would be 18 of the 6V Trojan T105 batteries which weigh 62lbs each(1116lbs total). If you could essentially replace ballast with the batteries, that might work but it will be expensive and heavy.

Charging- It will be time consuming to fully charge this battery pack. Charging at 12A (the most that is reasonable on a 15A, 110V circuit) you will be charging at 1.65kw. This means that charging will take you 12 hours. If you plug into a 30A circuit, you can charge in around 6 hours.

As a general rule, you want to run the highest voltage system possible. The higher the voltage, the lower the current which means smaller diameter wires and a more efficient system.

Also note that I glossed over all efficiency calculations which should actually be included. You will find that the battery bank needs to be a bit bigger and the charging time will be a bit longer but this should give a general idea.
 
#8 ·
While Electric hybrids or electric power might be a nice idea for a daysailer... it really doesn't make much sense if you sail longer distances or in heavier weather conditions. The reason I say this is simple... if you need to have a reliable motor/engine.... an electric hybrid or electric motor isn't gonna cut it... if your batteries go flat, you're basically screwed... with a gasoline or diesel engine, if it runs out of fuel, re-fueling is relatively quick and simple to do.
 
#9 ·
While Electric hybrids or electric power might be a nice idea for a daysailer... it really doesn't make much sense if you sail longer distances or in heavier weather conditions. The reason I say this is simple... if you need to have a reliable motor/engine.... an electric hybrid or electric motor isn't gonna cut it... if your batteries go flat, you're basically screwed... with a gasoline or diesel engine, if it runs out of fuel, re-fueling is relatively quick and simple to do.
Yeah, I was going to say that charging 18 Trojan 105's is going to take a bigger engine than the OP needs for the boat.:) If you can't plug into shorepower each time you use the electric motor, the suggestion is a non-starter

And the cost of the conversion to a boat made out of batteries and all the paraphanalia that it will take to make it work probably exceeds the cost of a rebuilt gasoline engine and then it's still unproven and in my view dodgy.

Get the "Atomic whatever" fixed or even better go to a used engine dealer and buy a used 2 or 3 cylinder Kubota diesel and convert it. It'll be less expensive, more durable and probably safer than a gasoline engine.
 
#10 ·
There is nothing inherently special about a marine diesel...until recently all of them were converted agricultural or truck engines.

Find yourself a good running Isuzu or kubota diesel for 1000 bucks or less out of a piece of construction equipment that went gunny sack for some other reason and build a heat exchanger for it....figure out how to attach your tranny to it and your set.

Iv got a couple good diesels sitting around here..if my Perkins ever gives up the ghost and it being a hard engine to find parts for any more ...I will be doing something very similar...
 
#11 · (Edited)
Why so many user names?

Jasper
Jasper Windvane
Jasper101

If you don't like the boat for whatever reason it is not meant to be. Look for a boat with a better engine or just accept the one you are interested in with the known problem. Logic says that the boat should be de-valued for the cost of the engine; so let the seller decide if he wants to fix the engine and sell it for closer to market value or sell it at a lower price.

The big problem with the A4 in my opinion is that most installations were raw water cooled. The engines corrode and end up with cooling system problems and block issues if not winterized; etc. There are Kubota diesel blocks that are direct fit replacements for the A4; so if you really want the boat you should look at what engine will fit without major modifications to the engine bed.

If you hate the engine that much you could put an outboard on the stern; and turn the A4 into your mooring block!!
 
#12 ·
Hybrids are not solutions for the water. A hybrid in car works because most of the time you are not using all the power during driving. In water you are transferring all the power to the prop which means all power produced is used. If you consider the losses of energy transfer from a diesel to a generator to a battery pack to the electric motor, it will be obvious using the diesel directly is more economical.
 
#14 ·
I'm not so sure about what you wrote.

When you are in a car you are using all the power to drive when you have your foot on the gas pedal, the rest of the time it is just idling. The same thing happens in a boat, the motor idles when you don't give it any throttle.

What makes a hybrid efficient is that by using a charging system, batteries, electric motors, etc, you can get rid of a lot of design "features" of a normal automobile engine that make it inefficient. For example, you have to design in a lot of inefficiency to make the car engine deliver increasing amounts of power over a wide range of rpm's, if you get rid of that and only run a car motor at one set rpm and deliver a constant amount of power the motor becomes much more efficient. So that's my understanding of how the new hybrids work, they use a simpler motor periodically to charge up the batteries, more like a generator motor than a traditional automobile motor. That same concept can work on a boat, instead of having such a complicated motor that has to deliver power over a wide range of rpm's, you just basically hook a generator up to a charging system and then use electric motors to run the boat, a much less complicated motor than a traditional boat motor that has to deliver variable amounts of power.
 
#13 ·
Its a POV thing i like Sea Fever and am starting at close to ZERO and if i cant fix the freshwater cooled A4 i will drop 6k for the Beta twin



In fact we like the interior much better than many NEW boats and if we sink 15k into it and use it 5 years i can assure this will be far cheaper than making payments on a 40k boat which is gonna need a motor at some point
 
#15 ·
I replaced a raw water cooled, neglected, A-4 in an Islander 28 with a Moyer Marine rebuilt, the FW cooling heat exchanger and a new hot pipe. It cost me about 6K doing all the work myself. I took the risk of investing in this 78 vintage boat because it was a nice design, very lightly used (stored for 20 years) and a good deal at $1500.00. All the standing rigging is sound. It came with a 10 foot Avon and motor, three usable sails a spinnaker, good lines, anchors, Mustang cold weather suits, sound thru hulls, pedestal steering. I replaced all hoses and hose clamps and the shift and throttle cables and two batteries, too. I enjoyed doing the work. Our little boat has a "new" fw cooled A-4 and it was affordable. I have also replaced the head with a Lavac. It probably has cost us about 8 K for this boat. I have added some nice electronics that I can remove if I want to take it with at the time of a sale. I left the original Datamarine stuff in place, too.

There are lots of tempting boats for 10K that look attractive but buying one means buying "old" parts and problems. Our boat's engine has 12 hours on it after two years. The hull is sound, the sails and other gear is in good shape.

Putting money into an old boat can be a mistake. I would not have picked this boat unless I could do the work myself. I could have sold the parts for more than I paid for the boat. I am glad we did it. it has been a fun boat for short cruises along the Maine coast.

The A-4s got a bad rap because they were squeezed into small boats like this making it difficult to do routine maintenance. They got neglected. They are good, simple little engines.

Choose carefully. Pick a good design that is well built. There are some "old boat" problems that would be a deal killer for me. A bulsa cored deck is a no-no!

George
 
#18 ·
A balsa cored deck is a no-no!
Wow; that would eliminate most (if not all) of the boats that would be on my short list. Virtually all older performance oriented designs used balsa coring in the deck; the problem is not the coring so much as the non-sealing of thru-deck fastener holes. So finding an inexpensive boat that does not have a deck with a bad balsa core might be difficult. It's a matter of doing your homework and finding the rare boat that needs some restoration but not total restoration.

I'd be more concerned with a balsa (or foam) cored hull; where there is coring below the waterline. But many boat designs with cored hulls have held up well (like the C&C's) so long as moisture has not found it's way in.
 
#20 ·
For the most part, I agree with Sailingdog's argument here. A hybrid is pointless in a sailboat because they are a continuous power output application. You do not get the benefits of being able to undersize the engine by making up for it with short bursts from your motor. In a boat, the hybrid would need to be a series style which involves several energy conversions, significantly lowering your efficiency. Also, from an environmental standpoint hybrids are not all that good. It is true that the hybrid cars do get a bit better fuel economy but they have so much embodied energy that a life cycle analysis comes out to being about the same as a gasoline car. If you want to get 5mpg better than a prius with a car that is going to last longer and have less embodied energy, buy a much simpler VW tdi. The hybrid that I participated in building was actually an assigned graduate culminating experience in engineering and we built a car for the hybrid formula SAE competition. Interestingly, this car was much worse environmentally than the cars competing in the gas classes.

What I was attempting to argue in my last post about an all electric powertrain was that the powertrain must be matched to the use. If you look at the numbers that I presented, it is a really unappealing solution. If you are going cruising, having an electric powertrain would limit you to very little engine operation and you would be having to plug into shore power all the time. Not to mention, when it got rough out would be when your batteries went dead and you would have to rely on your sailing abilities. The only place that an electric system might make sense is in a daysailor where it might be able to get you 4 miles home to your slip but that is it. This is similar to electric cars which are useless if you are trying to drive 500 miles to go on vacation but are great if you are trying to drive 20 miles each way to work.

All electric powertrains are actually more environmentally friendly. Internal combustion engines are significantly less efficient than producing energy in powerplants and then using that energy in an electric powertrain. In addition, since powerplants are point sources of energy, it is much cheaper and easier to put pollution control devices on them. You also do have the option of charging off of renewable energy. We figured out the mileage equivalency of the ford ranger that we converted to electric and it gets the equivalent of 60mpg on electric (charging with "brown" energy) and it used to get a little over 20mpg with the gas engine. The problem that I see here is that our distribution system could not handle the increased demand of lots of electric vehicles/boats at this point. This isn't a problem right now considering there are not any mainstream electric options out there anyways.

To sum it all up, the only place for an electric on a boat is in a daysailor application where you don't mind a lot of weight and have shore power.
 
#21 ·
Dog and Klem, that is all very interesting, I did not know that. I had thought that hybrid electric was basically a done deal for boats, that we were just waiting until the day. I know there are people out there installing electric drives on their boats, or at least I've heard people saying they were, I have never actually seen one myself. It is unfortunate in a way, I was looking forward not only to the eventual fuel savings, but also to new designs that moved the heaviest part of the propulsion (power generator) to a place that was more seaworthy, towards the center of the boat no doubt, and lower.
 
#22 ·
What about the solution that modern ships use: an inboard engine that generates power for electrical motors on the hull?

You'd still have to deal with a diesel or A4, but instead of a tranny and driveshaft you'd just have electrical leads to the motor. That seems like it would reduce a lot of complicated connections.

I'm sure I'm wrong, though. But where?! Cost, probably, right?
 
#23 ·
all this talk of electrics is cool, but it doesn't work for someone looking to buy a $10,000 boat. This means that you're looking at something under 30' in most cases, and will be on a tight budget.

So the answer is, get a good boat in decent condition with a blown motor. Get on ebay and get an inexpensive 5-6 hp long shaft outboard and some mounting brackets. The next time you haul out, pull the internal and patch the throughhull the propshaft went through. Recycle the old engine to get enough money to pay for the tankage you're going to install where the internal engine was. As an added bonus, the motor mount can be brought to the upright position and you have even less drag than a feathering prop would.

That would be my solution anyway. ymmv.

-- James
 
#24 · (Edited)
Gas Engine & Power Company unknown

One of the most frightening power sources for a boat I've ever seen was at the Phila maritime museum boat shop. ( used to volenteer there) it was a launch powered by a Naptha engine. If I understood it correctly the naptha was heated from gel to liquid into high pressure gas then drove the pistons like steam then condensed and so on... also it was used to fire the boiler... and we think propane is dangerous??? No matter how we try to reason it. Diesel really seems to be the best engine for boats. even stink pots with big gas engines are being converted. but again it all comes back to spending money and not getting even half of it back when you sell.

Someone please take the OP sailing without an engine! The OP will be happy (or not) to know the A4 is on display at mystic seaport museum!!
 
#25 ·
I feel bad about helping to pull the OP's thread off course a second time, but then part of me is not sure what the OP is even asking at this point. I mean you don't like the motor, you live with, replace it, or get rid of it, none of them are very fun options, but that's just how it goes. :D And sellers ask what they want for a boat and if you can negotiate a difference price good for you, and if not, then not so good for you! It's not a conundrum without an answer, it's just a question with answers you don't like!
 
#26 ·
A bit off track, but what has always amazed me is the cruising catamarans with 2 Yanmar or similar engines, one is each hull. Seems to me that a better solution would be one engine installed in the centre driving either 2 electric motors or 2 fluid drives. There have been hydraulic drives on boats before so they are proven afloat.
Brian
 
#27 · (Edited)
The easiest solution is to find an older boat thta has already been repowered, then the owner is selling for whatever life circumstance. The best "values" in my opinion are old boats that have been kept in specatacular condition and maintained to like new. The owner will never get the money back that he's spent on keeping up the boat. Every once in a while you'll find a boat on yachtworld where the prior owner spent elaborate sums of money on a cruising dream that was sidetracked for whatever reason (money, job, divorce, or death)...but those are the bargains if you can get 'em, even if they cost 2-3x the cost of a neglected boat with blown out sails and bad engine.
 
#30 · (Edited)
I think the OP wants a $15K boat for $5k, but since a the boats at $5k have suspect motors, the owners should give them away as it will cost him more than the boat is worth to repower it with a must have diesel. I do not see anyone giving away a boat that is in otherwise good condition unless the mortgage on their home is in danger of foreclosure.

I am wondering when Tager will chime in with an alternate source of boat propulsion he can make himself or get for $300:D.

PS I thought the reason hybrids work efficiently in cars is free energy in city driving with braking energy used to produce power to the batteries, but gas mileage not so spectacular on the highways.
 
#29 ·
Jasper:

I believe your original question was how do you go about telling someone that you feel their boat isn't worth the asking price because the engine is in bad shape?

I think the answer is easy, if not so pleasant: "Thanks for showing me your boat, but I am looking for one with the engine in better shape. Good luck." You are under no obligation but common courtesy. Yes, there are a lot of boats priced at about 10K out there with A4s that are less desireable because of their engines, but there ain't much anyone can do about that. If you like the boat and can't fix the engine, and all you want is assistance in getting in and out of the marina, an outboard is the way to go.
 
#31 ·
The series hybrid setups that the big ships use do have their advantages but I don't see them being important on a small boat. One of the big reasons those boats use that powertrain is space. An electric motor is a lot smaller and it means that they can put the engine somewhere remote without a drive shaft taking up lots of room down below. Also, electric motors give much better control since they can operate through a much wider range of rpm. The really big engines are basically fixed rpm engines so they often need controllable pitch propellers so that they can vary their thrust. The final reason that I know of is that the big ships often have several different generators and they can only run the number that they need for any given amount of power. I am sure there are other good points for them as well. To me, none of these points make particular sense for small cruising sailboats.

The idea of one engine on a cat and then using hydraulic or electric drives is interesting. It would add complexity but remove an engine. Your efficiency might drop a little. I am guessing that the average mechanic couldn't service a hybrid system.
 
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