High oil pressure - volvo penta 4.3

[2000silvers2k]

Just got the boat tuesday, test drove it, ran great, all gauges looked good.

Wednesday we had a major rain storm, I left the plug in the boat, and the battery was disconnected so the bilge pump never came on. Long story short the boat filled with quite a bit of water, right up to the base of the engine, took a good 8 minutes to drain. fast forward to this afternoon

I took the boat out on a small pond, took a while cranking before the engine would turn over, but then it turned over and ran ok, got out on the lake seamed to be running fine, I just started to relax and turn on the tunes when i noticed that my Oil pressure gauge was reading very high when accelerating, when the boat was idling the gauge read normal but under acceleration it jumped right up to red.

Could water have gotten in the oil? I putted around for a bit to see if it would return to normal, but it didnt, so i returned to the trailer. loaded it up and now im unsure of what to do.

Im guessing the first thing to do is to give it an oil change and then see if the problem is solved, if not, then what?

im tempted to just bring it to a marina and have them figure it out, since im very green to this whole boating thing, maybe ill finally figure out what BOAT truely stands for.

 

[a70eliminator]

Re: High oil pressure - volvo penta 4.3

Did you ever think to look at the dipstick during this event? oil pressure usually does creep up with proportional with RPM's. My oil pressure runs about 40 at idle and jumps right up to 60+ anything above idle, when cold the pressure pegs the guage.

 

[Alpheus]

Re: High oil pressure - volvo penta 4.3

First thing to do is pull the oil dip stick and have a look. Is it a milkshake? This should have been the very first thing you checked before starting your engine...

 

[2000silvers2k]

Re: High oil pressure - volvo penta 4.3

pics of oil dipstick,

I did check it before starting the engine, looked just like fresh clean oil to me, actually looked like the oil I saw prior to the boat taking on water incident when I test drove the boat (no high pressure oil issue)

Anyways, here are the pictures, hard to tell cause it was dark out, but its not rich dark oil, it also doesnt really look milky or chocolate milky to me, more of a clear translucent fresh looking oil. but im probably wrong.

 

[kellmike626]

Re: High oil pressure - volvo penta 4.3

Oil looks fine, no signs of water that I can see.

My oil pressure is always anywhere from 20-40 psi at idle, to about 60-70 psi at cruising or wide open. You could check the sending unit and gauge as well and make sure you are getting an accurate reading

 

[elkhunter338]

Re: High oil pressure - volvo penta 4.3

yep you need to check the oil pressure with a manual gauge and see if your electric is correct. When you say red that means your gauge does not give psi. A manual gauge will tell you what you have for oil pressure.
My car engine ran 80 psi for oil pressure (manual gauge) when running 3,000 rpms, idle was I think around 40 psi. 429 ford.
My boat runs around 35 psi idle and 50-60 at 3,000 rpms (manual gauge) after the engine is warm and the engine only has 135 hrs on it. 3.0 gm