issues with Panda genset

[jtill]

Mr. Taylor,
We have Grandpappy Point 903-465-6330 in Denison, Texas and Cedar Mills Marina 903-523-4222 in Gordonville, Texas both are very close Lake Texoma. You can speak to anyone in either of their service departments and they should be able to help you. If this is not the avenue you would like to pursue, the offer I made to you when we spoke on the phone is still valid. If you would like to send the unit to our location in Florida we will fix the governor free of charge.

Also, if you would like to use your current mechanic feel free to have him give our service a department a call as you have in the past. Our service department offers free support and can instruct your technician on how to do the repair. They can be reached at 800-508-6494 Mon-Fri 8:00-5:00pm ET.

I left a message on your home phone so feel free to give me a call or email. I would be happy to assist you in fixing your generator.

Jeff Till
Fischer Panda Generators
954-462-2800
jtill@fischerpanda.com

[seapony2]

Thanks Jeff
all I understood was $8000
I will get back to you and thank you
I think thatboffer is admirable

seapony2

[seapony2]

Folks I appreciate all your input.
I did send a email to Mr Rushton yesterday and of course you see the reply from Mr. Till.
I have been contacted by the service manager and I will remove the unit and send to Panda at my expense. They have agreed to fix the unit if it a mfg. default. We'll see what happens. It will probably be 30days or so but I will post results.

SeaPony2

[svHyLyte]

We have had a FP 4.2 FW Cooled unit aboard s/v HyLyte since the spring of 2002 and have had good experience with the unit and very good experience with the boys at FP, in particular Jeff Till and Bob Grubert in the service department. Both of these young men have gone out of their way to help us l-o-n-g after our unit was out of warranty. The only problems we've had with our Panda were the result of my own misunderstandfing of the maintenance regime necessary to keep her humming along; or, a manufacturing defect in a pump built by Johnson Pump that Panda could not have known of until it failed (but that Mr. Grubert kindly replaced at no cost to me 7-years after we bought our unit!) or, a failed capacitor caused by the original installer who did not follow the explicit installation instructions (he mounted the controller box sideways rather than vertical) which Mr. Till suggested in the first 3 minutes on the phone with me and proved true.

The Panda is a precision machine--perhaps too precision for the application--but, properly cared for (per the manufacturers instructions) it will provide years of reliable service. Unfortunately, it seems that only unhappy owners are willing to express an opinion in such threads but I believe in giving credit where credit is due so I am speaking up here.

The other morning we had a power outage. With that we trooped over to the yacht, fired up the Panda, and had a comfortable--air conditioned--morning doing boat chores. At one point during the moring our neighbor came over with an extension cord asking "...may we borrow a few amps?". In short order out unit was powering two yachts but still well with its routine operating limit.

Spend the money to send the unit over to Panda. Let the boys fix it properly. Take the (free) course that Panda offers on maintenance--normally offered at either the Ft. Lauderdale or Miami Boat show--and then do the maintenance and you, and your Panda, will be happy campers.

FWIW...

s/v HyLyte

[Cruisingdad]

Originally Posted by svHyLyte

We have had a FP 4.2 FW Cooled unit aboard s/v HyLyte since the spring of 2002 and have had good experience with the unit and very good experience with the boys at FP, in particular Jeff Till and Bob Grubert in the service department. Both of these young men have gone out of their way to help us l-o-n-g after our unit was out of warranty. The only problems we've had with our Panda were the result of my own misunderstandfing of the maintenance regime necessary to keep her humming along; or, a manufacturing defect in a pump built by Johnson Pump that Panda could not have known of until it failed (but that Mr. Grubert kindly replaced at no cost to me 7-years after we bought our unit!) or, a failed capacitor caused by the original installer who did not follow the explicit installation instructions (he mounted the controller box sideways rather than vertical) which Mr. Till suggested in the first 3 minutes on the phone with me and proved true.

The Panda is a precision machine--perhaps too precision for the application--but, properly cared for (per the manufacturers instructions) it will provide years of reliable service. Unfortunately, it seems that only unhappy owners are willing to express an opinion in such threads but I believe in giving credit where credit is due so I am speaking up here.

The other morning we had a power outage. With that we trooped over to the yacht, fired up the Panda, and had a comfortable--air conditioned--morning doing boat chores. At one point during the moring our neighbor came over with an extension cord asking "...may we borrow a few amps?". In short order out unit was powering two yachts but still well with its routine operating limit.

Spend the money to send the unit over to Panda. Let the boys fix it properly. Take the (free) course that Panda offers on maintenance--normally offered at either the Ft. Lauderdale or Miami Boat show--and then do the maintenance and you, and your Panda, will be happy campers.

FWIW...

s/v HyLyte

Great report. Thanks for your thoughts. I too have owned a Panda without issues. It also appears that they are taking care of customers afterwards - which is what is critical.

Take care and thanks to all involved.

- CD

[seapony2]

I received my generator back from Panda yesterday.
I hope to install it on Nov. 12th or 13th.

I am happy to give Panda a thumbs up on response to the thread on Sailnet.
It turns out the initial problem was a bad govenor. However durring the months of trying to locate the problem we had apparantly damaged the injector pump durring a reinstallation of it in trying to follow the tech department's instructions. There was also a small hole in the exhaust manifold. Jim Gagnon also told me the rear seal was leaking and that was repaired. My thanks and appreciation goes out to Mr. Till and James Gagnon the service manager for taking care of the issues. I am looking forward to many years of use from the unit.

Thanks to the sailnet comunity for the different inputs and again a thumbs up for Fischer Panda.

S/V
SeaPony2

[tdw]

Originally Posted by CharlieCobra

Wow, the mods jumped on my post for stating the TRUTH? Is Fischer Panda an advertiser here or something?

I'd just like to say that Charlie's original post was deleted in error. An attempt was made to merge two Fischer Panda threads into one and the post in question disappeared during the merge. It was not intentional.

[CharlieCobra]

Nice to see FP come through for a customer.

[seapony2]

We installed the unit this past Friday.
After the bleeding exercise she started up, ran perfectly.
I put eight hours of loaded use on it this weekend and at this time no problems. When I bought the boat she had 12 hours on it and did not sound nearly as good then as does now. You can barely tell when you add load.

As most of you know, the boat even looks different when everything works!

Seapony2

[lyonscmpy]

i have had 2 4200 fisher pandas and am dissatisfied