I always say that the reliability of a product is not as important as the reliability of the company behind it. Let's face it, every single thing that has ever been made, someday, somewhere, will break. Everything. The real test therefore, is what happens when an item breaks.
As you may know, we had a failure of our Perkins engine on August 26th. Once disassembled we found that the connecting rod bearing on piston 3 had disintegrated, with parts of the bearing spinning to the top side of the crankshaft (thereby raising the piston higher than it should be in the cylinder). It is amazingly lucky that the entire engine didn't blow apart, and I take full credit for saving the engine from a massive destruction. I have always been very in-tune with the sound and feel of the vehicles that I am controlling, whether that be a car, bus, truck, tractor, boat, plane, atv, snowmobile, race kart... whatever. In this incident I detected an odd noise and different feel from the engine, which is why I throttled back to idle to check out what was going on. Doing that stalled the engine and saved it from an imminent catastrophic event.
Well the engine is not under warranty, but because of the low number of hours, and as an act of good faith, Perkins Power Corporation will be covering the repair. How is THAT for great customer service!
We are getting a new crankshaft, one connecting rod, and an upgraded high pressure oil pump. We have to wait a few days while they rush ship the needed parts from the head office in England. They should be here this week though which means we'll soon be casting off the lines and heading to sea.