On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:09:30 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:52:23 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:

Wonder if that will soon change. Seems to me there's really nothing
special about manufacturing diesels over gas engines.

Actually I don't believe that is entirely correct. For one, the
injection systems are built to very high degree of precision. Also
the compression ratio is much higher which requires much beefier
engineering of bearings, cranks, head gaskets, etc.

You might recall that General Motors tried to build diesel cars like
automotive engines back in the early 80s. They were a disaster.

Yeah, I know all that, but besides the beef there's not much
difference. That GM "diesel" was just a converted 350 cid
as I recall. Think they threw them in Oldsmobiles.
Pretty laughable for GM to attempt that.
No question diesels have to be engineered from the ground up.
Well, I looked around for the "diesel premium" and quickly
found this:
"The fact that all of the volume truck makers are getting into this
game means that there will be strong price competition which will help
bring the premium down over time. When I look at family car prices in
Europe it looks like the premium for a diesel over a similar sized
gasoline engine is similar to the premium for an automatic
transmission instead of a manual, around ?1000. Don?t make the mistake
of simply using currency conversions to say what that means in $US,
because that isn?t how the real consumer market works. A Mondeo starts
at about ?17,245 in the UK. The similar sized Fusion starts at
$17,770.
I expect that once the market stabilizes we will see a diesel premium
in the US of around $1000. It may take several years for supply,
demand and competition balances to work out and get there. Higher
volumes mean lower production costs. GM and Ford are both bringing
their next generation diesel development and manufacturing in house,
which if they do it right should result in lower costs than buying
from Isuzu and Navistar."

Here's another with similar numbers:
"James Healey: Mercedes-Benz holds its diesel premium to $1,000 vs.
similar gasoline models. VW's sold diesel for as little as
$400-something more than gasoline, but its new line will be
$2,000-plus higher than the gasoline versions."

Since these support what I initially said, no sense looking further
(-:
Anyway, I'm not interested enough now to study deeper.
And I know the boat and car markets are different, marine engines are
cooled differently, etc.
Just thought the Yanmar prices are out of whack. Crazy.

--Vic

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:01:29 -0500, Vic Smith
wrote:

Just thought the Yanmar prices are out of whack. Crazy.

They probably are very profitable, no question about that. They seem
to have a tight lock on the small marine diesel market and no amount
of development in the automotive or trucking industry will change
that.

I also suspect that it's not a very large market compared to other
applications like generators, pumps, tractors, etc. I have a 20 kw
genset on my trawler which contains a marinized Yanmar 35 hp
industrial engine. The whole thing with fresh water cooling,
generator head, automated control systems, digital alarm panel, sound
shield, cost about $12K plus installation.