Sunshadow

Watch the "friend of a friend" deal I've seen several of them go bad with poor work and whole engines missing. A lot of time the lower priced guys don't have the experience, take longer and you spend as much in the end.

ROTAX454

First, not trying to spend your money. However, what sandcraft wrote is one of the best pieces of advice I have seen on OSO relating to someone in your position. I know it's another 12k, but you can boat with confidence with those motors. You can also get some value (something is better than nothing) out of the motors you are replacing. Remember it's a BOAT. Break Out Another Thousand.

tinman565

Gonna go out on a limb here, and say I have to disagree. He spent $18,500 on the boat...and still owes $16,000. That means he FINANCED it. There is no way he should take a chance on another $12,000 in motors. What happens if he spends the money on these "low hour motors", then something mysteriously happens to one or both of those ? I say pull the motors yourself. DO ONE MOTOR AT A TIME. Have a friend or two help you. Get good advice from numerous people (dont just tear something off cause uncle bill told you to). Ask 5,6,8 people about what you run into, then take a general consensus. Get info from the internet on what your working on that day. Work SLOWLY and mark everything. Put parts in zip lock bags and mark where they came from. Mark wires and hoses. Take pics with your phone. Keep a computer diary.Then find a reputable engine shop in your area, and ask questions. They want to help so you'll tell others about them. You should be able to rebuild both motors for less than one of the used ones. In the end, you'll have two new motors that YOU built, you'll know whats in them as far as parts and machine work, and you'll have learned something new. There is no feeling in the world like building a motor yourself, and firing it up for the first time. Remember I said this when you and your wife are cruising and listening to the sound of those big blocks that YOU built. Take your time...and get good solid info. I think you can handle this. I really do.

olmako20

I would rebuild as well. Since this unfortunatly happened in the summer you have pleanty of time until next summer to rebuild. I rebuilt 2 small blocks in the matter of 3 months only working on the weekends and some nights. It's really not rocket science to rebuild
either. A couple of good books and some local advice from the machine shop helped out big time. In also got the video from boxwrench.net and it helped great for those steps you can't visualize from
a book.

Tinman is right, the satisfaction from building your own motors is great. And if anything goes wrong you know the motors inside and out.

wjb21ndtown

At this point I would pick up the motor myself from the marina. You don't seem to have good results with them anyhow, and it doesn't sound like they're all that competent.

I would try to pressurize what you can of the cooling system and see if you can get water to leak into the block from somewhere. I guess you could have a crack somewhere that only opens when the motor gets hot, or when it's under power, but to assume that the block is junk just because water is ending up in the cyls or oil to me seems irresponsible. I would want to make sure I needed a block before I went out and did a ton of work swapping everything out.

If you can't get water to leak into the block with hose pressure or otherwise, I would rig the motor to run on a cradle in the garage with a garden hose supplying water to the motor. I would do everything that I could to make sure that it WAS a cracked block before I did all that work swapping blocks.

I would try to borrow some car headers and mufflers to run the motor in the garage. It will eliminate the possibility that a cracked exh. manifold is giving you problems, and help to isolate the block as the problem, if you end up finding a problem.

Regardless of the outcome of your water investigation plan on sending the heads off to a local machine shop to have them rebuilt. Have the valves ground, new guides put in place, and new seals installed. It shouldn't cost all that much to have this done, and at 500 hours you're ready for some valve work.


Don't count your boating season over yet! There's still a few warm months. There really isn't any reason that you shouldn't be able to get this thing back together reasonably quickly.

1BIGJIM

iTrader: (1)

If you are truely taking in water, first check the oil and see if it is milkshake.

balinsteadt

I'll be on my toes if I decide to go that route... Thanks for the advice!

BTW... what does dry piped mean? obviously the water doesn't exit the engine through the exhaust but, what the reason for doing that?

Mastercraft240

I'd scrap the whole boat, save up for a year and buy something with lower hours next year. Though I know it would suck to do that, it doesn't make sense investing $12,000 that you don't have into a boat that is only equally worth that amount. You'll be $24,000 deep into a boat that's only worth $12,000-$15,000 (guesstimate).

balinsteadt

I like the idea, however coming up with that sort of money is going to be very difficult for me... and I would feel like I purchased a 15/16 year old hull for $18.5k and thats hard for me to stomach. This was my first boat aside from a bass boat I had just prior to this and thought of it as a starter boat.... so far I'm not off to a good start however I feel that I'm ready for faster/bigger. I dont want to put myself so far upside down and take such a loss when it comes time to upgrade. If my boat was bigger and in as good of condition I would definitely lean this direction but I think I have ruled this option out as I plan to trade up in the next couple years.

Thank you very much for your advice! And thanks to sandcraft for 3 very viable options!

balinsteadt

My wife agrees with you fully about Smithville but I think technically it did drop below freezing (not much-and only for short periods of time just prior to dawn) before I got the boat to Smithville marine.