I have an E28+ that has become a project boat, mainly because the engine (Universal Model 12) needs to be replaced. I am trying to evaluate all the possibilities, and seeking any service recommendations in the Annapolis area -- both for sale/installation of a reconditioned engine, or possible conversion to solar. The bottom half of the original engine was partially submerged in 6-7" of water in the (flooded) engine compartment for several weeks when I was working out of town and couldn't get home to attend to it after a bad storm. The engine mfr's rep tells me there are three dealers in Annapolis, and I was also thinking about the solar conversion. Any thoughts or recommendations?
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28+ engine replacement
- Thread starter JM5845
- Start date
Did water get into the pan (and into the oil) ? Transmission?
OK, I’ve felt guilty for all the help I’ve garnered from this site but without contributing back anything. I have an embarrassing backlog of things I could/should have been posting, but as the owner of an E-28+ who did a diesel-to-electric conversion last year, this is a no-brained for me to weigh in.
We did the conversion primarily for smell, noise, and lazy-man maintenance issues, and we’ve been very happy so far with the result. The engine we took out was a relatively low-hours Volvo Penta D1 (sold to an E-27 owner nearby), and it itself had replaced the original gas engine. There were clear vestiges of the hacking needed for the earlier conversion, so it seemed another conversion wouldn’t harm anything.
This was the one project we didn’t do ourselves, so it ended up costing a lot primarily due to labor. Again, for us it was worth it, but like most things associated with boats, it wasn’t really economically justifiable. The rough break-down was $10K for the motor and motor controller and components (Thoosa 7000HT from a company in your area, I believe), $13K for batteries (12 + 1 [house] LIFePo 24/12-Volt), and $25K+ for labor. We erred on the side of excess battery capacity, and could have started smaller and added most later, but we chose to max out up front.
The motor itself is a small fraction of the size and weight of the diesel it replaced:
But the batteries took up enough space and added back enough weight so that it was pretty much a wash when all was said and done. Here’s a photo taken during installation showing about half the batteries. Note that these particular batteries can be oriented in any direction, which was one of the reasons for going for the LIFePo, expensive though they are.
In terms of range and capacity it’s important to remember this is a 48-Volt system, so a nominal 50-A-Hr 24-Volt battery is only going to provide 25A-Hrs at 48 Volts (these batteries can be used to full capacity). All told we can theoretically run at 40 amps for 7.5 hours, or 30 amps for 10 hours (300 A-Hrs at 48 Volts). For our E28+ (with a 3-blade, 12-inch prop) 30 amps drives us between 3.5 and 4 knots, and 40 amps a bit over 4 knots. The motor can be driven well over 100 amps, but with dramatically diminishing returns in speed and range, consistent with a displacement hull. The interesting thing that electric motors bring to light is that you can go as far as you want as long as you’re willing to slow down. (And if you want to go far fast, why are you in a sailboat In the first place?)
From another perspective, our batteries have a total capacity (not counting 12-Volt house battery) of about 16 KW-Hr, which is roughly half of our electric car, a Nissan Leaf with 30 KW-Hrs. KW-Hr units can be useful when thinking about solar panels, which usually are rated in watts. The 30-Amp running speed illustration above would correspond to about 1,500 W, so in principle you could use five 300-W panels to drive directly on solar power (highly over-simplified), but I don’t know where you would put that many panels on an E28+ (and no shading allowed)). You can do the math on recharge times versus speed/range to suit.
Our system does have regeneration via the prop when sailing, but that doesn’t really amount to much in our experience. It doesn’t affect sailing performance notably either, at least to the sensitivity of our instruments, so we always have it on.
The beauty of the system for us is it‘s essentially always on so the boundary between sailing and motor sailing is seamless, we never worry about the system not starting, we don’t breathe exhaust (at least not our own), and there is hardly any sound or vibration when underway. Because of COVID, we have’t really done anything other than day sailing (and some fishing—you won’t find a nicer trawling propulsion than electric, and you can go 1-2 knots forever), so we don’t yet have any range anxiety stories, but I’m sure they will come. But we did size everything for cruising, and we have sails as primary power, and we’ll be in and around Puget Sound where ports abound, so I think we’ll be OK.
if we were to do it again, we might look at more of the turnkey sail drive systems available, and this is an area of rapidly developing technology. We could have done more of the work ourselves, but who knows how long it would have taken us.
Happy to provide more information/experience as might be helpful.
Greg Miller
1981 E28+ “Aditi”
We did the conversion primarily for smell, noise, and lazy-man maintenance issues, and we’ve been very happy so far with the result. The engine we took out was a relatively low-hours Volvo Penta D1 (sold to an E-27 owner nearby), and it itself had replaced the original gas engine. There were clear vestiges of the hacking needed for the earlier conversion, so it seemed another conversion wouldn’t harm anything.
This was the one project we didn’t do ourselves, so it ended up costing a lot primarily due to labor. Again, for us it was worth it, but like most things associated with boats, it wasn’t really economically justifiable. The rough break-down was $10K for the motor and motor controller and components (Thoosa 7000HT from a company in your area, I believe), $13K for batteries (12 + 1 [house] LIFePo 24/12-Volt), and $25K+ for labor. We erred on the side of excess battery capacity, and could have started smaller and added most later, but we chose to max out up front.
The motor itself is a small fraction of the size and weight of the diesel it replaced:
But the batteries took up enough space and added back enough weight so that it was pretty much a wash when all was said and done. Here’s a photo taken during installation showing about half the batteries. Note that these particular batteries can be oriented in any direction, which was one of the reasons for going for the LIFePo, expensive though they are.
In terms of range and capacity it’s important to remember this is a 48-Volt system, so a nominal 50-A-Hr 24-Volt battery is only going to provide 25A-Hrs at 48 Volts (these batteries can be used to full capacity). All told we can theoretically run at 40 amps for 7.5 hours, or 30 amps for 10 hours (300 A-Hrs at 48 Volts). For our E28+ (with a 3-blade, 12-inch prop) 30 amps drives us between 3.5 and 4 knots, and 40 amps a bit over 4 knots. The motor can be driven well over 100 amps, but with dramatically diminishing returns in speed and range, consistent with a displacement hull. The interesting thing that electric motors bring to light is that you can go as far as you want as long as you’re willing to slow down. (And if you want to go far fast, why are you in a sailboat In the first place?)
From another perspective, our batteries have a total capacity (not counting 12-Volt house battery) of about 16 KW-Hr, which is roughly half of our electric car, a Nissan Leaf with 30 KW-Hrs. KW-Hr units can be useful when thinking about solar panels, which usually are rated in watts. The 30-Amp running speed illustration above would correspond to about 1,500 W, so in principle you could use five 300-W panels to drive directly on solar power (highly over-simplified), but I don’t know where you would put that many panels on an E28+ (and no shading allowed)). You can do the math on recharge times versus speed/range to suit.
Our system does have regeneration via the prop when sailing, but that doesn’t really amount to much in our experience. It doesn’t affect sailing performance notably either, at least to the sensitivity of our instruments, so we always have it on.
The beauty of the system for us is it‘s essentially always on so the boundary between sailing and motor sailing is seamless, we never worry about the system not starting, we don’t breathe exhaust (at least not our own), and there is hardly any sound or vibration when underway. Because of COVID, we have’t really done anything other than day sailing (and some fishing—you won’t find a nicer trawling propulsion than electric, and you can go 1-2 knots forever), so we don’t yet have any range anxiety stories, but I’m sure they will come. But we did size everything for cruising, and we have sails as primary power, and we’ll be in and around Puget Sound where ports abound, so I think we’ll be OK.
if we were to do it again, we might look at more of the turnkey sail drive systems available, and this is an area of rapidly developing technology. We could have done more of the work ourselves, but who knows how long it would have taken us.
Happy to provide more information/experience as might be helpful.
Greg Miller
1981 E28+ “Aditi”
Please help me understand better why you chose to replace a good diesel with such an expensive motor project. It was clearly not a casual decision and expense not a factor. Are you in some aspect of green business or other social commitment?
Surely the $25k for labour is a typo? $2.5k would be more like it, no?
at $100/h, $25k would be 250 hours of work!
Peter
Dave G.
1984 E30+ (SOLD)
$2.5k would only be 25 hours of labor which would not be enough to complete the conversion... I don't think ?
I guess we will need to hear from Greg to be sure, but it would have to be closer to 25 hours than 250 hours?
It will be interesting to know!
p
Hi Greg,
Nice write-up on your EP system! It would be good to clear-up your total cost for readers here.
The Thoosa systems are nice units, is yours AC or DC? I'm guessing DC. Looks like the Thoosa 7000HT is a 7KW motor. Thats a good size for a E28. Excellent battery bank! I envy the internal BMS (battery management system). Way less wires than the external BMS of an old school lithium bank! What is your top speed with the unit? What is the pitch of your prop?
30 amps seems a bit on the high side for 3.5-4 knots of boat speed. As a comparison, I get 4 knots of boat speed at 20 amps and top speed of around 6 knots on calm seas on my E27.
For me having an EP auxiliary on a sailboat is a quality of life thing. I do not enjoy working/maintenance on ICE's and the smell bothers me.
As Greg wrote, you can go forever if you can motor slowly but if you need to rush back to the Harbor from 20 miles away...
Nice write-up on your EP system! It would be good to clear-up your total cost for readers here.
The Thoosa systems are nice units, is yours AC or DC? I'm guessing DC. Looks like the Thoosa 7000HT is a 7KW motor. Thats a good size for a E28. Excellent battery bank! I envy the internal BMS (battery management system). Way less wires than the external BMS of an old school lithium bank! What is your top speed with the unit? What is the pitch of your prop?
30 amps seems a bit on the high side for 3.5-4 knots of boat speed. As a comparison, I get 4 knots of boat speed at 20 amps and top speed of around 6 knots on calm seas on my E27.
For me having an EP auxiliary on a sailboat is a quality of life thing. I do not enjoy working/maintenance on ICE's and the smell bothers me.
As Greg wrote, you can go forever if you can motor slowly but if you need to rush back to the Harbor from 20 miles away...
I was writing from memory, so I went back and checked the invoices. I had an extra $10K floating around in my head--the total cost was about $40K, with 137 hours of labor. Still expensive, but a custom job like this seemed to be kind of like a kitchen remodel: you don't really know what all you're facing until you're into it, and you tend to take care of some other side issues along the way.
Concerning Christian's "why did you do this?" question, it's one of those things where some more background might be helpful. If you had asked me in June of 2019 would I ever own a boat, I would have given you a blank stare because it wasn't anything I had ever really thought about. My wife, Susan, though, grew up with more boating in her family, and we have always had an anchor in our garage she had spent most of a day digging out of the sand on some beach as a young girl--her thinking was, "I have my anchor, all I need now is to someday get a boat". That having been said, we never went down this road seriously.
Until....during some casual conversation at a colleague's retirement party it came up that a couple we knew had bought a new sailboat and needed to sell their old one. Susan's eyes got big, and long story short we ended buying their boat. In a Harry Potter sense, it's like this boat picked us rather than us having made a decision to get a boat, done research, shopped around, etc. like a responsible adult would do.
We got the boat for what seemed to us a pretty low price, and so we felt we had breathing room financially to modify/upgrade it to make it work for us for the next 10 year or so. I was also approaching retirement, so I was going to have bandwidth to do stuff at a scale that wouldn't have been feasible for me earlier on. The initial top tasks were to fix the smells, stop the rain leaks, and make it function well overall as a sailboat as much as we could.
The smells were a rich combination of a 40-year old head infused with diesel scents. First I took out all the upholstery, cleaned or replaced the foam, and redid all the fabric covering, and let things air out at home for a number of months. Turning to the sources of the smells I took out the head with a plan to replace it, temporarily installing a porta-potty, which may end up being a permanent solution. For the diesel smells (which were particularly problematic for Susan), we started thinking about switching to electric power. We got a Nissan Leaf a couple years ago, and we really like it (and yes, we also installed solar panels on our roof at the same time, so we are trying to be as green as we can at our small personal level). The thought of having a similarly simple, quiet, clean, and low-maintenance power system for the boat was very attractive to us on several levels, including my engineer-nerd background. So while we had a functioning diesel engine already in the boat, we didn't like all the unpleasant side effects both long term and in the moment while while running it as I mentioned in my first post, so it wasn't the auxiliary power system that made sense for us. Also, whether the existing engine was relatively old or relatively new, the price of the boat would not have varied much, so in effect, the existing engine didn't really cost us much. Thus that aspect of removing it was not a problem for us. (Of course a corollary to this is that if we tried to sell our boat tomorrow, we would see very little return on the electric investment, but that's not part of our calculation).
Unfortunately for us, the general availability of electric systems is still limited and relatively expensive, so we have the early adopter problem of paying more than would be the case were these systems more common. In principle, even more than with cars I see no reason why a production boat with electric power should cost much more than a similar boat with a diesel system, but a retrofit is another story, and it became our story.
At a more global level, we would like to see electrification of transport continue to broaden, and so being guinea pigs of a sort is OK with us. But really the only downside in this has been the cost, and while I wouldn't say cost didn't matter, we were in a position at this point in our lives to make it work. I wouldn't want to confuse privilege with any hint of some kind of ethical superiority. Ultimately we've ended up with a boat we really like at a price we could afford, and that's about as good as it gets. (Except for that one lingering rain leak...aargh)
Need to end this--I promise less rambling in future posts.
Greg (and Susan) Miller
'81 E28+ "Aditi"
Concerning Christian's "why did you do this?" question, it's one of those things where some more background might be helpful. If you had asked me in June of 2019 would I ever own a boat, I would have given you a blank stare because it wasn't anything I had ever really thought about. My wife, Susan, though, grew up with more boating in her family, and we have always had an anchor in our garage she had spent most of a day digging out of the sand on some beach as a young girl--her thinking was, "I have my anchor, all I need now is to someday get a boat". That having been said, we never went down this road seriously.
Until....during some casual conversation at a colleague's retirement party it came up that a couple we knew had bought a new sailboat and needed to sell their old one. Susan's eyes got big, and long story short we ended buying their boat. In a Harry Potter sense, it's like this boat picked us rather than us having made a decision to get a boat, done research, shopped around, etc. like a responsible adult would do.
We got the boat for what seemed to us a pretty low price, and so we felt we had breathing room financially to modify/upgrade it to make it work for us for the next 10 year or so. I was also approaching retirement, so I was going to have bandwidth to do stuff at a scale that wouldn't have been feasible for me earlier on. The initial top tasks were to fix the smells, stop the rain leaks, and make it function well overall as a sailboat as much as we could.
The smells were a rich combination of a 40-year old head infused with diesel scents. First I took out all the upholstery, cleaned or replaced the foam, and redid all the fabric covering, and let things air out at home for a number of months. Turning to the sources of the smells I took out the head with a plan to replace it, temporarily installing a porta-potty, which may end up being a permanent solution. For the diesel smells (which were particularly problematic for Susan), we started thinking about switching to electric power. We got a Nissan Leaf a couple years ago, and we really like it (and yes, we also installed solar panels on our roof at the same time, so we are trying to be as green as we can at our small personal level). The thought of having a similarly simple, quiet, clean, and low-maintenance power system for the boat was very attractive to us on several levels, including my engineer-nerd background. So while we had a functioning diesel engine already in the boat, we didn't like all the unpleasant side effects both long term and in the moment while while running it as I mentioned in my first post, so it wasn't the auxiliary power system that made sense for us. Also, whether the existing engine was relatively old or relatively new, the price of the boat would not have varied much, so in effect, the existing engine didn't really cost us much. Thus that aspect of removing it was not a problem for us. (Of course a corollary to this is that if we tried to sell our boat tomorrow, we would see very little return on the electric investment, but that's not part of our calculation).
Unfortunately for us, the general availability of electric systems is still limited and relatively expensive, so we have the early adopter problem of paying more than would be the case were these systems more common. In principle, even more than with cars I see no reason why a production boat with electric power should cost much more than a similar boat with a diesel system, but a retrofit is another story, and it became our story.
At a more global level, we would like to see electrification of transport continue to broaden, and so being guinea pigs of a sort is OK with us. But really the only downside in this has been the cost, and while I wouldn't say cost didn't matter, we were in a position at this point in our lives to make it work. I wouldn't want to confuse privilege with any hint of some kind of ethical superiority. Ultimately we've ended up with a boat we really like at a price we could afford, and that's about as good as it gets. (Except for that one lingering rain leak...aargh)
Need to end this--I promise less rambling in future posts.
Greg (and Susan) Miller
'81 E28+ "Aditi"
Hi Mark:
Our system is DC, and yes, it is a 7KW motor. We have a 1:1 pitch on the 12-inch prop, and we actually haven't tried for top speed yet. Our theoretical hull speed is a bit over 6 knots, and I assume we could hit that in flat water. We sail out of the Edmonds, WA marina, and that generally involves dodging or racing ferries whose dock is directly north of us, so we have on occasion pushed up into the high-5.x knot range to get out of the way of these large neighbors. We're way out on the diminishing returns part of the power curve by then, though, so we don't leave it there for long.
We rarely have flat, current-free water, so my amp-draw numbers were based on typical SOG observations when we're out and about in the Sound. Within the marina we do see numbers closer to yours.
Thanks,
Greg
K2MSmith
Sustaining Member
Greg, Thanks for posting ! I am very interested in the electric power topic and this looks like a great case study for an Ericson.
When I bought my 1st generation Leaf (I actually leased it), it was clear to me that ICE engines are going to be a thing of the past. I loved that car. Really pleasant to drive (the torque of an electric motor really adds to the experience) and there is the opportunity to integrate all of systems in the car. I'm not a purist (and btw, my "other" car is a 1991 Carrera 2 ) but I think ICE engines are dead in the long run. Even for high performance you can't argue with a car that has sub 2.0 0-60 time (I'm referring to the Tesla roadster which is in development).
My diesel is the original U25. It smells, but it still runs and it requires a bit of TLC. I would really like to convert to electric power at some point, but I am going to wait (1) until cost drops and (2) there is more data out there on the reliability of LiPo batteries and charging systems designed for Marine use.
With the LiPO's you are using, were you able to get any customer data on them in terms of safety/longevity ?
When I bought my 1st generation Leaf (I actually leased it), it was clear to me that ICE engines are going to be a thing of the past. I loved that car. Really pleasant to drive (the torque of an electric motor really adds to the experience) and there is the opportunity to integrate all of systems in the car. I'm not a purist (and btw, my "other" car is a 1991 Carrera 2 ) but I think ICE engines are dead in the long run. Even for high performance you can't argue with a car that has sub 2.0 0-60 time (I'm referring to the Tesla roadster which is in development).
My diesel is the original U25. It smells, but it still runs and it requires a bit of TLC. I would really like to convert to electric power at some point, but I am going to wait (1) until cost drops and (2) there is more data out there on the reliability of LiPo batteries and charging systems designed for Marine use.
With the LiPO's you are using, were you able to get any customer data on them in terms of safety/longevity ?
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Ignoring costs, no smell would be nice; less vibration would be great; no noise would be wonderful. The need for range is an owner/user decision. But something just bothers me from a safety standpoint. I tried to light a can of diesel fuel on fire once with a long-handled butane lighter. I never got it to light, let alone burn or explode. If a diesel engine gets wet enough, it rusts out or stops running in an unspectacular fashion. But, that battery bank just seems like an immense amount of stored chemical/electrical energy to be house within a few inches of salt water. And, what about all the heat created while re-charging? Maybe I just have a lot to learn--and an exhaust leak to repair on my M-25.
Thanks Greg. You have inspired me to get a good accounting of the costs of my EP unit. I have posted a few blogs here in the past about my EP system ( https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/ubs/blog/electric-repower-of-lotus-flower-a-1976-ericson-27.773/ ) but it has matured since then and I think it would be good to update my costs and current system. I'll get to work on that soon. My initial cost in 2008 for the SolidNav 5kw drive unit, lead acid (90ah bank), charger and wires was $6000. I did most of the install.
A diesel shouldn't smell, gentleman. Exhaust when the wind blows it into the cockpit, OK. Otherwise, something is wrong, no?
On neither of my boats would you know there was a diesel by nose evidence. What am I missing?
On neither of my boats would you know there was a diesel by nose evidence. What am I missing?
Well stated.
I have been quietly pondering this same sentiment.
There is, normally, never any smell of diesel on our boat. Worse, in some ways, is the smell from holding tank and allied hoses & pumps. We did have the later problem, to eradicate, when we took possession.
That said, our former engine did have crankcase odors from excessive blow-by, exiting from the crankcase vent hose... until I copied the system of the later versions of that engine and led it back to the intake ("air cleaner") location.
Takeaway, for me, is that ALL systems on a boat *require* regular maintenance and upgrades, and also that a large % of owners ignore this stuff as long as the motor "moves the boat" and the head makes the waste "go away". (I have day sailed on boats where the skipper casually declared that all this unpleasant stuff was normal and fine, even tho the crew hated going inside the cabin. Or when he opened the hatch and a strong "head odor" assaulted us. Nice boats, on the outside, tho.
An Aside: I have some friends that bought new boats, over the years, and one of them recently sold his still-like-new 30 foot sailboat for his asking price....
and I had visited aboard and it was always clean inside and had zero odors. Most of us bought used boats - some that were abused and zero-maintaned - and it was left to us to undo ten to thirty years of "benign neglect"... !
If sailing only in local waters, gotta admit that it would be great fun to use an electric auxiliary.... but would maintaining a large high tech battery bank with all of the computer and control functions be any easier or cheaper overall than the cost of an internal combustion drive train?
steven
Sustaining Member
I continue to be really pleased with my A4 and will replace it with a new one (5 - $7k including labor) when it expires.
That should be good for another 50years of so.
Nothing wrong with a good diesel except the cost of yard labor has made the conversion cost pretty high.
I sure would like to go electric. But 90ah gets only a few miles of range and I would need more.
--Steve
That should be good for another 50years of so.
Nothing wrong with a good diesel except the cost of yard labor has made the conversion cost pretty high.
I sure would like to go electric. But 90ah gets only a few miles of range and I would need more.
--Steve
Dave G.
1984 E30+ (SOLD)
I would add that the range restrictions is a deal breaker for me even at a 1/10 of the cost. While ICE's have obvious issues and ongoing messy maintenance schedules I don't think those costs and time over 5 years really add up to a lot of $ compared to replacing those crazy expensive batteries every 5-10 years which will be the cost of a NEW diesel engine. I have looked at electric cars in the past but the range is always the killer on those for me as you can't just jump in and drive to a distant location... and on a boat you can't just pull over to the side of the road and call AAA to bail you out. You would also have to plan any trips down to the minute or you could end up with a very untimely loss of engine power. I guess if money is of no concern what so ever and you are strictly a day sailor that is in a marina slip(with shore power) then maybe. Wonder what that charging system will cost to run on the old marina meter ?
Theses are the batteries we are using (except the house battery is 12V):
50Ah 24V LiFePO4 Battery | Dragonfly Energy
Dimensions (L x W x H) 12.75 x 6.875 x 9 Weight: 31 lbs. Operating Voltage: 25.6V Charging Voltage: 28.8-29.2V Float Voltage: 27.2V or lower Operating Temp Range: -4°F to 140°F
dragonflyenergy.com
The web site has whatever info we were provided. Note these are LiFePo, different from what might be in a car, in principle better suited for marine use.
Ultimately time will tell how well these do in the long term...
Greg
Salonica has just started selling a 47’ foot boat with dual electric motors and a single battery bank. What’s interesting is that at that scale they can get adequate regeneration while sailing to allow one to be essentially untethered from shore power (i.e., several hours sailing in modest winds can fully recharge the battery bank). This is on beyond zebra for us at present, but it’s indicative of what can be done with ground-up design, and also what different possibilities there are for auxiliary power for a boat relative to primary power for a car.
Greg