impellers?

Hi,

I worked on a boat where we changed the tenders impellers a day or so before the Day the Owner arrived, once they had 30 Hrs running we would all get very anxious as this was about the max running hrs we had had to date with otherwise fantastic tenders built new with Volvo KAD 44's in 1998.

We always used the original parts.

Ouch!
I guess I'm expecting things to be well designed and sorted out.
In my business we are using some machines from 1942. Still, today there is no better equipment (we did tweek them a bit) in the world.
This really points up that there is no substitute for keeping your eyes open and checking things all the time.
It's easy to complain about something that a mechanic missed or did sloppily or blame poor design, manufacture but at the end of the day your ass is on the line and only you can change that.

Were the boats run in very sandy or silty water that could have worn out the impellors much quicker? Or did the impellors have a problem priming after being out of the water and then launched? 30 hours seems like a very short time for impellors.

It might be a bit of both ,the desire`to run the engines on board to flush out "all" the water that caused the problems. The best way to avoid owner related problems came to be to prevent the problems.

I had no impeller issues with a set of KAMD44P's for over a year, and the same good report on a single install. They were both heavy use marine recreation commercial.