bbig problem

[yachts]

ok shredded the impeller. pegged the temp gague at 220.. had just launched the boat. probably ran it for maybe 2 mins. turned it off hand cranked it back on trailer.

replaced impelller now it wont turn over at all. pulled starter its ok. been told engine maybe locked up..

2 questions.. guy wants to pull tranny and try to turn engine over from fly wheel. then do compresson test when its hot.. does this make sense?


said if it ruined engine ill have to get a lng block and rebuild engine.. total cost about 2 grand......

do these two options make sense

[dickboxers]

That sucks bro. When you changed your impeller did it look like the picture i just posted earlier. Sorry i have no answer to your question. Good luck

[DAFF]

Pull the plugs and watch for water. You might of blown a exhaust manifold gasket and hydrolocked the engine with water. With the plugs removed try to move the engine at the crank or use the starter. As for the marine mechanic friend....i wouldn't use him. I not licensed, but to pull the trans to get to the flywheel seems a tad on the agressive side of the pocket book. You could achieve the same results by pulling the starter and using a screwdriver on the flywheel teeth.

[michael hunter]

I agree with Daff. There is no way you damaged the engine to the point of lock up in 2 Min's. Checkout the hoses also they can be damaged by the heat.

[wotan2525]

Pull the plugs and use the bolt on the harmonic balancer to try and turn it over. Something isn't adding up.

[yachts]

Ok here is the deal took the plugs out used the starter to turn over the engine.. lots of water coming out of the plugholes...had a mechanic come by he said 2 things cracked heads or head gasket.. he is a local mechanic and a friend of my daughters.. he spent 3 hours today with me taking off the exhaust manifold and the heads.. Taking the heads to get machined flat tomorrow and he will install them back on monday or tuesday....

Question for all you guys.. the guy who did the impeller replacement (a marine mechanic different from my daughters friend) told me my battery was low because it wouldnt fire the starter and to charge it ..asked me the next day how the boat ran,, seemed very interested.
he was doing the impeller replacement as a side job. he nevr said when i picked the boat up any chance of it being hydrolocked just a dead battery... does that seem fishy to anyone? as a marine mechanic wouldnt hydrolock be a possibility and wouldnt you check to make sure it turned over? ( side note I looked at buying this guys boat before i bought the one i did)

HE also wanted to pull the tranny to try and Free up the engine..but after my daughters friend and i got the water out of the cylinders it turned fine. why would he be soo anxious to pull the tranny..

whats everyones opinion?

[Salty87]

sounds fairly flakey. if the engine won't crank, takes 2 seconds to check the battery's charge with a multi-meter. you're getting a first class education in why most of us do as much of our own engine work as possible. you are the only person you can really trust.

it's lazy to blame the battery without checking its charge but if working from assumptions it makes more sense to suspect battery than water in the cylinders. but then again, as an owner you wouldn't work from assumptions because it's your boat and your a$$ possibly getting stranded if a bad assumption is made.

the label marine mechanic doesn't necessarily mean much. pulling the tranny = more hours for him. inboard engines are very simple. marine mechanic sometimes means outboard motor specialist.

[haugy]

First guy is trying to rack up the hours in cost.

Second guy sounds like he knows what he's doing.

[wotan2525]

Hydrolocking is fairly uncommon.... but.... diagnosing a "no-crank" as a dead battery and then advocating pulling the tranny without at least pulling out jumper cables is baaaaaaaad. I'd steer clear of this guy. At best he is incompetent, at worst: a crook.

[sydneyACE]

Let us know how it goes.

I had almost the exact same problem as you.
Toasted my impeller. Engine got hot. Wouldn't crank easily.
Pulled plugs. Starter pumped the water out.
On marine engines, overheating is commonly accompanied by water in the cylinders and hydro-locking.

It's too bad the second mechanic didn't do a leak-down test and compression test with you before tearing-down the engine. His diagnosis is pretty sound, but... When my engine did the same thing, I though I had the same situation, but decided to check compression and do a leak-down just to be sure before doing a tear-down.
The compression check and leak-down were both good, so I knew I didn't have a blown head gasked or cracked head.

Sometimes when an engine gets hot, the heads/block will warp just a little-bit to allow water into the cylinders, but will return to their normal shape after they cool.

So in my situation, I didn't have to replace the gaskets or machine the heads.
Hopefully the machine work isn't costing you too much.

As for pulling the trannie, I have no idea why he would want to do that. The first thing you should do if the engine wont turn-over is check the battery/connections. The second thing is to pull the spark-plugs. He should have been able to figure it-out at step-2.
If it still doesn't turn-over with a good battery and no plugs, THEN you can start looking for "the big one". Even if that was the case, you can get pretty good access to the flywheel through the starter hole and behind the dust-cover on the bottom.

Good luck, sounds like you will be back on the water soon-enough!

[docdrs]

The first thing you have to determine is , how did you shred the impeller. It is fine to fix the result , but if you do not know the cause then you have learned nothing. I have yet to hear that you fixed the initial problem. Yet what is the motor and hours and year and make? A water strainer will save your impeller as welll as let you see water is flowing into your motor. Why would anyone not have one of these? Not to be a dick , but I hear this story over and over.

[DAFF]

One thing I hate are mechanics which just throw parts at a problem without diagnosing and second proving thier diagnosis with some simple tests. There have been way to many parts replaced just for a hunch which turns out to be not the true issue at hand. I am sure your other mechanic would of done a compression test on the engine if it was on his dime.....

Perhaps the other mechanic wanted to pull the trans to replace the clutch......




















LOL.....

[yachts]

Got the heads machined. Evrything back together except the exhaust manifolds. We will finish tomorrow, put it back on the lake tomorrow night.. Ian pretty fortunate. 100 and 20 bucks for head gasket kit and new plugs , 50$ to machine the heads and 250 for the new mechanic...my boat is an 87 saltare 454 , 460 hours

[yachts]

well everyone. put the whole engine back together.. started first turn and we are going to the lake tomorrow....gonna change the oil first thing.. i bought one of those little oil pumps that remove it via the dipstick.. is there any tricks or anything to know before i do it?

[docdrs]

well everyone. put the whole engine back together.. started first turn and we are going to the lake tomorrow....gonna change the oil first thing.. i bought one of those little oil pumps that remove it via the dipstick.. is there any tricks or anything to know before i do it?

There is a quickdrain line coming from the bottom of the oil pan......I suggest you use this rather then the dipstick.......lets just say the plastic pipe can get stuck in the tube and it does not get all the oil out.

[Salty87]

that's great news.

my 87 saltare doesn't have the drain hose. not enough room between the oil pan and the hull.

warm the engine/oil, but not totally hot, before using the pump. be careful with the tube. refill only the amount of oil you remove. check level and add more if necessary.

the oil filter will be fun since you can't get all of the oil out. be prepared to clean up a slight mess. i've tried a milk jug cut in half to catch the oil but it's never really worked well. don't know why i've never tried an automotive oil tub.

[yachts]

got to the lake took it out .. started getting hot..realized the fresh water intake hose fell off shut it down got to 200 degrees reattached.. ran all day great between 140 and 160 .. is this normal operating range?

[wotan2525]

Yep. Sounds fixed!

[wotan2525]

that's great news.

my 87 saltare doesn't have the drain hose. not enough room between the oil pan and the hull.



I installed an aux drain hose when I rebuilt my engine. Ended up being banged into the hull so many times that the fitting cracked the oil pan. Ended up pulling the oil pan, repairing the crack, put the oil plug back in and then rigged up a new fitting for the the aux drain hose at the rear corner of the oil pan -- this time mounted to the side. Seems to work great.