It's hard not to be attached to a sailboats engine, especially if you installed it and care for it yourself when it's sick.

This is an old style swirl chamber 4 cylinder engine, massive and heavy by todays standards. It makes a clatter at some lower rpms. I haven't adjusted the valves on this one but did on a previous and will soon. It's so easy, TDC does half of them, rotate, and the other half are loose. There's no timing chain, just gears, the simple Bosch pump is turned if it needs adjustment. The simple robust Bosch priming pump fills the filters and I never have an air problem. The injection pump has a manual governor that tops it at 2600 rpms to deliver 40 hp to countless pumps around the world and a few boats in the 70's and forklifts around the country. Easy stuff compared to it's higher auto application governor @3200-53 hp that was used in Datusn PU trucks in the 80s.

Most of my vibration comes from the rod linkage from the mechanical transmission to the old cockpit lever. When and if it goes(transmission), I'll go to a cable, that would help.

But if you dump the throttle all the way, it simply ticks(the engine) down below, barely audible. And then at higher throttles it has the sweetest, steady, low throated roar. I had a lobstermen once remark as I went by his boat, "She sounds nice", I kid you not.