Good engines on Appollo Duck little used

[LadyG]

https://www.apolloduck.com/boat.phtml?id=377234

they seem to have been from scrapped ships lifeboats, low hours,  well maintained.

[OldGoat]

21 minutes ago, LadyG said:

https://www.apolloduck.com/boat.phtml?id=377234

they seem to have been from scrapped ships lifeboats, low hours,  well maintained.

Many of them are too large for NB or even BB use. Most (if not all) are heat exchanger cooled - as you would expect for real marine use, but fill inland boaters with horror...

I don't know why.

There's a small Beta 3 cylinder that looks in excellent condition. I suppose it could be converted to a 'hot exhaust'.

Whoops - I bypassed the keel cooled Bukh engines.

Edited September 28, 2017 by OldGoat

[LadyG]

Bukh DV36 RME 36hp Three Cylinder Keel Cooled Marine Diesel Engine Package Including Gearbox, Control Panel & Loom. 

Propellers, shafts and couplings to suit are also available at extra cost.

This is the current model, and still sold today, with new units costing in excess of £10,000!

not sure just how big this is.

They are advertised under narrowboats

Edited September 28, 2017 by LadyG

[RLWP]

6 minutes ago, OldGoat said:

Many of them are too large for NB or even BB use. Most (if not all) are heat exchanger cooled - as you would expect for real marine use, but fill inland boaters with horror...

I don't know why.

Plenty of BMCs with that sort of cooling on the cut

Richard

[David Mack]

1 minute ago, LadyG said:

Bukh DV36 RME 36hp Three Cylinder Keel Cooled Marine Diesel Engine Package Including Gearbox, Control Panel & Loom. 

Propellers, shafts and couplings to suit are also available at extra cost.

This is the current model, and still sold today, with new units costing in excess of £10,000!

not sure just how big this is

DV36 is just fine for a larger narrowboat, and well regarded. The same advertiser also has some DV24 (2 cylinder version of the DV36) which would suit smaller narrowboats. Says they are all suitable for keel/skin tank cooling.

He also has nb-sized Sabb and Lister engines.

[Stilllearning]

Lovely proper diesels, and just right for a narrow boat. If I was looking to fit a good engine, the 2or 3 cylinder Bukh is exactly what I would get.

[Tony Brooks]

33 minutes ago, LadyG said:

Bukh DV36 RME 36hp Three Cylinder Keel Cooled Marine Diesel Engine Package Including Gearbox, Control Panel & Loom. 

Propellers, shafts and couplings to suit are also available at extra cost.

This is the current model, and still sold today, with new units costing in excess of £10,000!

not sure just how big this is.

They are advertised under narrowboats

1498cc so on par with a BMC 1.5 although the torque curve is slightly different and arguably more suitable for a displacement boat.

In modern usage probably not considered powerful enough for much over 40 ft but mines fine on 54ft and I expect it would be the same on 60ft.

I suspect a bit hard to fit a second alternator though.

[ditchcrawler]

Our boat use to hang on davits, we use to start them once a week, they had an ether injection system where you gave them one shot before trying to start them. As they hung on davits there was no cooling so never ran for more than 10 minutes like that, sometimes in the summer we lowered them in the water and gave them a run for an hour, you couldn't be out longer than that or you wouldn't get back on the hook.  The boats were probably 30 years old when they were scrapped and the engines had probably only a few hundred hours on them.

[MtB]

3 hours ago, LadyG said:

https://www.apolloduck.com/boat.phtml?id=377234

they seem to have been from scrapped ships lifeboats, low hours,  well maintained.

 

Blimey £2.5k?!

He's sold loads of these, I'm not sure where he is getting them all from. I'm fairly sure when he first popped up he was selling them for £1,400. I enquired about buying one back in the summer and he wanted £1,600 for one. 

[Tony Brooks]

If I had an aged BMC or some such I think I would be onto him him like a shot. 2.5K   far better than 4K and a proper marine engine to boot.

[Stilllearning]

10 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

If I had an aged BMC or some such I think I would be onto him him like a shot. 2.5K   far better than 4K and a proper marine engine to boot.

Exactly my thought. Back in the day when my job was working on canal boat engines, the one with a Bukh in it was a pleasure to service.

 

[MtB]

1 hour ago, Tony Brooks said:

If I had an aged BMC or some such I think I would be onto him him like a shot. 2.5K   far better than 4K and a proper marine engine to boot.

 

You're right, but my view is coloured by the fact he was selling them for a little over half that price six months ago!

[cuthound]

 

7 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

You're right, but my view is coloured by the fact he was selling them for a little over half that price six months ago!

I thought you were an advocate of market forces Mike? 

Edited September 28, 2017 by cuthound

[mark99]

Twin Bukh sounds great too.

[Athy]

Not sure about the paint job - but then you can't judge a Bukh by the cover.

[MtB]

16 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

I thought you were an advocate of market forces Mike? 

 

I am. 

I'm just annoyed I didn't buy one for £1600 when I had the chance. Could be flogging it now for £2.5k!

[Neil2]

I've seen these and you have to ask what the catch is.  At the price I keep thinking it would make sense to buy a replacement for my DV24 if/when the time comes.  

There are issues with these engines in the modern narrowboat world where twin alternators are the norm, and you can't have a calorifier with these units either (they run too cool).  

Still a bargain at the price though. 

[David Mack]

Presumably they originally ran cool so they could be used as direct saltwater cooled. But is there any reason why you can't use a higher temperature thermostat in a skin tank cooled situation?

 

[MtB]

3 hours ago, Neil2 said:

I've seen these and you have to ask what the catch is. 

 

I think it is that they come from decommissioned north sea oil rig lifeboats and have sat unused for 25 years except for a ten minute test-run once a year, hardly long enough to even get hot. 

Once received at the seller's depot they get a coat of paint to make them look new again (according to the seller!) and nothing more. You get to install it in your boat and discover the teething problems (if any). 

[Old Son]

The ad says they run them up to test and then paint them.

[Mike Hurley]

13 hours ago, Athy said:

Not sure about the paint job - but then you can't judge a Bukh by the cover.

Hahaha.

 

[Tony Brooks]

11 hours ago, Neil2 said:

I've seen these and you have to ask what the catch is.  At the price I keep thinking it would make sense to buy a replacement for my DV24 if/when the time comes.  

There are issues with these engines in the modern narrowboat world where twin alternators are the norm, and you can't have a calorifier with these units either (they run too cool).  

Still a bargain at the price though. 

Pity no one told me that before I fitted one to mine! The domestic water gets close to dangerously hot.

Yes you can have a calorifier but piped slightly different to the normal way. You need a calorifier with a minimum of 22mm coils and just pass the coolant from the engine outlet through the calorifier and back to the skin tank. Admittedly no water heating will occur when the thermostat is closed but it works as well as a more conventionally piped system. 

In general it is difficult to fit a calorifier to any direct RAW water cooled engines because the thermostat housing incorporates an internal bypass that supplies water to the exhaust system when the engine thermostat is closed but on marinised engines like the BMCs the bypass was by external spring loaded valve so suitable modification to the pipework from the thermostat housing would allow the fitting of a calorifier (if you were happy to run with a  thermostat, 60C is plenty hot enough for domestic water.

These engines are tank/keel cooled, not direct raw water cooled like many of the smaller Bukhs

Edited to add - if they had been direct raw water cooled then great care would need to be taken in respect of internal corrosion. They are wet liner engines and corrosion around the bottom of the liner area would be very expensive to fix.

Edited September 29, 2017 by Tony Brooks

[Tony Brooks]

11 hours ago, David Mack said:

Presumably they originally ran cool so they could be used as direct saltwater cooled. But is there any reason why you can't use a higher temperature thermostat in a skin tank cooled situation?

 

I have carefully inspected the photos and they were never direct raw water cooled. The mounting position for the raw water pump is blanked off and it seems a circulating pump has been bolted to the back of that part of the engine. I have never seen this before and I have not seen it as an option but it all looks like Bukh work so maybe it is a special order.

Yes you could fit a hotter thermostat but as I said above 60C ish seem plenty hot enough.

[Psycloud]

19 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

1498cc so on par with a BMC 1.5 although the torque curve is slightly different and arguably more suitable for a displacement boat.

In modern usage probably not considered powerful enough for much over 40 ft but mines fine on 54ft and I expect it would be the same on 60ft.

I suspect a bit hard to fit a second alternator though.

Mine's on a 64' and I believe it's OK on canals.  Never taken it on a river though.

[Tony Brooks]

1 minute ago, Psycloud said:

Mine's on a 64' and I believe it's OK on canals.  Never taken it on a river though.

As long as the prop is well matched I expect it will be fine - that is having run flat out up the Tent from Keadby for an hour or so and down the Thames from Reading for several hours. No problems on the Tideway (apart from a very "untidy" entry into Limehouse).