In the ‘good ole days’ Lister Petter engines were fitted to everything. Dumpers, mixers, rollers, generators all had them fitted and although they were noisy, smoky and leaked like a sieve they went on for years and years with the minimum amount of maintenance. You could even argue they worked better on a 50/50 water and diesel mix and the engine oil would take an hour to drain out the sump as it was that thick and contaminated it came out like treacle.
The reason why these engines could be treated like this was because they weighed twice as much as a comparable horsepower engine now and the engineering tolerances were that big they would still work when they were 95% worn out!
The modern Yanmar engine is not like that though, the days of chucking fuel into a combustion chamber and whatever wasn’t burnt came out as black sooty smoke from the exhaust are over. The modern Yanmar engine, whether it be the single cylinder LV series or the water-cooled TNV series, are complex pieces of machinery that require regular maintenance to pass the stringent emissions regulations. Engines have gone from being a relatively in-expensive commodity to probably the most expensive single item in a piece of construction equipment. So why do some people compromise the integrity of their Yanmar engine and try and save a few pounds on cheap filters?
Whatever the seller tells you, cheap after-market Yanmar filters are not the same as genuine ones. There is a price difference for a reason. They make look the same but the fact that they fit doesn’t mean they are as good. On an oil filter the paper is not the same quality, it doesn’t filter down to the same micron as the genuine Yanmar one and there is probably half as much in there meaning the filtered surface area can be half as big. On the fuel filters it is the same thing. Modern Yanmar fuel injection systems are designed to run on clean filtered fuel to meet emissions. If your fuel is not filtered down to the correct micron levels the Yanmar injection equipment will wear quickly and a costly repair or replacement of the pump and injectors is required. You are looking at around £1000 to get a pump repaired and £1500 to get it replaced. Is it worth buying a non-genuine filter from eBay or the multitude of on-line so called ‘engineering suppliers’ saving yourself £4 every 250 hours worth of use? Your Thwaites 1 tonne dumper has a Yanmar 3TNV76 engine and is an investment of £14,000. Is it really worth trying to save yourself 1.6 pence per hour of use on using a cheap after-market filter?
Genuine Yanmar filters are slightly more expensive for a reason. Don’t compromise, keep your Yanmar engine serviced with genuine Yanmar filters. That is unless of course you can’t afford the extra 1.6 pence per hour……………………….
