- This topic has 8 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 17 years, 7 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
-
Dear Mr. Carter,
Thank you for your email. Most Pearson’s used the RV-10 V-Drive, not the model RV-20, therefore my conclusion that you were speaking about the model RV-10. Regardless, typical labor to repair a model RV-20 is 5 – 6 hrs labor @ $78/hr. You will note that our labor rate hasn’t changed in many years and is far less than charged by any automotive dealer that I know of (and substantially less than Xerox or Verizon or AT&T “repairmen”).
Most people repairing a Walter V-Drive find that there is no need to make tools. The locknuts on the two main shafts can be tightened using spanner wrenches; the torque setting is not crucial since you are locking up the inner races of the bearings — you are not setting bearing preloads when tightening these nuts.
The design of our V-Drives is a careful balance between cost and longevity and function. I don’t know of many devices today that are built to withstand more than 30 years of service. On computerized machines which cost $250,000 – $300,000 most parts are obsolete after 10 years and many machine tool builders stop supporting machinery after 25 years. So while you take issue with our waterjacket, the fact remains that it is a perfect balance of cost, longevity and function. There are always improvements possible in every product, including ours, but unfortunately the vast majority of boatbuilders will not pay for them. We are one of very few manufacturers in 2009 who actually make our parts in the good old United States; most of our competition builds parts and/or assemblies in China. I am proud that we continue to manufacture in the United States and our 82 years in business and the way we are able to support the end user with parts shipped the same day from stock.
I’m sorry that you view our product negatively because of the watercooling and its maintenance. Any type of watercooling is a maintenance item; an external heat exchanger has a much, much, much shorter life than our waterjacket and the life of our waterjacket is balanced with the life of the internal parts. Sure we could build something which lasts almost forever, but no one would want to pay for it. Simply cleaning out the waterjacket every few years is quick and easy and will allow for a nearly infinite lifespan of the waterjacket. It costs nothing to do and takes far less time than replacing an oil cooler. Regarding paint, we use a marine grade rust-inhibitive primer followed by a finish coat. The mounting fasteners are heat treated steel which are superior to stainless steel in terms of strength. I believe a fair comparison to our product is the sterndrive which costs much more, requires substantially more annual maintenance and has a substantially shorter life.
The difference in size between the RV-26 and RV-20 doesn’t present any difficulties in 95% of boats. I am not familiar with the “engine pan” in your Pearson, but do know that the width of the #01 main case of the RV-20 is 9-1/2″, same as the RV-26.
Thank you for your comments.
Sincerely,
Don Chatrnuck
THE WALTER MACHINE COMPANY, INC.
– Established 1927 –
84 – 98 Cambridge Ave
Jersey City, NJ 07307
USA
(201) 656-5654 – Main
(201) 656-0318 – Facsimile
E-Mail –
This message from The Walter Machine Co., Inc. and any attachments may contain confidential
information. This is intended for the company or individual named above. If you are not the
intended recipient, please notify the sender and then delete it from your system immediately;
please do not forward, copy, print, use or disclose this communication to others.
Don,
I’m the author of the subject notes. We have RV-20 gear boxes, not RV-10. I believe that my $650 quote was provided by your office about 8 years ago. This didn’t include labor but did include shipping. I don’t have my notes here, but I think I paid more than $400 for the rebuild kit. If I misunderstood the estimate, I appreciate the correction. We boat owners are used to getting wacked with unexpected charges whenever we hire someone. If it is uncommon for extra charges on one of these rebuilds, I’d appreciate that info.I rebuilt the old V-drive and had a great deal of difficulty getting the torque settings correct when re-assembling. The problem is that special tools are needed. I had to fabricate my own. I don’t think I’ll have the patience to do this again when my cases rust out in 20 years or so and I don’t recommend that owners attempt this. In fact, I doubt that these things are rebuildable anymore. The cases are most likely rusted to the point where its not work fixing.
I replaced the old unit with an RV-26 about three years ago when I repowered. My notes are linked here if you are interested in reading.
http://www.richardcarter.net/repower/Vdrive.htmlI had a negative comment regarding the quality of your product on my page. Of particular concern was the lack of a freshwater cooling option. This is a maintenance problem. The unit builds up rust scale which restricts cooling to the engine unless the jacket is cleaned every few years. It eventually destroys the cases. I discussed the possibility of using the engine cooling system to cool the V-drive and this was rejected by your technician. I also discussed the possibility of bypassing the cooling jacket and running the oil through a heat exchanger instead. This was also rejected. I invite you to comment on this issue. If there’s a way to prevent the unit from self-destructing, we’d like to know.
I dislike the paint that you use. Considering the cost of these units, you might find a more durable finish. The fasteners are steel. Since the unit is mounted in the bilge where it is damp, they rust. This can make disassembly difficult. The mounting fasteners at least should have been stainless. I think you’d have a nice product if you could address these complaints.
I opened up the cooling jacket on my new V-drive and cleaned it this winter after three seasons of use. There was a thin coating of corrosion inside the cooling jacket that came off with a sharp chisel. I expected more rust. Its hard to get in around the oil cooling lines to clean out the jacket. I cut my own gasket and flushed out the jacket to insure that any remaining chips were cleaned out. I hope that if I keep up with this I won’t endup with a mess like I did with my old v-drive.
Removal of the V-drive is not a big deal once you do it once. This is simple wrench work. Other than finding a way to get at some of the nuts and bolts that hold the unit in place, I’d rate it as a fairly easy task. Alignment is a bit of an art however. If you don’t have the patience to experiment and learn how its done, I suggest hiring an expert for this. In my opinion, there is no reason that a healthy owner couldn’t remove and replace the unit. They might chose to hire a mechanic for the final alignment. Replacing a rusted RV-20 with an RV-26 is non-trivial. The RV-26 is wider than the RV-20 and won’t fit in the engine pan unless new mounts are fabricated. In my opinion, if Walter wanted to discontinue the RV-20, they should have provided a better migration path to the new unit.
Regards
Rich CarterPost generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
p { margin: 0; }
Don
We are a fleet of over 200 boats with your V-drive. While a lifespan of perhaps 30 years sounded great back in 1978 when Pearson started production on these things, it isn’t comforting 32 years later. Our units are at or near the end of their life. You discontinued production on cases for the RV-20. Replacement cases are not available, so the option to rebuild these units at this point in time is probably not viable. A replacement includes not only the V-drive, but also the splined shaft, rework to the V-drive pan and mounts, and perhaps labor charges to install and align the new V-drive. As I said in my last message, I’ve already replace my unit. Next to the engine, it was the most expensive part of the repower. For my replacement engine, I opted to go with Yanmar rather than Westerbeke because Westerbeke failed to provide replacement parts for the original engine. I would have preferred a different vendor to Walter for my V-drive for the same reason. At this point in time, you have a lock on the market. While I appreciate the “made in USA” aspect of your business and appreciate the need to balance quality vs price, you could have designed the RV-20 with a much longer life span; either by providing an optional freshwater cooling system, stockpiling sufficient replacement parts, using more corrosive resistent materials or coatings, or perhaps designing the cooling jacket as a single replaceable part. I suggest that you are leaving yourself open to a more agressive manufacturer. If you don’t accept constructive criticism from your customer base and feed it back into your engineering process, you will find yourself out of business. Please consider our complaints seriously. We find it unacceptable that you product rusts out. If you come up with a solution, please contact us. I’m sure most if not all of us would be interested in what you come up with.Here are some suggestions:
1 – A replaceable cooling jacket that bolts to the top of the V-drive and can be replaced without replacing the whole set of cases. This might bolt on top of the existing cases without modification or may require a different set of cases. Clearance might be an issue and what about the dip-stick?2 – A coating that protects the cases from rust. (application may be a problem on older cases or cases with oil cooling lines)
3 – An oil cooler that replaces the cooling jacket. Even though this may not last as long as the cases, its much easier and cheaper to replace a heat exchanger every decade or so than a set of cases or the entire V-drive after three decades.
4 – A freshwater cooling system with heat exchanger. We might be able to retrofit this by using an electric water pump and generic heat exchanger. I’ve considered such a project already. An over-temperature alarm would probably warn if the pump failed.
5 – Air cooling with an aluminum heat-sink.
Thanks again for your time
Regards
Rich Carter
Original Message
<.. snip>Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
-
I know, we do this to ourselves. We fail to innovate, building the same junk we made decades ago. Then some innovative foreign company cleans our clocks. Sounds like Detroit. Idiots! Its not like the customer base didn’t tell them. I get a strong feeling that Walter will do nothing.
Rich
Original Message
<.. snip>Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
-
Rich,
I think you are being way too hard on Walter. You must understand that the installation of that drive in our boats is like nothing to them – they play with the big boys who put great gobs of power into these things. If you doubt the durability, check in with the C&C people who had crappy little v-drives and see what they have to say. To last 30 years is well beyond what most machinery lasts, and frankly longer than many engines last. Tell me, how many 30 year old abused cars or car transmissions do you have?
For a grand total of possibly 238 boat owners, I don't expect Walter to make changes. At this point, I'm surprised they even can rebuild these things, let alone sell us parts (except the case). They don't build new models thinking of our boats, nor should they. If their current model needs a different mounting then it's to be expected. It's 30 years on!
If it cost $650 to rebuild and $1200 new, I'd go for new. And if you don't think it's fair to change sizes or bolt patterns or whatever, remember, they improve their products over the decades. They have to because the market changes.
Also, if you don't think it needs cooling, it may very well not in our situation. But they're the manufacturer and it was designed for cooling and they'd be simpletons to say you don't need it. Then when some idiot runs 1000 horsepower through it for a couple of hours without cooling and it burns up, what do you think he's going to say? Yup, you guessed it: “Hey, you said it was alright for the Pearson group!”
Let's face it, there is relatively little you can change in a v-drive. It's a simple, well known, well engineered piece of kit and there is very little room for improvement. There is clearly nothing wrong with the drives – they perform to spec, they last decades in an hostile environment (let's have a vote – how many of us have even bothered to open the drive? How many of us check the temperature? How many of us change the oil once a year?). And yet, it performs. It's a good piece of machinery and it does its job. You may not be happy, but I'm not happy cars don't have a separate vent window, or about any other number of engineering changes over the last 30 years.
Bob
On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:44 AM, < ([email][/email])> wrote:
Quote:I know, we do this to ourselves. We fail to innovate, building the same junk we made decades ago. Then some innovative foreign company cleans our clocks. Sounds like Detroit. Idiots! Its not like the customer base didn't tell them. I get a strong feeling that Walter will do nothing.Rich
Original Message
<.. snip>Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
Bob,
I pretty much agree with your POV, none of us should be complaining too much as these V-drives seem to outlast the engines and transmissions they are hooked to. Granted the V-Drive doesn't do much so it should have a long life. Manufacturers make many business decisions that to us on the outside don't seem to make sense, but unless you are involved in the industry and have an understanding of the financial and technical issues of the company its hard to say they've made the wrong decision.
There is one point you made which I do believe is short-sighted on the manufacturers part: “They don't build new models thinking of our boats, nor should they.”
Maybe they should. Walter and other suppliers to the boat industry tend to view their customer base as the boat manufacturers. That seems to be a pretty narrow view considering there are now only a handful of boat builders in the USA and probably few of them are using V-Drives. However, there are several thousands boats out there with V-Drives that were manufactured during the 70s and 80s and probably 25% (my guess) are well enough maintained by their owners to warrant a replacement. If Walter could supply a replacement on the same form factor they might be able to churn that market for couple of years of production run. Instead the owners are faced with some level of re-engineering the installation, which makes the replacement significantly more expensive and complicated (I don't really know what is involved). This drives a lot of owners to do many of the things that have been discussed on this forum to keep these V-drives working – few of which put any money in the Walter coffers.
Walter doesn't really have any competition in this niche market so I understand why they may not have a broader focus on their customer base, but I still believe it is short-sighted.
For me the prime example of this short-sightedness is Bomar, who in the 70s owned the hatch and portlight market in the US and a big chunck of Europe as well. I had the same clunky cast aluminum hatches on my previous boat as I inheirited on the 424. When I wanted to replace the hatch on my previous boat, which was cracked I first turned to Bomar. They had a really nice looking line of hatches from which I would have purchased a replacement (not the clunky ones), but their new hatches had a very different form factor. I didn't want to make a major modification to the boat, so Lewmar which made a drop-in replacement for the Bomar hatch got my business. 15 years later I wanted to replace the hatches on Sarah and Bomar still did not have a drop-in replacement (except the same klunky things), so Lewmar got a few more of my boat units and Bomar got nothing. Today of course Lewmar owns the hatch and portlight business in the way Bomar used to and Bomar is now a niche player. I'm sure there were many reasons for that change, not just my purchase decisions, but I believe Bomar blew it by not paying attention to their own customer base.
There, I got that off my chest. You'll hear nothing further from me on this subject.
JohnOn Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 2:32 PM, Robert Fine < ([email][/email])> wrote:
Quote:Rich,I think you are being way too hard on Walter. You must understand that the installation of that drive in our boats is like nothing to them – they play with the big boys who put great gobs of power into these things. If you doubt the durability, check in with the C&C people who had crappy little v-drives and see what they have to say. To last 30 years is well beyond what most machinery lasts, and frankly longer than many engines last. Tell me, how many 30 year old abused cars or car transmissions do you have?
For a grand total of possibly 238 boat owners, I don't expect Walter to make changes. At this point, I'm surprised they even can rebuild these things, let alone sell us parts (except the case). They don't build new models thinking of our boats, nor should they. If their current model needs a different mounting then it's to be expected. It's 30 years on!
If it cost $650 to rebuild and $1200 new, I'd go for new. And if you don't think it's fair to change sizes or bolt patterns or whatever, remember, they improve their products over the decades. They have to because the market changes.
Also, if you don't think it needs cooling, it may very well not in our situation. But they're the manufacturer and it was designed for cooling and they'd be simpletons to say you don't need it. Then when some idiot runs 1000 horsepower through it for a couple of hours without cooling and it burns up, what do you think he's going to say? Yup, you guessed it: “Hey, you said it was alright for the Pearson group!”
Let's face it, there is relatively little you can change in a v-drive. It's a simple, well known, well engineered piece of kit and there is very little room for improvement. There is clearly nothing wrong with the drives – they perform to spec, they last decades in an hostile environment (let's have a vote – how many of us have even bothered to open the drive? How many of us check the temperature? How many of us change the oil once a year?). And yet, it performs. It's a good piece of machinery and it does its job. You may not be happy, but I'm not happy cars don't have a separate vent window, or about any other number of engineering changes over the last 30 years.
Bob
On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 11:44 AM, < ([email][/email])> wrote:
Quote:I know, we do this to ourselves. We fail to innovate, building the same junk we made decades ago. Then some innovative foreign company cleans our clocks. Sounds like Detroit. Idiots! Its not like the customer base didn't tell them. I get a strong feeling that Walter will do nothing.Rich
Original Message
<.. snip>Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
Quent,
Yes, I’ve considered that option. The RV-26 has an oil pump. It would be a simple retrofit and more reliable than adding a water pump and accumulator tank. Since the unit runs warm even with seawater cooling, I’m not sure there would be enough oil circulation to keep it cool. Walter won’t comment on the idea. Since they not only run seawater through the cooling jacket but also run an oil cooler through there, they must think the thing needs a lot of cooling.Sorry for all the ranting folks. I’m still pissed about how expensive it was to repower. The V-drive replacement cost was insane and for no apparent reason.
Regards
RichQuote:<.. snip>Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
Hi John,
Don't even get me going on Bomar and Lewmar. Lewmar does not supply parts for hatches over 10 years old (I know, I tried) that replace or repair their engineering stupidity. Bomar for some reason discontinued the gasket material for our aluminum portlights this year. Defender still has a piece lying around I think.
We could turn this whole discussion into one about manufacturing philosophies. But who's got time for that?
Bob
—
Bob Fine
s/v Pelican
Hull #8Post generated from Pearson424 Forum using Mail2Forum
-
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.