Bowman intercoolers save the day and thousands of dollars!

Mark Tripi had a problem. He needed two intercoolers to replace failed units on two diesel engines on his boat. The problem was that having scoured the country, only one OEM replacement was available anywhere in the USA!

The other problem was the price – $5,000.00 US – and he needed two!

Winding the story back, Mark is the proud owner of a very fine offshore sport fishing boat – a Pursuit 3000 Express; one of Pursuits most successful designs and a vessel capable of running with much larger boats in ‘blue water’ fishing tournaments.

One of the reasons for the boats popularity is its diesel engines –  two Cummins 4BTA, 250 hp units which endow it with performance, fuel economy and reliability – the latter being extremely important for any boat owner when they’re miles offshore!

Mark’s boat is a 1999 model and in excellent condition, no doubt due to the strict maintenance regime he employs on the vessel. With its 20^th anniversary approaching, he decided to remove it from the water over winter for some refurbishment. Removing both engines from the hull, closer inspection revealed the original intercoolers had failed and were leaking seawater into the combustion chambers – not great news for an engines health and definitely bad news for the bank balance – as Mark found out!

‘’The problem was that OEM parts were no longer available’’ said Mark. ‘’I couldn’t even find a company that could rebuild my leaking intercoolers, which left me with a big problem. Fortunately, I continued my search online and found Bowman. I checked out the specification of their charge air coolers and reckoned their FG 100 units would do the job fine. I ordered two from their distributor in Florida and the total cost was about $1800.00. Was I relieved at that saving!’’

The Cummins engines feature a cold start air heater and temperature sensor which Mark wanted to retain, so he set about adapting the Bowman units to accept the original Cummins equipment. After some time designing and fabricating adaptor plates, the new Bowman units charge air coolers were fitted to the Cummins engines and his work paid off.

‘’It turned out fantastic’’ said Mark, ‘’we sea trailed her in the Spring and the new coolers worked flawlessly. No issues, no loss of power and no new engines*. In fact if you were unfamiliar with the engine model, you would never even know these Bowman units were not the original equipment!’’

Bowman marine specification charge air coolers are readily available in a range of sizes to suit engines ranging from 50 kW to 1200 kW, for heat loads up to 100 kW. And, being based on Bowman’s proven ‘shell & tube’ design, they’re easy to maintain and extremely reliable in service.

For customers considering replacing OEM intercoolers, Bowman can accurately select the correct charge air cooler for the application, using bespoke computer aided selection software.

*With only one OEM replacement intercooler available and not being able have the original units repaired, the only other option could have been to replace the engines had the Bowman charge air coolers not been available, which would have involved considerable expense to the customer!