Cat 3412TA 1000hp by Pantropic

Early this year I purchased a boat that was built in 1992 and powered by what was the early marine version of the venerable Cat 3412. The engines began life from Caterpillar as Industrial engines (38S blocks) rated at 750hp but were marinized by Pantropic and given an E rating of 1,000hp for pleasure use.

I understand that these engines have earned a good repuation over the years for being reliable and providing good service life at 1,000hp out of 27 liters. Unfortunately, it seems that these engines are not very common these days in the Cat marine engine world. They are not nearly as well known as the later and incredibly popular electronic "E" versions of the 3412 that were produced directly from Caterpillar after the success of the Pantropic modified 3412C's.

After Pantropic modified these engines for marine use they created a parts book of exactly what parts they used for the conversion but that book is no longer being produced. I have searched the internet and have not been able to find a copy of this book anywhere. Does anyone have or know anyone that has a copy of this book? I would like to purchase a copy if possible or even just have a copy of the book made at a local print shop if someone would be so kind as to allow me to do so.

Any help in this matter is greatly appreciated. Thank You!

Capt J, I thank you for the suggestion but actually Pantropic Power's Headquarters in Miami is the first call that I made when I started looking for a copy of the book. They no longer have a copy themselves and they are the ones who told me that it is no longer available. Unfortunately, about four years ago their copy of the book "grew legs" one night and disappeared and they have been looking for it ever since.

K1W1, Thank you for your response. You are correct and Pantropic is quite familiar with these engines in their various locations in south FL, but it would be so much easier for me to find and order parts if I had a parts book that listed the numbers.

In actuality, these engines are the same as the 38S block Industrial engines except for the heat exchangers, exhaust manifolds, turbos and water piping. There is an update to these engines that converts the dry turbos to wet turbos and includes larger heat exchangers and new exhaust manifolds etc. which makes them basically the same as the newer factory Caterpillar 3JK engines, but the parts are quite pricey for the update.

Pantropic told me of a customer who recently rebuilt his engines like these that had 14,000 hours! That owner said that he would never get rid of these engines as they had lasted him 15 years. He did purchase all the update parts during his rebuild and is now ready for another 15+ years of boating.

With that in mind, it is difficult to justify upgrading to the wet turbos and larger heat exchangers because longevity is obviolusly not an issue with these engines. It is more the added safety of the wet turbos, a larger safety margin for cooling at very high speeds and the ease of parts availability from any Caterpillar dealer.

Thank you K1W1 and Loren!

K1W1, please do not bother any of those old boys or burn any favors for me at this point because luckily I am not stuck at the moment. This is merely due dilligence for any issues that will come up in the future now that I own these engines. Luckily they were completely rebuilt about 800 hours ago, but the previous owner elected not to update to the wet turbo's and larger heat exchangers, etc.

Loren, I just tried Jeff Dana but he was not at his desk. I'll try again later.

I just made my plans to attend FLIBS again this year and It would be my pleasure to meet you guys and buy some drinks. Which watering hole is your favorite, one of the beer barges or maybe the bar at Bahia Mar? I looked around Bahia Mar last year and didn't notice anything YF, but maybe I didn't know what I was looking for or where to look.

FYI, I bought the old Patent Pending, later Lady Patricia and now the Sweet Melissa. Many will remember her lines as she is a custom Tom Fexas design built by Trident (I know, I know) in Tampa, FL but was one of only two Tridents built that were designed by Fexas. From what I understand the quality of Trident was very high for the early boats like mine, but the last boat or two were not as fortunate.

Here she is:

I would like to apologize to YF for not resizing the above image of my boat down to the 640x480 forum limit. I accidentally posted it too large earlier and resized it down, but not enough and now the "edit" button has disappeared. I tried clearing cache and changing browsers thinking that may be why, but still no "edit" button yet. I will keep trying to reduce the size but I'm thinking that there is probably a time limit or number of times limit to editing posts. SORRY GUYS!

Lars, Thank you for resizing the pic for me. Unfortunately, I did not do it properly myself the first time and I ran out of time to fix it.

I must agree that this is one of the better Fexas designs. The hull is incredibly efficient (a classic Fexas attribute) and does well with lower HP than it's comparables to achieve the same speeds while burning significantly less fuel. It is a good sea boat and rides flat in the water at any speed with very little bow rise at all. The lines are pleasing to the eye and come across as somewhat timeless today because it could be mistaken for a much newer boat. Hopefully the lines will continue to stand the test of time as they have so far.

I know that she was at FLIBS in 1992 to make her debut, then was officially delivered to the owner in January 1993 (on my 23rd birthday) who was a very experienced Yachtsman that came from a decade of cruising in his Hatteras 58 Yachtfish which happens to be my last boat as well. He fell in love with the silhouette of "Time", a ~125' Fexas design from 1988 that was built by Palmer Johnson so he contracted Tom Fexas to build him a boat with similar lines but under 80' to be owner operated. He and Tom Fexas truly created a masterpiece in my opinion because the level of thought and attention to detail is unparallelled in anything in this size and age range.

I believe that a good measure of a custom boat's success is how long the original owner keeps the boat. This original owner kept the boat and actively cruised it for 11 years from Canada to the Caribbean, only selling the boat because he had "gone everywhere he wanted to go on the water and did everything he ever wanted to do on a boat". Sounded like a good reason to sell to me!

Carl, Thank you so much! It is wonderful to have a boat that is admired by YachtForums Royalty! I am familiar with Transition and have admired her sleek lines as well. She was on the market with a fresh refit when I was looking and although the look attracted me, the fact that she was built in aluminum and had Arneson surface drives were the two main things that deterred me from pursuing her. I did not see her in person until after I had closed on my boat and was headed up the ICW between Jupiter inlet and Stuart where she was at a private dock. A truly beautiful boat, I hope her new owners appreciate what a unique and special boat that they have.

The original owner of my boat and Tom Fexas had Palmer Johnson bid on the build in aluminum, but luckily for me they chose to go with composite construction because I would not have bought her in aluminum. I am far too comfortable with the lower maintenance of composite.

Stan, she is indeed much more racey than any of my previous Hatt's but what can I say? Just like a beautiful woman, she absolutely seduced me with her curves and lines and then I read the spec sheet and saw rebuilt Industrial Cat 3412's, low hour Industrial Northern Lights 30kw gensets with 1200rpm John Deere engines, accommodations for 10 in 5 staterooms with no separate crew quarters (I am an owner-operator), wide beam of 21'6" and a shallow draft of 4'6" fully loaded, 2500 gallons of fuel capacity, hinged radar arch for reduced clearance of 16'3", new top of the line electronics and a full interior refit including a kegerator in the salon! I still cannot believe that nobody else scooped it up when the ask dipped below 7 figures when the boat market bottomed out.

To answer your question I actually gained elbow room because of the 21'6" beam compared to the 58 Yachtfish that I had previously. That boat only had a 15'10" beam, and even the 1996+ Hatteras 74's that I thought for sure would be my next boat only have the standard Hatteras 18'2" beam, which in my opinion is relatively narrow for a 70+' boat. I like at least a 25% beam-to-length ratio and this boat exceeds that general rule.

While the sleekness does not allow for quite as large a flybridge as other vessels of this size, it is more than adequate for 10-12 people. Besides, I rather like the way the flybridge is situated more aft giving her the feel of a big sportfish and is therefore easy to back down. About the only other area where a true flush deck would have given some more room over this raised pilothouse design is the fact that there is no dining table in front of the salon. It makes the salon seem smaller because it is not one long open room, but in actuality it is about the same size salon as a comparable 74 or 75 Hatt without side decks, but this boat has side decks. I personally think that a dining room table is a waste of space in a boat of this size range because you only use it at most 1 hour per day if you have a formal dinner every day. For us, most meals are usually taken casually on the aft deck, the dinette or in the salon that has a large Anigre and Paduak hi-lo coffee table that raises to double as a dining room table that seats 6.

All boats are a compromise, but this one truly seems to me made for me. While I used to have occasional dreams of having a boat custom built in this size range someday if I could ever afford to do so, I now realize that I could never have executed a build nearly as well as Tom Fexas, the original owner and Trident did on this build.

Can you tell that I am genuinely pleased with the purchase and completely in love with this boat?