This is going to be painful

davidbrooks

I have been pretty preoccupied with all kinds of projects with a new to me house from last summer.  I moved into a place on the water and the list of things i have done is pretty crazy.  So the boat got neglected a bit.  I maybe used 50 gallons of fuel last year.  So, i get a break from home projects and go to do some maintenance on the boat.  Had to replace a water pump and took it out for a test run.  Couldn't get above 12 mph.  Both engines started fine but i didn't have any more HP past half throttle.  So started checking out the typical items.  Checked wires, plugs, distributor and then climbed in the bay and scraped 2 months of barnacles off the bottom and prop.  Took it out for another test run and when i went to start it my port engine wouldn't turn over very easy.  No problem i thought.  Batteries need to be replaced anyway.  Put it on emergency power and it started up.  Took it out and it seemed to run much better.  Got up to 30 mph and was cruising along for about 20 min when port engine lost power.  Back to barely getting up to 12mph and the port engine couldnt do above 2400 rpm.  First thought was fuel.  Pulled to the side.  Switched fuel to run both engines off the starboard tank and took off again.  It seemed a little better but still not good.  Pulled up to my old marina to get gas and port engine died.  Now it wouldn't even turn over.  Pulled into an empty slip.  Bought two new starter batteries and still the same.  Waited for it to cool down and pulled the plugs.  Ugh.  One side had water in the pistons.  Water in the oil. Sprayed a bunch of wd40 in the cylinders and then I ran a compression test.  

#8  40

#6  180

#4  140

#2   95

#7    0

#5    0

#3    30

#1   180

Basically it looks like i came in on two cylinders.  My reading of the numbers tell me i likely have a blown head gasket between #5 and #7.  Worst case scenario is a cracked block.  Best case is broken rings?  Or am i missing something completely.  I have a mechanic that can't get to it till next week at the earliest and i am going to see if there is anything i can do to help speed up the process.  I am not sure if they are going to try and pull the heads on the boat or if they are going straight to pulling the engine.  This sort of feels like the engine is coming out.   What are everyone's thoughts?  Start up an only fans page?

rasbury

Wow, above my pay grade but sure does not sound good...@PickleRick needs to chime in plus some others as well that know these motors..

captkevin

How many hours on the motor?

YYZRC

I hear feet are really popular on OF. You had a pedicure lately??

Any reason you don’t suspect risers/manifolds as the problem?

aero3113

My first thought was risers/manifolds like @YYZRC states. They can cause the hard to start then no start issue. But…. If they were leaking after your last run from last season the water could’ve been sitting in the cylinders all that time and caused some corrosion in the cylinders.

davidbrooks

Manifolds and elbows def helped to cause this. No risers. I was gonna do them last year but got overcome with house projects. They were on my list to do this summer with new bottom paint. Engines have  700 hrs.  How do I determine if the rings, pistons.valves etc are damaged. 

PickleRick

With a blown head gasket between two cylinders I'd still expect some compression, not zero.  

If you can have someone spin the engine over by hand while you use a long screw driver to verify the pistons are moving. Do this with all the spark plugs out.  If they are not the engine is coming out.  

If the pistons move then I'd pull the heads to see what's going on.    I don't know if you're in fresh, salt or brackish water but if it's not fresh water that changes everything.   If salt water got in the motor I'd be willing to bet they'd pull it.  I don't have any experience with salt but it seems to do damage very quickly. 

Since shops charge by the hour and efficiency is needed this time of year they may pull the motors anyway for a more thorough inspection.  I'm pretty sure most marinas can yank a motor in an hour or less.  The tear down is much easier on an engine stand rather than the endless treks up and down a ladder to the boat.  And you don't have to worry about greasy finger and foot prints in the shop like you do a nice white rinker.  

Dream_Inn

Sure doesn't sound good. (I was just thinking about you the other day when we went past your place after the blue angels show, wondering how things are going). 

FYI, David is in brackish water, so not the best, but not the worst either.  But it does sound like it may have been sitting a while.  If the pistons move, you may have saved something spraying some wd40.  Keep us updated.

davidbrooks

Local mechanic is telling me the safest thing to do is a long block.  Otherwise we are basically pulling everything apart and either sending it out for testing or just replacing.  By the time we factor all that in we are getting very close to the cost of just replacing the block.  This keeps my bolt on parts such as starter, alternator, steering pump etc.. We just swap them over.  He is going to look into availability and work up a quote for me but i think this is going to be in the $8k range.

YYZRC

Sounds like a smart approach. Time burns money so fast. 

PickleRick

The nice thing about Chevy motors is the long block price.   If I had bank to spend it would be hard for me to resist dropping in some 6.0 LS motors in the place of a 5.7!!!!   

davidbrooks

@PickleRick unfortunately that is the dilemma. I would love to actually do both engines now.  Even if i went up to a 383.  I am worried that if i went up to a 6.0 LS at 340 hp each i would also have to change my outdrives and props.  Heck i was thinking about putting in roller rockers just for a few more HP but i don't think i can swing it.  I have elbows and manifolds on order for both engines so that is going add another $3k to the bill.

PickleRick

I'm assuming you have bravo 2 or 3 drives which hold up to big block torque, just don't slam the throttles down lol.  So youd likely be fine there.  Alphas certainly wouldn't like 300+ hp.


But for more hp there is a chance you'd have to reprop to stay in your wot rpm range.  


The good news is many report being on plane quicker and cruising rpms being lower after they add as little as 30 or 40 hp. 


Being two engines, those parts add up quickly but we're all fast to give you upgrade ideas when we're not the ones paying for it!

YYZRC

If I was spending your money I would also go with digital throttle/shift. 

davidbrooks

I want to go test the compression on the good engine....i am afraid of what i might find though.  

DanD2

Did you run into a freeze over the winter months?

davidbrooks

@DanD2 No we had a pretty mild winter and i fully winterized.  The boat ran great when i first splashed at the end of March.  Then it sat.  It was starting to give me problems last year but i just thought it was cause i was not on a lift anymore.  In reality it was a little of that and a whole lot of "I should of replaced manifolds and elbows last year"  It is possible that i had an issue with a cylinder before that.  I am going to need to see the engine to determine how bad it was.  Popping the heads and looking at the cylinders is going to tell me a lot.  New long block, swap out parts from old engine, reinstall and test...$12k.  Overall, they are figuring 14hrs of work.

rasbury

Ugh...that is painfull..when I shopped for our boat, closed cooling was a must. When I pulled the motor I replaced the elbows and risers but did not have to worry about the manifold. Most of my boating is the driveway or fresh water.

Hope you can get her back to pushing water soon...

davidbrooks

New engine is going back in this week.  Hopefully they/we can get it wrapped up by mid week.  The issue now is that with almost 2 months of no rain we are going to get 4 days of it.  So that might slow things down some.  I will hopefully have the new manifolds and elbows delivered tomorrow.  When i pulled off the manifolds on the good engine this week i decided to do a quick compression test.  This was on a cold engine.  

#8  160, #6  140, #4  170, #2   170, #7    185, #5    200, #3    165, #1   180.  The cylinder #5 reading at 200 was weird.  Even brand new it shouldn't be that high.  The mechanic just said that it was strange but that he would just redo the compression test later after i had a chance to warm up the engine.  The other cylinder at 140 was still within specs especially if you discount the 200 reading.  

davidbrooks

I am back in the water. New long block, new starter, manifolds,elbows,anodes and bottom paint. Took it home in the rain and it ran great. Now just have to figure how to pay the bill.

PickleRick

I hear onlyfans can be profitable 

davidbrooks

@PickleRick I made that joke and def got a few headshakes...as in " did that ol man just say what I think he said". 

captkevin

glad to hear you are back on the water.

davidbrooks

I am also. Now just going over all the hose clamps and looking for leaks. Question for those that use the wider T clamps. Do you still double them up?  I did the manifolds and bottom painting myself. I can tell you it was a task. Enough to realize I couldn't do that job every day. My back needed a weeks rest after that. I asked the mechanic if he also rebuilt out drives and his answer was pretty interesting. He said that they stopped rebuilding out drives about 10 years ago. As a mechanic it just wasn't worth it. They only recommend that people simply replace them now. He even said that as long as we weren't getting water in oil there wasn't really any reason to do it. Which was interesting to me. His answer was that the cost of a new outdrive wasn't actually that much more than what the rebuild costs would be. And you get a full 3-year warranty out of it.

PickleRick

It's no shocker that he doesn't rebuild them with the cost of labor and risk he takes in warranty in 2023.   I don't even rebuild small engine carbs in 2023 much less something as tasking as an outdrive.  

PickleRick

captkevin said:

glad to hear you are back on the water.

Assure your audience that dad's are allowed to make this joke.