[K1W1]

Originally Posted by Marmot

If I were going to buy an engine from them.

As I tried to point out above you the end user are not buying from or having any dealings with CAT Corporation. You deal with their Dealers who are the only people CAT recognise as their customers, you are a customer of the dealer not CAT themselves.

Originally Posted by Marmot

Have you contacted Cat headquarters to obtain a definitive statement on what conditions would void the warranty?

They will refer you to your dealer to answer all these questions. If as Golden Fox says it states in the Marine Warranty Description and he has been told by his distributor that failure to follow rating or installation instructions/definitions can have a negative affect on any warranty I would be inclined to believe that especially when coupled with my extensive experiences battling with CAT Dealers mis representation of product, performance and reliability issues and the CAT Corps sloping shoulders when it comes to accepting responsibility for a lot of what their dealers say and or do.

[golden_fox]

Originally Posted by Marmot

If I were going to buy an engine from them I would make sure they put in writing that they are placing warranty conditions on the engine beyond what Cat is publishing. I wonder if they will do that? Considering that they also added an hour limit well under Cat's published specification adds to the issue. Have you contacted Cat headquarters to obtain a definitive statement on what conditions would void the warranty? Until you have that the issue is moot.

I don't think i was actually very clear before. The CAT dealer meant 250 to 1000 hours per annum, which is also what's mentioned in the E Rating by CAT. When I have contacted CAT, I get referred to the regional 'head quarter', which for Asia Pacific Region is in Singapore. Will let you know if they tell me something different, but I do doubt it though.

[Marmot]

I was the one who was not clear on the hours, 250 to 1000 p.a. is what Cat state as "normal", for some reason when I responded I had another figure in mind so pardon the confusion, it originated with me.

I spoke to Pantropic Power Systems in Miami today and their warranty person stated unequivocally that exceeding the load factor will not effect the engine warranty. Doing so is not considered abuse or improper operation. I am waiting for a written response and will post it when (and if) it arrives.

[Marmot]

K1W1 wrote:

"CAT will also have you believe there is no de rate at up to 50 Deg C.inlet air temp."

Cat very clearly states that the rating conditions for 3500 and smaller engines are based on either SAE or ISO standard conditions of either 25 deg. C or 27 deg. C inlet temperature. Power will drop off above those temperatures.

3600 series and C280 engines are rated at 45 deg. C to the turbo.
Power will drop off above that temperature.

The specs are very clearly defined and there isn't much faith based engineering involved so it is unclear where the misunderstanding could have come from.

[K1W1]

Hi,

Marmot- 12 yrs ago I was involved in a boat with 3306 Gensets rated at 160 ekw @ 1500 RPM. These were ok with the wet manifolds but in an effort to clean up the exhaust stack which was fed into UNIKAT Catalytic converters the wet manifold and turbo turbine casing were exchanged for dry ones off a 66Z Engine ( Industrial). The engines were never bench tested with this arrangement. The temps in the box were extreme and as the Air Cleaner inlet was also in the box the inlet temperature was often 50 Deg C which just made the exhaust gas hotter. The manifold used to glow cherry red under heavy load and we had numerous failures of turbos and the manifolds (11turbos were done on 2 engines in the first 12 months in service)

At the time the published CAT Data sheet gave the rating as being normal up to 50 Deg C.

The whole lot was eventually changed for the original style wet ones and we did not have anymore failures although the soot filters did require cleaning occasionally after this.