Saturday's Work....
 

Got to do some work on a Volvo Penta for a buddy Saturday.

Definitely some areas that I thought were designed better than Mercruiser.

Local Marina quoted him 7k to do the work, 40 hours worth was just labor!! He bought an entire new Transom Assembly for $2700, and hopes to sell the old one for a few hundred.

We started at about 10am and were done by about 9pm including assembling the hoist, engine out, old TA off, new TA on, engine back in. Hit a couple snags along the way, and had to make a couple trips to Advance, but it felt good to keep that marina from making 5k on him.

Neat stuff.

Well done:drink:

Most of the big/established places use flat rate. If thats what the book says thats what they quote. With that being said my A tech's were bonused on hours under / 120-150% efficiency. It costs lots of money to operate a marina.

And, yes, Volvos are better across the board, just not popular and frankly a pain to get parts for as a service operator

40 hours is ridiculous if my dumb-backyard-ass can do it in a day.....

What's even worse - they charged him for an oil change and all they did was switch filters and write a new date on it. My buddy is checking the invoice, but he also thinks they charged him for a drive lube change, which clearly hadn't been done.

Ok, looks like he's dealing with a crook.

way 2 much of this stuff B'n said on here & go'n on! As if things in the marine industry R not bad enough!!! Sad!! Glad U pulled the repair off!!!:coolcowboy:

Dads boat had a rusted out oil pan on his 260merc 350 in a 250 Wellcraft years ago. I went down to use it when he was out of town and the Marina had an invoice written for 2600 to pull the engine and put a new oil pan on. This was like 14 years ago.

Bought the oil pan for 75 bucks and and pulled the starter and got under the motor with out pulling it and had every thing changed out in 3 hours Piece of cake.

Told the mechanic there what i did he said he no way . Had the boat another 5 years never a drop of oil out of it.

The book is unreal what they give you to do some jobs. Especially if it doesn't take into account what model boat it may be in and what the accessibility might be.

Good Job!

Where did you get that engine lift? Can it handle a BBC, and how high can it lift the motor?

Well done, man. And it's nice to know you saved a bundle doing it yourselves.

Crane, Chain Hoist and Trolley were all from Harbor Freight. I bought all of it for around 500 bucks about 2 years ago (I believe I signed up for the HF email and waited until I got one of their "20% off everything" coupons).

Yes it did my BBC's fully dressed with blowers, coolers, exhaust etc....

Didn't flex or wince at all.

Thats diff. Thats outright fraud. Out the business if you have proof they did this so others can steer clear

Good deal!!! Gantry was one of the best investments I've made! And now that I'm moving my buddies want to borrow it until I get a house. lol

I had a similar Saturday but didn't have any help.. Had to pull an engine to drop a pan. Started around 8 am and finished around 5:30 pm. sucked but at least it's done!

Help is a relative term:lolhit::lolhit:

I need a friend like you.....would have save me a lot of money over the years!! :drink:

I've had "help" that caused more harm than help:eek:

And yes, some of the Volvo stuff is waay better engineered than
the merc stuff.

Cool story........glad you were able to help AND save the guy 5K! :D

Sounds like they individually priced each job and added up the hours..... Pull motor X # hours, replace motor X #, pull drive X #, replace drive X # and so on. Pricing individually doesn't allow for the if you pull the motor the time for pulling the drive is already included. :eek:

Working on a boat is always a great way to spend a Saturday.....:drink: