Aside from having to meet particular standards in order to maintain a commercial operating licence there are many important reasons for regular maintenance and rebuild of vessel engines. I have touched on a few below.
The goal of performing regular maintenance and repairing parts before failure is to maximise an engines efficiency and therefore maximise your end profit. Regular maintenance including replacing or remanufacturing of warn-out parts will:
Improve the uptime of your engine
Allow for planned downtime for more major overhauls and rebuilds
Reduce overall operating costs
Allow for a superior level of performance
Replacing certain parts and oils should be a regular part of your maintenance routine, and not just when things fail. Replacing parts before they go bad will keep your engine in optimal condition and increase its lifespan.
Regular maintenance essentially slows the wearing of parts however even the most thorough of maintenance schedules will not fully prevent wear. With so many parts being difficult to reach in an assembled, in situ state it is very difficult to perform maintenance to all areas required, not to mention the cramped engine room. This is why it is so important to include rebuilding of your engine (preferably to OEM standards) with in your maintenance and rebuild schedule.
So why repair before failure? First of all it is worth mentioning that many parts are designed to last multiple lives however they have to be maintained properly to get this value out of them. If you let something progress to failure you could be spending dramatically more for the cost to repair or replace them. You also run the risk of potential additional damage to parts that really shouldn't need replacing. If you do let something progress to failure studies show that about 90% of the time these failures could have been prevented, resulting in major costs right out of your pocket.
So why is there so much repair after failure? One we often hear is why fix it if it's not broken or we're too busy right now with production demands, we've got to keep it running, or the turnaround time is too long. These reasons are destined for inefficiency and uncontrolled spiralling costs when you look at it over the long term life of the engine. The truth of the matter is a repair after failure will often take considerably longer to turnaround than a repair before failure and will nearly always bring unscheduled downtime and unknown costs associated with this.
Repair before failure means getting the best value out of your engine and its associated parts or maximising parts reuse. Engines comprise of parts that are replaced regularly during scheduled maintenance, wearing parts which need replacement or remanufacture during top end or major overhauls and non wearing parts which will last the life of the engine assuming no catastrophic failure. Keeping all of these parts in prime working condition is most important if you want to be in control of your operating costs, performance, up time and down time.
There are many trusted engine rebuild, reman and maintenance companies throughout the UK and Ireland. If you need us to point you in the right direction just let us know and we will advise.