I've had it with Cummins

I work as Service Director for a large equipment company; we use Cummins engines on one of our products - they are the worst, bar none - the worst when it comes to response. It took us 7 months to get a replacement engine for a customer - just delivered it last week. Every time we have to deal with Cummins I learn new vocabulary - and I don't mean that in a good way. Expensive, arrogant and rude - kind of like my ex-wife :smt021

Good luck Converse, I feel horrible for you especially as your short boating season keeps ticking by.... Keep us posted.
 
I'm sorry to hear that Tim, because I can really feel your pain. I'm in an almost similar situation. There's places I want to go and things I want to do, but I'm stuck and can't go. Cheryl broke her ankle and is having a really hard time. i had to pick her up early from work today because she was in terrific pain caused by falling off her crutches. So I have a perfectly good, useable boat, perfectly nice boating weather, and I'm stuck at home.


Wanna borrow a little gasser? It might as well be doing someone some good.
 
Interesting thread. I always thought Cummins were solid engines based on what I had read, but I didn't realize they had these service issues.
 
Fellow dock mate has older Cummins 4BTA engines in his boat. One engine needs a new heat exchanger. Searched all over the country for a new one and found he is in the back of the line of many waiting to get new 4BTA heat exchangers. The outlook to get one is undetermined. So, he had the boat towed from the marina to a friend's private dock to sit until something shows up. He didn't see any point in paying for slip fees (he's on a monthly plan) for a boat he can't use for what could be many months.
 
The admiral and I are just in the very infant stages of thinking about moving up-likely 3-5 years away. After reading this thread, I hope the Cats are the way to go because I sure would not go the Cummins route. Thanks for all of the information. It is one thing to have problems, but it is something else if you cannot find parts and service....

Thanks again,
Bennett
 
The admiral and I are just in the very infant stages of thinking about moving up-likely 3-5 years away. After reading this thread, I hope the Cats are the way to go because I sure would not go the Cummins route. Thanks for all of the information. It is one thing to have problems, but it is something else if you cannot find parts and service....

Thanks again,
Bennett
I haven't had any of these kind of parts or service availability issues on the 6CTA engines. Between my local Cummins parts supplier and Seaboard Marine (sbmar.com), stuff seems readily available.
 
I haven't had any of these kind of parts or service availability issues on the 6CTA engines. Between my local Cummins parts supplier and Seaboard Marine (sbmar.com), stuff seems readily available.

Thanks Bill. I just did some real quick looking and all of the 400/420/440 DB all appear to have Cummings in them-at least the 2002-2007s. Just something to be mindful of...is there one model of Cummings that appears to be less problematic/better parts availability than others?

Thanks,
Bennett
 
is there one model of Cummings that appears to be less problematic/better parts availability than others?

Thanks,
Bennett

i would not go that far calling all qsm11 bad because we read here one case with issues. there are tons of yachts with this engines which just run.
 
i would not go that far calling all qsm11 bad because we read here one case with issues. there are tons of yachts with this engines which just run.
You would if it was your boat with the QSM11's that were fried.

I know it would really annoy me because that's their job, to make and support engines. They're doing a really horrible job in supporting Tim's engines.

I guess marine isn't a big enough market for them that they don't bother to keep parts available. Which begs the question. Are there so many failures that the supplier can't keep up with demand? Or is it a case that these things rarely fail so they're waiting to get a couple orders before tooling-up for a small production run?
 
Please keep in mind that my major beef is not that things broke; that will happen and the engines are thirteen years old. My main beef is the lack of availability of parts and/or transparency about when I may see them.

Week five and counting...
 
I realize Comverse is simply venting, and not looking for feedback. Our next boat, when we retire my Use Cummins power plants so I am very interested in this discussion.

It it appears to me that Cummins is providing good support to their land based vehicles, but not not enough attention to the recreational marine market based on what I am reading....correct?

Are other folks out there with say 3 to 10 year old boats also having the same service issues, and access to parts?
 
Did the rat's nests blow out of the exhaust when you fired them up? That poor boat has been abused due to lack of use for too long! Hope the damaged wing is doing better...
 
That isn't true.........I saw it floating in its slip last July. Unfortunately the owner couldn't shake my hand because he was headed to get his arm reattached the next week.

And I now have some high-quality metal installed from my "480 DB Injury"

791d329f-2650-46cf-9f19-4dcbc20932ff_zpss8q2j1vm.jpg
 
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