Back in 1967: Those were the days - displacement boats had a conventional drive with a reversing gear and shaft system, which was set in motion by a heavy, robustly built naturally aspirated diesel engine. They were often based on car engines, which were made suitable for boats with varying degrees of effort.
New developments are (too) expensive, so Volvo Penta goes shopping at Peugeot at the end of the 1970s. Four- and six-cylinder diesels landed in the shopping trolley, which were quite something. There is certainly more than one mechanic, including the author, who still gets a stomach ache today at the type designations MD21 and MD32.
Even if their aluminium cylinder head held tight and the pre-chambers inside it were (still) firmly in place - the guys who were allergic to cold starts always sounded like they had a total breakdown. Good thing they no longer exist.
At the time, gliders were preferably pushed by outboards, while inboards with the Z-drive invented by Jim Wynne were only just beginning to conquer the market. "Armed" with car engines made in the USA, however, this should succeed quickly. The fact that these things drink like holes and rust faster than you can look in salt water:
What's the point? You want to have fun, and the petrol is cheap!
The "spoilsports", to whom we owe a large part of technical progress, are based at Lake Constance and in the Californian environmental authority. In the mid-1990s, they enacted emissions standards that could not be met with the "old" technology.
If you want to survive as an engine manufacturer, you have to rethink and invest. The result: two-stroke and carburettor engines are acutely threatened with extinction. There are only a few survivors. Nevertheless, we say thank you and grudgingly accept that the new four-strokes equipped with electronic petrol injection and power trim are significantly heavier and more expensive than their predecessors.
You can read the full report in Boote 6/2017 - on sale from 24 May 2017.
