Yanmar parts

The Good Goose · Post by **The Good Goose** » Fri Jun 17, 2005 8:42 pm

Anyone have a good source for Yanmar parts? I need a new buzzer alarm for my control panel.

Brock Richardson

Post by **dasein668** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 2:36 am

I use these guys, thanks to a tip from Tim:

Marine Diesel Direct

Post by **Tim** » Sat Jun 18, 2005 6:36 am

Yup, they're a very good source, as long as you are located within their selling territory (as specified by Yanmar). Their territory covers the northeast, mid-atlantic, and part of the upper midwest (Great Lakes areas). I've always been pleased with their website setup and parts availability.

Ordering is much easier if you know the Yanmar part number, though. If you don't have a parts manual for your engine, it's worth picking up.

Marine Diesel Direct is part of Torressen Marine.

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 12:03 am

... reviving "This Old Thread" ....
My Yanmar buzzer is dead, too. But $65 for a buzzer ???? Come on, Yanmar, that's a little steep! Has anyone had success with an aftermarket one, or discovered where Yanmar buys theirs?

Post by **Tim** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 6:01 am

I see no reason why you couldn't use any old buzzer. The Yanmar one is certainly nothing special, or need not be, in any case. The important thing, if you replace it, is to ensure that the new one is very loud; otherwise, it's not even worth the trouble.

I hate those buzzers, especially when starting up early in the morning in a quiet anchorage, but have not disabled mine since all I have is the idiot lights provided by Yanmar. I will definitely have full gauges on the next boat.

Eric · Post by **Eric** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 12:03 pm

Tim wrote:I will definitely have full gauges on the next boat.

I'm guessing you don't mean that you will keep your tanks full! Have you thought through what instrumentation for a small modern diesel should include?

This is idle curiosity on my part as I don't plan to augment the Yanmar 'B' panel any time soon, but I do occasionally muse about what I'd like to have. I think I'd find oil pressure and temperature reassuring and an ammeter would be nice. I wouldn't want to give up the binary status indicators though as the associated alarm will hopefully give me a more timely indication of a problem than a chance glance at the gages. More likely is that the gages will serve as confirmation after something else has alerted me to a problem. They can protect against a false positive, but not a false negative unless they are monitored! Modern diesel engines are so reliable that regular, frequent gage checks seem excessive.

The problem with the idiot lights and associated buzzer is trust. It would be nice to have a way to assure that they are working as designed. I find the oil pressure alarm at start up reassuring as it seems to reset just when I expect oil pressure to rise above minimum. I've never had the engine overheat and I've never lost the alternator.

One of my goals for Sophia is to achieve brutal simplicity. Not brutal on me, necessarily, but capable of withstanding the brutality of the sea. I've come to distrust redundancy as a response to reliability concerns as it creates extra complexity, requires attention that is better directed at primary systems, and encourages complacency.

Post by **dasein668** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 4:27 pm

Eric wrote:Have you thought through what instrumentation for a small modern diesel should include?.

Engine hours.

bcooke · Post by **bcooke** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:38 pm

Have you thought through what instrumentation for a small modern diesel should include?

I think that depends on the operator's skill in interpreting the instruments. More instruments can give a better picture of what is happening in the engine but only if you know how to interpret what the guages are telling you.

Certainly oil pressure. Without oil pressure you are dead. Beyond that...

Oil temp is nice and will tell you if you have a coolant problem or a bearing getting ready to fail. Oil temperatures change slowly though so coolant temperature is nice and responds quicker.
Coolant temp can tell you if your high oil temp is a cooling system problem or something internal or if you forget to top off the coolant last week- or in my case forgot to open the raw water intake seacock.
Engine operating time is good as long as the circuit continues to function. Often a hundred hours goes by before someone notices the guage has stopped counting.
A tachometer is nice for fine tuning what you hear and catching those small rpm fluctuations.
An ammeter can let you know if your alternator is working and what sort of load it is working under.
A volt meter can tell you how well your alternator is keeping up with the load.

I think those are the basics.

For something more exotic how about a manifold pressure guage for reading how well the cylinders are drawing air into the engine.
Or a fuel flow meter to estimate efficiency and spot bad fuel injectors.
A torque meter... okay that is getting a little silly. Unless you really want someting cool on your panel.
An exhaust gas temperature guage can spot fuel mixture problems in gas engines, I don't know about diesels.

Then there is the really exotic such as cylinder pressure monitors but now I am really getting silly.

-Britton

Eric · Post by **Eric** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 5:51 pm

dasein668 wrote:
Eric wrote:Have you thought through what instrumentation for a small modern diesel should include?.
Engine hours.

Yup. Sophia's meter is currently installed next to the Yanmar panel in the cockpit. On my list is a move of this essential meter to a more convenient location to my log book--probably the side of my breaker panel cabinet facing the companionway.

Post by **dasein668** » Sat Jan 21, 2006 6:04 pm

bcooke wrote:Then there is the really exotic such as cylinder pressure monitors but now I am really getting silly.

Nothing new there. Ever since your first rum on the cruise last summer you've been a bit "off" methinks! ;-P

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 1:08 am

Closer investigation showed four wires going to the buzzer: three from water, oil, and charge and one positive for power.
Even closer investigation, using a small screwdriver to pry it open, (what the heck ... it's not working anyway) revealed one wire of three had come loose from the buzzer diaphram. A wee bit of solder and some SikaFlex 291 and she's buzzing like a good thing again :-)

Post by **Tim** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:33 am

I think the more gauges the better, to a point. I'm the type who looks at gauges frequently, so I feel that I would be well served to have a full set rather than (or perhaps in addition to) the warning buzzer. Britton's list, while containing a few gauges I'd never even thought (or heard) of, pretty much sums up the ideal setup.

I think I'd like to have the following for a sailboat diesel engine:

Oil pressure
Tachometer (this is the one I do have now)
Water temperature
Transmission oil temperature
Hours
Maybe crankcase oil temperature--sounds like a good one to have
An accurate fuel gauge

In my case, I don't need the voltmeter/ammeter because my battery monitor contains all this information (and much more), so I can easily determine the operating condition of the alternator. But otherwise, either one or the other, or both, should be considered mandatory.

Here's a question: why doesn't there seem to be such a thing as an oil level gauge? I'm not advocating getting rid of the accurate dipstick, but a gauge giving the user some idea of oil level seems like it'd be a handy addition. Is there such a thing?

I like gauges over buzzers and idiot lights because gauges allow the user to determine trends in the various inputs--is the temperature slowly creeping up, or is oil pressure trending downward? Observing these trends, when you know where the gauges should read, is far more helpful than having a buzzer sound only when a true problem develops.

I agree that it depends on the user. Buzzers and flashing warnings are probably better for a lot of people who don't take an interest in the engine's operating condition, or who don't know how to interpret the information that gauges would provide. But even so, you'd think that gauges would be de rigor anyway.

<Rant Warning>

As an aside, I think it's ridiculous that these engine manufacturers provide such useless panels with their product. Why do they not all include the basic set of gauges (oil pressure, water temp, ammeter, tachometer at least)? The diminishing of quality in favor of price is not something I will ever come to terms with. Not only that, but the lousy panels they do supply are cheap and flimsy to boot. All this is a false economy, and this trend irritates me to no end. It's reached the point where one who wants quality can hardly even find it for any price. I'm not Mr. Moneybags here, but I have found over the years that few things annoy me more than paying for something that is insufficient for the task; nothing is more expensive in the end than wasted time or doing the same job over again because of poor materials. Or, at the extreme, facing an expensive rebuild or repower because the cheap panel failed, and there were no sturdy gauges installed. And more and more, it's becoming difficult to get something truly good.

<Rant Over>

And Peter--sorry to hijack the thread. Glad to hear that you discovered such an easy fix! It's nice when that happens.

bcooke · Post by **bcooke** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 10:27 am

Yeah Peter, sorry...

Just when you used some ingenuity to fix what you already had some bozos go and try to tell you what you should have.

Hasn't everybody heard of a cylinder pressure monitor? I may have made that up but I think the REALLY big diesels, such as those found in mammoth ships, use a system for monitoring the pressures. You can check anything you want, all it takes is money.

Now about the oil level guage...
I believe the reasoning is that the dipstick is unlikely to fail whereas an electrical guage would have a much higher failure rate. The foaming of the oil as it returns to the engine oil pan might be troublesome for an electrical guage system as well.

You are supposed to check the dipstick prior to every engine start. If while running the engine the oil level dropped then I suppose the oil running out of the engine spraying all over the engine compartment, smoking, and running into the bilge would be indication enough. But I suppose for those people that need more proof that the oil level is low then an electrical guage might be nice.

-Britton

Peter · Post by **Peter** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 2:01 am

You know when you're out of oil when it stops leaking all over the catch pan ;-)