Price good or too high??

B

BSenzina

New Member
May 30, 2006
67
West Palm Beach
I just had a non Searay service tech replace the impeller on my genny....evidently it was completely done since i didnt have ANY water flow when the genny was running....and it didnt stay running long either.....

The job cost me $400....Does this sound abut right or is it high? :huh: It sure ws higher than i expected, but then i have ZERO experience with this job. What do you think?? :smt017
 
Paid 380 two years ago, but that included a whole new pump because of a design change. Used Southeast Marine, how about you?
 
NOt exactly sure what the company name is, but I keep my boat at New Port Cove Marina, and its who ever they have there on sight.....maybe the price isnt too bad after all.....
 
WOW ! ! This is honestly VERY GOOD news....The people seem like good folks at New Port Cove....VERY Nice and SUPER HELPFUL, especially when I am coming in for a landing.... :smt013

I appreciate your input.....I really didnt have much of a clue as to the price, and was kind of surprised at $400 for the job....but if this is the going rate....whats a poor guy gonna do? Thanks again Skipper.
 
BSenzina,
I had a similar issue last year. Hot August Saturday morning, 420 loaded up with my family, another family, and temps in the mid 90s. A/C a very good thing to have with four kids aboard. My Onan 9KW, unbeknownst to me (though I should have checked it out at purchase time) had never had a new impeller in two years/80 operating hours when I bought the boat. Old reliable Onan/Kubota 1.3L diesel started right up, then promptly shut off. Error code indicated insufficient cooling water flow. The impeller was done for. I had two spares on board, and though I had never done the impeller before, it was fairly simple to remove the cover, pull the old impeller out, spary the new one down with silicone, and slide it into position. Replaced the water pump cover. Generator started and ran fine, with good cooling water flow. My next task (again, coached through by fwebster) was to clean the impeller chunks out of the generator's heat exchanger so it would function properly. To do this I closed the seacock, removed the inboard end of the heat exchanger, used a tweezer to pull all the rubber chunks I could see, then used a small shop vac I keep on board to suck out the rest of the rubber chunks. I then took all the rubber pieces I had removed, laid the old impeller out on a paper towel next to a new spare impeller, and tried to re-assemble the worn impeller to determine if I had captured all or most of the rubber pieces that came off when the impeller disintegrated.
Total time/post repair medication for this job was two hours, one advil. I carry spare impellers for the Onan and the Cummins just in case.
The (Westerbeke?) on your boat may be a bit harder to get to, but this is a fairly easy job if you have the time.

best regards
Skip
 
Impeller replacement on a generator is really one of those DIY things even for non-DIY people. I'm about to say "wow!" on the $400 because I can change mine literally in 10 minutes and the impeller costs $20. How many hours of work is $400? 3? I guess if he had to take off the heat exchanger and clean it, that may be about right... but if he didn't do that, that's way too much IMO.

So here you have a guy (me) that spends $1500 to fill up the fuel tanks but won't spend money to let someone else change impellers... go figure.

Like Skip said, these things fail at bad times. I find it better just to replace the generator impeller at the beginning of the season and middle of the season before it falls apart (my generator is always running). I had mine fall apart when I pulled out on the bay heading from Herrrington Harbor to Chrisfield and you would have thought the world was going to end because the sat tv and Xbox didn't work. Turned everything off and drifted for a few minutes and changed it on the spot and cleaned out the heat exchanger the next day. And my ungreatful children were happy.
 
I may have the boats mixed up, but I believe the water pump is not accessible with the generator in place on your boat. If so, then the genset has to be unbolted and slid out where some access is possible.

Is kind of like they tried to put 10 lbs of potatoes in the 5 lb bag worth of available space on the 310/330's.
 
So one of those 3 hours of disassembly/reassembly for a 10 minute job issues.... Thought Sea Ray didn't have those issues? :grin:
 
I can see I need to go talk to the guy who did the job and see what took $400 to do?? I guess if he had to unblot to get to the pump system, I will need to live with it. This inquiring mind is gonne find out about this....
Many Thanks for all the input.... :smt038

Bob
 
If it is the boat I'm remembering, most mechanics won't just replace an impellor; they replace the pump. There is so much involved in just gaining access, they don't want the risk of a do-over or to have to charge the labor 2X if a seal leaks next month.

I really don't think we can blame Sea Ray for this one, either. The customer demands the same systems on a 30ft. Dancer as he does on a 50ft. boat. You can only put so much stuff in the space available below the deck, so access usually suffers on smaller boats.
 
Now that you mention this......the sexy littel vixen at the marina mentioned the mechanic was crying about lack of space......This may be the case, with the pump being replaced.
 
Impeller on mine was an easy diy project. Took about 15 minutes on the water to change out the first time. Know that I know how to do it I'll do it each spring. $400, well It seems high but I do like to save were I can so that I put more into the gas tank. One day I will probably pay what ever the mech's want to allow me to not to get dirty. :thumbsup:
 
Bob,

You may have paid too much, if all you got was an impeller. I just checked my bill, and it was $198 plus delivery for the new pump, plus $150 for labor, plus a couple of zincs and tax, total $379.

The pump on my genny had been superseded by a new design. The mechanic said he couldn't get an impeller for the old pump. Before approving the work, I called Westerbeke and confirmed the design change, so I told him to go ahead. I imagine that the impeller would have been pretty cheap compared to a whole new pump.

Frank,

I watched the guy do the work. On my '99 310DA, the genny did not have to be lifted or shifted. But the guy had to be a monkey to get down there. The pump was not accessible without removing the bracket with the pump still on it. The mechanic had to work by feel, since the nuts were pretty well hidden. I am pretty sure that I could do it myself, if I devote a couple of hours and a pack of band-aids to the job.

I replaced the zinc today even though it faces about 45 degrees down toward the mounting floor. I had seen the mechanic cut the pencil to about half length, so I am doing the same. That took about 15 minutes.
 
I did it myself on my 5kw on the 280 and it cost me $38 and took 3 hours (because I had to move my sewage tank). At a labor rate of $80 an hour your bill is way too high; $278 max.

Marq
 
Heres the scoop

Well, I went to the Marina today and they pulled up the work order. It seems the tech had to use a grinder and cut the old bolts off. He did not replace the pump, just the impeller....Then he had to find new bolts to put back in place...He charged 3 hours labor at $85/hr and 2 hours at $45....I guess he felt bad?? :smt101
The cost was all labor....parts were cheap enough....I have only owned the boat 2 years...I wonder if this could have been the original impeller??? On a 1990?? Is it normal for the bolts to corrode so bad they have to be cut off??
And I guess what’s more important, does $400 seem justified now given the work to cut the bolts?
 
Well, yes, sort of. If he wasn't working on your boat, he would have been working on the next job at his regular rate. In that business, time is money, whether he is productive or not. It's a bad break that your bolts were that rusty, but at least he took the job and finished it. Could have been nasty if he was not reliable.

Bob, it's not likely to be the original impeller, but maybe the generator had not been used for years. As a rule, I run mine for about 15 minutes with a load, every month, even if we aren't going anywhere.
 
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