Quick answer: Emergency marine diesel service means getting a qualified technician to your vessel fast when an engine has failed, alarmed or shut down — wherever the boat is. Scarano Marine responds from Miami and Fort Lauderdale to vessels throughout South Florida, the Keys, the Bahamas and the wider Caribbean, and we travel internationally when a vessel is stranded abroad. Call 786-717-6471 (Miami) or 954-763-9804 (Fort Lauderdale).
What to Have Ready When You Call
What we ask depends entirely on what the engine is doing — an overheat alarm sends the conversation one way, a no-start or a shutdown another. The engine model and serial number we need every time; the rest depends on the symptom. Having what you can in front of you before you dial saves time, and sometimes identifies the fault on the phone.
- Engine model and serial number. This is the one thing we need on every call. The serial number lets us pull the exact build specification, check warranty status, identify the correct parts before anyone leaves the shop, and look up what has been done to that engine previously. It’s on the data plate on the engine — photograph it and send it with your first message. Getting this wrong is how a technician arrives with the wrong parts.
- If the engine shut itself down, call before you restart it. Whether a restart is safe depends entirely on why it shut down. There is no single rule, and the alarm on the display doesn’t always tell the whole story. A two-minute phone call is worth more than a guess.
- How does the oil look, smell and read on the dipstick? Level first, then appearance. A milky, yellow-green emulsion instead of oil means coolant has reached the oil — stop running the engine and tell us immediately. A burnt or fuel-like smell tells us something different again.
- What is the coolant level in the expansion tank? Low coolant points the diagnosis in a very different direction from full coolant with a high-temperature alarm.
- What does the raw-water strainer look like? A blocked strainer is one of the most common causes of an overheat, and one of the few a crew can often clear themselves.
- Is water coming out of the exhaust? No water at the exhaust means the raw-water side has stopped moving — impeller, strainer, seacock or pump.
- Send photos. Any alarm or fault code on the display, and any smoke coming off the engine or out of the exhaust. Colour and volume of smoke tell a technician a great deal before anyone is aboard.
- Is there fluid in the bilge? Oil, coolant or fuel in the bilge tells us there’s a leak and roughly where to start looking.
- Where will the boat be docked? We come to the vessel, so we need to know where it will be when we arrive.
Then call. You don’t need all of it — tell us what you have and what the engine is doing, and we’ll ask for whatever else the symptom calls for. From there we can usually tell you whether this is something you can run in on, something that needs a technician today, or something that needs a tow.
What Emergency Marine Diesel Service Looks Like at Scarano Marine
We do not operate a waterfront facility. All of our work is performed at your vessel — dockside, at the marina, or at whichever boatyard the boat is hauled in. For an emergency that is the point: the engine is where the engine is, and moving a disabled vessel is usually the most expensive part of the problem.
When you call, you get a real conversation with someone who knows MAN and John Deere engines, not a dispatcher taking a message. We will ask what the engine did, what the alarm said, and what you’ve already checked. Often that conversation alone identifies the fault — and occasionally it saves you a service call entirely, because the answer is a strainer, a cap or a breaker.
If a technician is needed, we tell you honestly when we can have one on your boat.
Why We Don’t Advertise a Guaranteed Response Time
Plenty of shops publish a number — two hours, four hours, same day, guaranteed. We don’t, because on any given morning our technicians are already on vessels, and a promise we can’t keep is worse than no promise at all. A captain who was told “two hours” and waited six is in a worse position than one who was told the truth at the start.
What we will do is give you a straight answer on the phone: whether we can get someone to you today, tomorrow, or when the realistic window is — and if we can’t get to you in the time your situation demands, we’ll say so rather than keep you waiting on us. That honesty is the whole reason owners and captains keep our number.
A Saturday Call in Marathon
A 110-foot Riva Dolcevita running MTU 16V2000 M96L engines was in Marathon on a Saturday, headed further south, when a raw-water leak developed on a heat exchanger. A vessel that size in transit, on a weekend, in the middle of the Keys is about as inconvenient as a cooling fault gets.
Our team responded and the vessel kept its schedule.
That call is a fair picture of what emergency work actually involves — not heroics, just people who know the platform getting to the boat with the right parts and finding the failure instead of guessing at it.
Emergencies Outside the United States
A breakdown in the Bahamas or the Caribbean is a different problem from a breakdown in Miami. Local help may not be certified on your engines, the parts are not on the island, and a vessel sitting waiting for a solution is costing money every day.
We travel. We book flights quickly and we bring the parts with us, which is usually the difference between days and weeks. We have worked vessels in the Bahamas, throughout the Caribbean, and in Central and South America — including warranty work carried out abroad on behalf of the manufacturer.
If your vessel is stranded outside the country, call and tell us where it is and what it’s doing. We’ll tell you honestly whether flying a technician to you is the right answer or whether there’s a better option closer to you.
What an Authorized Dealer Brings to a Breakdown
In an emergency, dealer status stops being a credential and becomes a practical advantage:
- Genuine parts on the shelf in Miami. The most common failure parts for MAN and John Deere marine engines are in stock locally, not ordered and waited on.
- Factory diagnostic tools. MAN-cats and John Deere Service ADVISOR read stored fault history, not just the alarm currently showing — which often reveals that the engine has been warning about this for weeks.
- Direct technical escalation. When a fault is genuinely unusual, we have access to MAN and John Deere technical support and service bulletins that independent shops do not.
- Warranty protection. If your engine is in warranty, repairs carried out by an authorized dealer keep that coverage intact. An emergency repair by an unauthorized shop can void it at exactly the wrong moment.
Scarano Marine is the authorized MAN and John Deere dealer for South Florida. Our founder, Adolfo Scarano, came up as a Merchant Navy chief engineer and spent twenty years with an MTU distributor, including factory certification in Friedrichshafen and in Michigan. Our technicians hold current factory training on the MAN and John Deere platforms and are separately certified on MTU engines. When you call at seven on a Sunday morning, that is who is answering.
Common Emergency Questions
My engine shut down on its own. Can I restart it to get home?
It depends on why it shut down, and that is not something to guess at from the helm. Some shutdowns are protecting the engine from damage in progress, and restarting makes a repairable fault much worse. Others come from a sensor or electrical fault where the engine is undamaged and a restart is reasonable. Call us with the alarm and what the engine was doing, and we’ll tell you which situation you’re in.
Do you work weekends and after hours?
Yes. Both locations take emergency calls outside normal hours. We can’t promise a technician is free at any given moment, but the phone is answered and you’ll get a straight answer.
How much does an emergency call cost?
It depends on where the vessel is, what the fault turns out to be and whether parts are needed. We’ll discuss it with you before anyone is dispatched. What we won’t do is arrive, diagnose, and hand you a surprise.
The other shop already replaced parts and the problem is back. What now?
That’s a common call. Repeat failures usually mean the original diagnosis was wrong, and the fix is to diagnose the system properly rather than replace the next part on the list. See our marine engine second opinion page, and the V12-1800 case study for what happens when it isn’t caught.
Call Now
Miami: 786-717-6471
Fort Lauderdale: 954-763-9804
E-mail: info@scaranomarine.com
Serving vessels in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach, the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, the Caribbean and Central and South America. Se habla español.
Related: Marine Diesel Diagnostics · Marine Diesel Engine Problems · Marine Engine Case Studies
This page is general information, not a repair instruction or a diagnosis of your specific engine. Full disclaimer.