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Anyone know please about the Barrus Shire 2000 engine? pros and cons


aristorias

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I am looking at a possible boat to buy with engine listed as Barrus Shire 2000. The boat was built in the year 2000, but according to the web, Barrus had an engine model called Barrus Shire 2000 then.   The web was not helpful with any further information about this model so I do not know if I would have problems later with manuals and parts. I have seen on another post for the Shire 2002 that it may be a model 45 engine?

I would be grateful if anyone out there who has a Shire 2000 could tell me a little more about it.

 

Thank you 

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I had a boat with a Barrus Shire 40hp from 2002 which was a 2000cc engine. I bought it in 2006 and sold it last year. It was a good engine, always ran well, started well, serviced annually and never required any major work on it. The only issue was the 70Amp alternator did not have a large enough engine pulley so only produced 45Amp, we got a bigger engine pulley and larger alternator, there are several people selling upgrades for these older Shire engines. The one thing to beware of is they can smoke a bit at idle which clears under load, I think this is to do with the injection design, so check this rather than immediately thinking the engine is worn if you see it at tickover.

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1 hour ago, PeterF said:

I had a boat with a Barrus Shire 40hp from 2002 which was a 2000cc engine. I bought it in 2006 and sold it last year. It was a good engine, always ran well, started well, serviced annually and never required any major work on it. The only issue was the 70Amp alternator did not have a large enough engine pulley so only produced 45Amp, we got a bigger engine pulley and larger alternator, there are several people selling upgrades for these older Shire engines. The one thing to beware of is they can smoke a bit at idle which clears under load, I think this is to do with the injection design, so check this rather than immediately thinking the engine is worn if you see it at tickover.

 

Correct, by and large it is, they are direct injection and they  normally start easily form cold but can smoke a bit at low speed because of a lack of swirl in the cylinder (as opposed to a lot of swirl in an indirect injection swirl or pre-combustion chamber).

 

The Shire range are Yanamar engines and are normally well thought of, especially in the offshore market.

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Normally a good reliable engine as long as it has been looked after. The only one thing that was a bit of a problem on some of the early engines is that they had twin alternators, but both were operated from a single belt. One belt would come from the crankshaft then around the water pump and then also both alternators. In my experience this was never very successful and would wear the belt quite quickly. The later models had two belts for the twin alternators.

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They must be good as you often see Barrus Shire engines in hire fleets. Probably doing 2000 hrs a year. In fact I have hired a couple of boats with Barrus Shire engines and they seem to run very nicely. I can vouch for them being a bit smoky at idle, an occasional annoyance in a narrow lock on a calm day when it can get a bit hazy down there! I've often wondered why so thanks for the explanation @Tony Brooks and @PeterF

Not to be confused with Barrus Shanks engines which are Chinese made, and poorer quality from what I've read.  

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3 hours ago, Steve56 said:

Normally a good reliable engine as long as it has been looked after. The only one thing that was a bit of a problem on some of the early engines is that they had twin alternators, but both were operated from a single belt. One belt would come from the crankshaft then around the water pump and then also both alternators. In my experience this was never very successful and would wear the belt quite quickly. The later models had two belts for the twin alternators.

 

I could not believe what I was looking at when I saw that at a boat show. It's against all engineering principles so it made me a bit suspicious about the Barrus marinisation of the Yanmar engines.

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