2003 / 2004 48 DB - MAN (2876LE4) vs. Cummins (QSM's 11)

J

jeljr

New Member
May 7, 2007
17
Tequesta, FL & Grosse Pointe, MI
I am looking at 2003 and 2004 Sea Ray 48 DB's and have a question.

Some boats on the market have MAN diesles and most have the Cummins QSM's. I have hear glowing reviews of the QSM's but have not heard anything about the MAN's?

I know the MAN's were a very expensive option -- anyone with thoughts are the MAN 2876LE4's good engines?

I would love some feedback, we are looking close at the 48's and this looks like the site for good general feedback.

Warm Regards,
J
 
J, First welcome to the board. I cant help you with your ? but there are several here who can. Good luck and welcome. JC
 
So here is my "but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night" answer.

When I test drove the 480DB in Nov of 2002 at the Sea Ray factory in Palm Coast, it had the Mann engine option. Boat ran great... so good I bought one that day and had it delivered in May of 03. I'm not sure whose boat it was though... So someone out there has a boat I drove at WOT in reverse for an hour down the ICW (just kidding). The Mann option gave the 480 a little more horsepower I believe but it doesn't really need it. My boat cruises around 30-31 mph at 2100 RPM/ 75-80% load and I generally keep it around 1950-2050 on cruise. It's a fast boat for it's size and weight. I'm not sure if the boat had different props with the Mann's to give it more speed or not so someone else will have to chime in on that.

The one thing I did notice when I test drove the 480 DB with Manns was that the guys came out and said they did not have the block heaters on and so we had to wait a little bit for the block heaters to warm it up and then start it... and it smoked like a chimney for about 15 minutes. The Cummins don't need block heaters... and they never smoke unless something is wrong. I take mine out fishing in the winter and have never had a problem with the cold. I've had to remove snow from the cockpit area and had ice forming on the rails and deck from spray and the engines run great (I love striped bass fishing on the ocean in the winter months off the Virginia/NC coast).

The QSM-11 engines are a different animal than the smaller recreational Cummins diesels. It's basically an electronic and high-pressure rail version of their older M-11 continuous duty industrial engine that has been marinized. The issues with cooling systems and aftercoolers and such you see with the smaller Cummins you generally don't see on the QSM series. Although very opinionated, I belong to boatdiesel.com and there is a lot of good information there on the Cummins products. The marine QSM-11 is not rated for continuous duty but there are versions of this engine that are so that can't hurt. There are many QSM-11's out there with over 15,000 hours on them (for boats that run everyday) but I was told by the Cummins rep at one of the Sea Ray events a few years ago that the "expectation" for the QSM-11 is around 6,000 hours if maintained well. He had a few beers in him so who knows how true that is. I was also told that the engines would last longer than the boat (hmmm.... not sure I like that).

Mann are good engines. I've driven several 48' to 72' Vikings and they use the big Manns all the time and those boats haul butt compared to mine.... My guess would be they are a higher-end engine but I have nothing to back that up... so that's my unqualified response.

How's that?

and BTW... How tall are you?

(you have to read some other posts to get that)
 
Welcome to the board. :grin: You will find a wealth of info in here and some real characters, but everyone in here love's their boats and will be glad to share and help you out. :smt024 Best of luck in making your decision. :thumbsup:
 
M.A.N. is one of Germany's largest industrial comglomerates. One of its predecessor companies was founded by a fellow named Rudolph Diesel, so the've been at this a while.

As far a M.A.N. engines are concerned, they make design choices like Caterpillar does....they choose to do things the best possible way as opposed to making choices based on how is the most cost effective way to accomplish something. Their designs are typical for German engineering....extremely well thought out, cleanly and neatly executed, subtle in a lot of respects, but very durable.

As far as their engines in Sea Rays goes, our local dealer orders all large boats with the M.A.N. option. So far, they have all (probably 20 boats over the last 2 years) been trouble free and have had nothing but regular service. The new common rail electronic engines are smoke free and are very clean running boats. I don't know what was the issue with the early boat Gary ran but smoke isn't a problem on the current engines.

You may hear some smoke and noise complaints about M.A.N.'s but that is probably from earlier mechanical designs. They had one 800hp 10 cylinder engine that turned off 5 cylinders at idle......they shook and smoked horribly on cold starts and at idle.

The only negative I know of on M.A.N.'s is that parts and service can be expensive.........think in terms of Mercedes Benz quality and cost since parts come from Germany and they need to be serviced by someone who knows the engines, not some general diesel mechanic.
 
OK... I can't spell M.A.N.... whatever...

But I'm telling you... My M.A.N. smoked when I took him for a ride. (that's sick)

Were the M.A.N.'s in the 480 common rail technology?...
 
Hey Gary-

Quick question (without trying to highjack this thread). Can you share fuel burn numbers at cruising speed on your 480DB? My wife and I have decided that it will be our next boat, so I'm curious on those numbers.

Thanks.

Jeff
 
I have also heard the same thing that Frank W. stated-The MAN's are very expensive in the parts department. Great engines, used in many of the big 50 ft +up. They look like jewerly down in an engine room. The Cummins are smoke-free and good runners so I wouldn't shy away from that boat either. Good luck.
 
I don't have my log book here with me but the published cruise numbers are 2100 RPM at about 50 GPH (25 GPH per engine). 2100 RPM pushes the boat along between 30 and 32 mph depending on conditions and how many shoes my wife has on board. It actually goes a little faster with a little chop versus being dead calm flat. I generally run between 1950 and 2050 RPM and the "miles per gallon" is basically the same but it's going around 28 mph and burning about 45 GPH. The addition of Diesel Kleen has made these numbers about 5% better or so but I don't have enough experience with that yet.
 
Hello everyone, and thank you for the great info.

After speaking with a number of people about the 48 with the MAN's I am hearing much of the same thing. Smoke - and lots of it at start up, rough idle, parts and service network is not as advanced as the Cummins. This is not to say that I have heard that the engines are bad, not at all but what I do know is that from all perspectives the QSM's are fantastic engines, smoke free, great parts and service network...

I am looking forward to finding a boat soon and getting to know everyone around here!

Jack
 
I will say that MAN engines on the newer Vikings I've driven don't smoke so I don't know what the deal is with the model in the 480.. who knows...

I must say, if you have never seen the engine room in a Viking, you should. It's all white finished fiberglass (not gray sprayed on gel coat), lot's of lighting, and the MANs with their gold valve covers look awsome. Need a better paying job.
 
I'll give you my issues with the QSM-11's here so Frank doesn't think I'm biased. :wink:

The front plastic belt covers are cheap and break at the bolt holes and then fall on the belt. They are cheaply made but very expensive to replace. I'm on my second set and they are broken again and this time I'm going to go to a machine shop and have something made out of metal and powder coat it.

The impeller on the port side engine is a bitch to get to and replace. I have to remove the port exhaust pipe to get to mine. And you can't just put it back on with the same T-clamps because they are stainless and the nut binds up on the threads after one use. Carry extra 10" exhaust pipe T-clamps along with extra impellers.

The QSM-11's have a "popping dipstick" problem that will leave oil all over your engine room when the dipstick comes out. Cummins used a 39 cent rubber cork-based dipstick that, when gets old, does not stay in and the vibration knocks it out. You think you have crankcase pressure problems but you don't. Cummins came out with a real locking dipstick to fix the problem but it's expensive. So you just have to replace the dipsticks every 3 years or so or by the expensive upgrade.

The white paint does not hold up well IMO.

Instead of putting a real gasket on the front gear cover, they used this black caulk like stuff that oozes out and sticks to everything. Guess it saved 4 bucks for a gasket.

This is probably not unique to QSM-11's but the fuel cooler is in the raw water cooling loop before the impeller. If the zinc in there degrades enough to come off, it goes into the impeller and tears it up. This only happens on the port side where the thing is a bitch to get to. Did I mention that?

MAKE SURE YOU PAY ATTENTION TO THIS: The original air cleaners on the QSM-11's were brown plastic wanna-be airsep imatations. They had a problem with these on the 03 models where the screen on the inside would break up and go into the turbo (and pistons, etc.). Metal screens going into the turbo charger are bad. Make sure you pull both air cleaners off and look at the turbos for pitting on the blades. I replaced mine with real Walker Airseps. They have an OEM replacement for the QSM-11's and are very good quality and the filters can be cleaned (can't clean the Racors... have to replace the whole unit).

Other than that, the engines run great... Never had one break down (knock on wood).
 
Gary,

You post really confirms the opinion I've posted on the differences between Cat and Cummins several times........Cummins builds great engines, but they make design choices based on answering this question: "How can we do this in the most cost effective way to still achieve the indended function with acceptable results?".....whereas, others like Caterpillar and M.A.N. make their choices by answering a different question: "How is the very best way to achieve this function?".
 
Mr. Admin? Is there any way to block certain people from reading a post?

:wink:
 
Gary,

Excellent post, thank you for the overview, a very good friend of mine who is also a 48DB owner (with QSM's) had much of the same feedback but I found your post very helpful.

With all due respect to Frank, regarding CAT engines. I had a 1999 SR 40 DB with Cats - 3116s which were recalled. Though I liked the engines, when I could use the boat, my impression of the cats after going through 14 months of work on the engines, talking to the CAT Techs., working with Sea Ray, was and is, not great.

Sea Ray ended up taking the boat back however CAT and MAN are not immune to mistakes in product design and testing. CAT now has a bad rep. for boats, especially SR's between the late 90's and up until Sea Ray yanked CAT from their line up in 2002/3 - I believe the 56DB and the larger Dancers had the 800hp CATs until 2003?

The old 3208s were SOLID heavy but solid, but starting in the late 90's CAT didn't put enough R&D into testing their good engines in the marine environment (engine rooms). I know many boat brands that had major problems with CAT in the late 1990's and I know this is for most CAT engine models including the 3412's they too had some serious problems in 1997/1998.

I am not on one side or another as far as engine brands, in fact my favorite diesel engine is the DD 671ti (410hp).

For me CAT did themselves in - within the marine market - until very recently. The core CAT engines may have been good engines but the R&D behind putting them into the marine enviromment was akin to the launch of YUGO.

:grin:
 
If you don't like Caterpillar engines....dont buy a boat with them! Many of the oil burner crowd on this board with Cat's are quite happy with our choices.
 
jeljr said:
I know many boat brands that had major problems with CAT in the late 1990's and I know this is for most CAT engine models including the 3412's they too had some serious problems in 1997/1998.
Click to expand...

FWIW, There is an article in Boat U.S. magazine this month regarding a class action lawsuit brewing over Caterpillar Engines with allegedly defective coolers. I'm not a fan of lawsuits - but pretty interesting reading.
 
I struck a nerve!

Frank H. perhaps you didn't see the comment from "Frank" that I replied to?

"Cummins builds great engines, but they make design choices based on answering this question: "How can we do this in the most cost effective way to still achieve the indended function with acceptable results?".....whereas, others like Caterpillar and M.A.N. make their choices by answering a different question: "How is the very best way to achieve this function?"."

No worry about me buying CATs they were not available in the SR model year that I am seeking.

Jack
 
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