It's official... the engine is dead!

After a long fight to resurrect the Ford York diesel engine (original), it was pronounced dead this morning. Tim and Ken are in Cyprus, now busy taking it apart for removal, while I (Richard) am stuck in the UK just hearing about it from a distance. There is a question as to how to get it out of the yacht. Ken reckons if we take it to small enough parts, we can get it out through the saloon. Hopefully this will be true.

So what will we replace it with? We have been contemplating this for a couple of weeks now and done research on the subject. Our desire is to replace it with a electric drive powered by batteries.

Having researched many different motor options, the current one that we believe will be right for the boat is a Marine powertrain 8kw from Electro-vehicles in Italy.

They don't show the AC08/4 online, but its very similar to the AC07: http://www.electro-vehicles.eu/shop/details.asp?prodid=EVE06&cat=0&path=47,60

Now we need to finalise all the details of mounting the motor, controller and batteries in King Malu and get her sailing as soon as possible.

UPDATE 13:34 EEST: While stripping the engine down, about 4 litres of water came out with the oil. Basically that means the head gasket was blown badly and so the engine would have needed a fully rebuild to be any use, in indeed it could be rebuilt. So... correct decision to scrap the engine.