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[Anonymous]

Dear Mr. Carter,

Thank you for your email and 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 –

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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

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