Pruno
Seaman
- Joined
- Oct 9, 2019
- Messages
- 62
My wife said she wanted to go for a gondola ride in Venice, I guess paddling our SeaRay across one of the finger lakes is as close as she's going to get.
The short story is we hydrolocked on the water and I'm seeking advice on what I should checkout so I don't end up with a giant paperweight.
Engine S/N - unknown I believe it's a reman and correlates to merc manual 25. Fresh water boat. Raw water cooled.
The long version- I give this information as I'm unsure if any of this is in the error chain that lent us to be dead on the water. First, the exhaust bellows slipped off the bell housing a few weeks ago. I tried a few times to get it back on, but it kept sliding off. Doing some research led me to leaving it disconnected for the last few outings of the season. Second, the day before, I noticed water dripping from the starboard exhaust boot (in the area in the photo). Which means water was moving up between the boot and elbow, which I dont understand. I thought that maybe I lost the flapper and it was backfilling the exhaust, but after inspection the exhaust flapper is in place as it should be. The other part of this is the starboard exhaust was much warmer than port.
On to being hydrolock. We were idling all day long. When we decided to return to the ramp I wanted to "runup" the engine before putting on the trailer. So got up on plane and around 3 grand I started having issues with my ignition fuse shorting in and out (knew if the problem - though I had it fixed). So the engine is on-off-on-off in in rapid succession then as it completely cut out the engine start dieseling for probably 15 seconds. Then, as said before on this forum, the last few revs that sound funny sucked a bunch of water into the engine. Fortunately, I had a spark plug socket with me and was able to immediately remove the plugs. The number 4 was the only cylinder that had water when I pulled the plugs. However, when I cranked the engine water kept coming out of cylinders 2, 6 and one of the port cylinders, I think # 1. Because water never stopped coming out if the cylinders I decided it was best to start paddling. Got the boat home, shot some oil into the cylinders, cranked engine on muffs and still had a couple spurts of water coming out. Oil level was good and no evidence of milk. I decided to disconnect the water on the inside transom, so that the impeller still had water, but was not putting water into block if there's a crack somewhere. Fired her up and it ran great. Let it run until the exhaust manifolds started getting warm and then shut it down. And that's where we stand now.
I'm thinking tomorrow I'll extract some oil and inspect. Compression test. Maybe pressure test the cooling system? I'll have to research how to do that. I'm a bit nervous the water found it's way into the cylinder besides from the instance of running backwards. I could see though how it might be that the exhaust manifold completely filled with water and it wasnt going to give up the water until I pulled it out of the lake. As we were bobbing in the waves I could hear the water pushing and pulling high in the manifold, way above the waterline.
Of course the story wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention this was our first mini-vaca without the kiddos. On the way out we came upon a jack knifed trailer on the thruway blocking all lanes of traffic, we were able to stop but the semi behind us was not and ended up hitting us and 2 other cars. Fortunately every one involved was ok, and we only suffered some minor damage to the truck and boat.
The short story is we hydrolocked on the water and I'm seeking advice on what I should checkout so I don't end up with a giant paperweight.
Engine S/N - unknown I believe it's a reman and correlates to merc manual 25. Fresh water boat. Raw water cooled.
The long version- I give this information as I'm unsure if any of this is in the error chain that lent us to be dead on the water. First, the exhaust bellows slipped off the bell housing a few weeks ago. I tried a few times to get it back on, but it kept sliding off. Doing some research led me to leaving it disconnected for the last few outings of the season. Second, the day before, I noticed water dripping from the starboard exhaust boot (in the area in the photo). Which means water was moving up between the boot and elbow, which I dont understand. I thought that maybe I lost the flapper and it was backfilling the exhaust, but after inspection the exhaust flapper is in place as it should be. The other part of this is the starboard exhaust was much warmer than port.
On to being hydrolock. We were idling all day long. When we decided to return to the ramp I wanted to "runup" the engine before putting on the trailer. So got up on plane and around 3 grand I started having issues with my ignition fuse shorting in and out (knew if the problem - though I had it fixed). So the engine is on-off-on-off in in rapid succession then as it completely cut out the engine start dieseling for probably 15 seconds. Then, as said before on this forum, the last few revs that sound funny sucked a bunch of water into the engine. Fortunately, I had a spark plug socket with me and was able to immediately remove the plugs. The number 4 was the only cylinder that had water when I pulled the plugs. However, when I cranked the engine water kept coming out of cylinders 2, 6 and one of the port cylinders, I think # 1. Because water never stopped coming out if the cylinders I decided it was best to start paddling. Got the boat home, shot some oil into the cylinders, cranked engine on muffs and still had a couple spurts of water coming out. Oil level was good and no evidence of milk. I decided to disconnect the water on the inside transom, so that the impeller still had water, but was not putting water into block if there's a crack somewhere. Fired her up and it ran great. Let it run until the exhaust manifolds started getting warm and then shut it down. And that's where we stand now.
I'm thinking tomorrow I'll extract some oil and inspect. Compression test. Maybe pressure test the cooling system? I'll have to research how to do that. I'm a bit nervous the water found it's way into the cylinder besides from the instance of running backwards. I could see though how it might be that the exhaust manifold completely filled with water and it wasnt going to give up the water until I pulled it out of the lake. As we were bobbing in the waves I could hear the water pushing and pulling high in the manifold, way above the waterline.
Of course the story wouldn't be complete if I didn't mention this was our first mini-vaca without the kiddos. On the way out we came upon a jack knifed trailer on the thruway blocking all lanes of traffic, we were able to stop but the semi behind us was not and ended up hitting us and 2 other cars. Fortunately every one involved was ok, and we only suffered some minor damage to the truck and boat.
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