[AT] Jap tractors

Thomas O. Mehrkam tomehrkam at houston.rr.com
Sun Nov 7 17:43:48 PST 2004


This has noting to do with tractors. But my brother in law purchased a 
38 ft Cigarette boat with two Yanmar diesel engines. His main motivation 
was for lower fuel consumption's and lower maintenance costs. He paid 
$30,000 more for the diesel engines.

He had nothing but trouble. Blew the turbo and exhaust elbow 100 miles 
off shore of Florida. Almost lost the boat but made it back to Key West. 
Yanmar tried their best to side step the warranty issues. I took two 
years and a lawyer to resolve the issue. He got $10,000 for $30,000 in 
repairs.

The boat dealer would not admit to problems but he showed him a shelf 
with 30 or 40 turbo charger housings. It was his way of admitting that 
there was a big problem with the product. Yanmar tried every dirty trick 
to get out of honoring the warranty. They analyzed the defective parts 
and sent the report in Japanese. My brother in law had to pay for the 
translation only to find out that the report admitted that there was a 
problem.

All parts were very over priced even for boat parts. How about $1000 for 
a power steering pump. It was basically a Toyota pump. Had it rebuilt 
for $35 at a auto rebuild place. Then there was $1000 for a complete set 
of hoses for this engine.

I would stay from Yamnar at all costs. You will pay a fortune for the 
parts and not get any service. If they are gray market then forget about it.

He did. He traded the boat for one with Mercury gas engines. $20,000 
will buy a lot of gas. He can get both engines rebuilt for less than 
$10,000.

Steve W. wrote:
> Yanmar is the outfit that makes the smaller JD diesel tractors. They




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