Who needs water?

[Twidget]

I noticed a neighbor was having problems with his bass boat. He had it running for about 5 minutes, then it died out. He couldnt get it started again. Being the nosey..er helpful neighbor that I am, I went over to see what was happening.<br /><br />He said that he was trying to get the boat ready for the next day and it wouldnt run. I noticed that he didnt have muffs on the engine. His answer.....you dont need water, if you arent putting the engine in gear. DOH.

 

[timfromfc]

Re: Who needs water?

Anybody need parts? Twidget's neighbor may have some cheap!

 

[Seamus]

Re: Who needs water?

Well, I don't know. Speaking of realy stupid things I've done, I used to have a little sailboat that I sailed on Lake Union (until the keel fell off, but that's a story for another time) and it had an old Honda 100 (10hp,4stroke) for a kicker. Once I got used to sailing into and out of my moorage, I didn't really depend on the kicker and so it didn't really bother me that it would only run for about 10 minutes and then stop. Usually I couldn't get it started again for hours and sometimes not that day at all. No big deal, that's why I have these great big pieces of dacron for, and paddles. I did finally get around to noticing (or maybe somebody pointed it out to me) that the engine was not venting coolant and I couldn't remember that it ever had (I guess I assumed that it was supposed to vent it under water or something.) Anyway, I took it into the shop and they found that the rubber impeller had disintegrated and sucked itself in various coolant galleys. This had probably been the case as long as I had owned the boat (as I said - it had NEVER displayed a coolant stream.) A new impeller put it right - no damage to engine. Some of those engines are really pretty durable.

 

[brother chris]

Re: Who needs water?

Wow, you are lucky Seamus McFadden. <br /><br />And as for the fellow who started his boat in the driveway....hopefully his motor wasn't too expensive to replace. Ooops...

 

[ZmOz]

Re: Who needs water?

The engine probably would be fine for a couple minutes without water...although probably hotter than it should be, not fatally hot. The problem is the impeller in the water pump...it's got a VERY short life span without any water.

 

[Seamus]

Re: Who needs water?

Yeah, hmm, that's probably true about impellor life. As I said, I think the impellor was toast when I bought the boat. Still, this particular engine was blessed with an inability to run when overheated. When it got hot it simply stopped and refused to start again. I know many engines are like this. My Pontiac Fiero used to have some serious cooling system issues (too long a story to list here) but one night after filling the coolant after work, I headed home without the filler cap. Had to stop several times after I noticed it to put a couple of gallons of water in so it could spit it straight back out. Should have killed the engine for sure. No apparent damamge was done though.

 

[Seamus]

Re: Who needs water?

In fact, now that I think about it, I used to have a Honda CB650 that would do exactly the same thing. I never did figure out why it overheated (oil/air cooled) but when it did it would stop and tell me to go away and leave it alone when I tried to start it again. It actually got hot enough to refuse to crank at all (cylinder/piston shape mismatch - square peg, oblong hole, kind of a thing, I'm guessing) until it cooled down. Never solved the problem, but it never hurt the bike either.

 

[Seamus]

Re: Who needs water?

I even tried telling the bike that it didn't need oil or air unless I put it in gear - to no avail

 

[robpoe]

Re: Who needs water?

Off subject, but I had an old (and I mean OLD) Craftsman lawn mower. After about 30 mins of running, it would lack in power, then die completely out. You couldn't pull the starter rope if you life depended on it. After it cooled for a while, (it varied) you'd just walk right over to it, give it a yank (or 20) and it'd start .. run .. mow just fine.<br /><br />When I finally tore it down, the piston and cylinder were VERY scored -- and what rings?

 

[demsvmejm]

Re: Who needs water?

I love Rob Poe's signature line. And some of you know I love my soapbox.

 

[BQMatt]

Re: Who needs water?

I'm sure the firing up on dry land without muffs is pretty common. When I was in college my roommate bought a boat with an I/O. Now, we knew it was water-cooled, so we never ran it for more than 5 or 10 seconds, we figured not enough time to let the engine get hot at all. It sure sounded badass! Anyway, by this point I'm sure you've figured out that we put no thought into how that water actually got in to cool the motor. Big surprise, first time out on the water, the engine overheats. A quick trip to the boat shop and telling the folks there what we'd done sorted out the impeller problem. Now, if they'd just told us that the drive had to be in forward gear to put the lower unit back on, they could have saved about a week of my life!

 

[Twidget]

Re: Who needs water?

I used to have a OMC I/O that the impeller disintegrated while the engine idled on muffs. I looke at the temp gauge and about fainted... Fortunately the impellers on those outdrives were sooo simple to replace.