3.0L Mercruiser Alpha One Water in Oil

achris

More fish than mountain goat
Joined
May 19, 2004
Messages
27,468
Oh, that's classic for firing order incorrect!

Chris....
 

achris

More fish than mountain goat
Joined
May 19, 2004
Messages
27,468
Valves overtightened... Redo your valve setup. Find zero lash, by lifting, not turning!
 

kaeden1100

Cadet
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
27
Okay, so just figured I'd give everyone following along an update. As you should know, got the motor back together Friday night but couldn't get it to fire. After posting in here, and achris suggesting valves were over tightened I went ahead and checked them, and sure enough that was the issue. After redoing my valves, I had between 135-120psi cold in every cylinder. After getting everything back together, she fired right up and sounded great.

Unfortunately, we had quite a few friends and family going out on the river this weekend so I was really pushing to get this thing done so that we could join them. That being said, I didn't exactly have time to do the proper pressure tests before getting everything completely back together like I would have liked to have done. However, the way I look at is this, if it wasn't a head gasket issue, and it is actually an issue with the block, what more can I really hurt right? I'm going to be looking at putting a new motor in it anyway if that's the case so, at the least maybe it can get me through the rest of this season.

So we took it out for about 6 hours and everything ran and performed perfectly. I checked the oil after I got it loaded back up and onto level ground and everything looked fine so far, so fingers crossed it was that simple of a fix.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for the IMMENSE amount of help I received. Definitely learned a lot throughout this little job, so thank you! achris Scott06 Rick Stephens Grub54891 Mad Props
 
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