De-mothball after 10 years
 

My 28 SS has been in mothballs for just over 10 years. I am in the process of getting her water ready.

1. Should I pull the distributors and pre-lube the engines before attempting to start them?

2. Should I change the oil before starting or fire the motors, bring them up to temperature to collect any moisture and then change the oil & filters?

3. I have TRS's, what about them?

4. Fuel tanks, should I add a few gallons of fresh fuel per tank and pump it any anything that remained out?

Thanks

Any thoughts?

I would ABSOLUTELY pre-lube the motor by pulling the distributor and runing a drill to the oil pump to prime everything... you can get a rod with the right slot in it to match the oil pump, or just make one up....

If the boat sat that long - I would definitly change all fluids, plugs, wires, drive oil, everything.... get that old nasty gas out of there and put some fresh stuff in too... chances are, if the fule wasnt treated when it was put in, its probably all varnished up anyway. But it would sure be a good idea to change everythign you can before firing up the first time...

good chance the bellows are dry rotted out too and boat might take on some water, but thats a relatively easy fix. Make sure your bilge pump is working before you put it in the water too... ya never know... ;) Good luck!

How about that. I just put my 28 in the water a couple of weeks ago after sitting since the fall of '05. A couple of cans of sea foam in each tank will help.

You can borrow the correct pre-lube tool from Autozone. The first store I called had one. Spin the drill the normal/forward direction. You'll hear the drill bog down a bit when it pulls oil up and starts pumping.

I found a waste recovery company that did it for $50, had to drive the boat there. A marina can also point you to a place to do this since it's a fairly common situation. He got just about all of it out by moving the hose around the V of the tank, I'd say there was only a few cups left in the tanks. The new gas fully diluted what was left. I wouldn't bother spending more $, especially at $3.50/gallon, just to pump it out.

Starting fluid on the flame arrestors got them running enough to pump fuel into the bowls, and saved cranking time enormously.

mine 38 sat for a few years and i had to replace fuel lines, fuel pumps, filters, and pump old fuel from tanks.

whatever u dont do now... u will do at some point.

My twin has been sitting for three years and I'm nearly finished getting it back online. I evacuated 25 gallons of old fuel from the tank by disconnecting all of the lines and plugging them accept for the port intake and the starboard intake. I also plugged the vent. I put a cheap inline fuel filter on one of the open lines and then I pushed compressed air into the tank. This forced the fuel out of the other line (through the filter) into a five gallon jug. When the jug filled, I poured it into my truck - which had 20 gallons of super. So I mixed 5 gallons of old fuel with 20 gallons of super. I did this five times until it was all gone. I was okay doing this with 3 year old fuel. Not sure I'd do it with 10 year old fuel.

On the motor, I pulled the plugs and squirted marvel mystery oil into the cylinders. I let that sit for a few days. Then I barred over the engine before running the starter. After barring over, I spun the motor with the starter and the plugs out. Didn't get oil pressure, because the pump had lost prime.

I couldn't fit a primer tool into the dist. because there was no room, so I made a pre-oiler out of pvc pipe and used compressed air. This worked great. Also, I drained the oil, but it had turned to sludge. Oil will do that if left just sitting for years. I did the oil change with cheap oil, and after I got it to where it would idle (only ran it for about 30 seconds), I shut it down and mixed 2/3 diesel fuel to 1/3 oil and ran one minute. Then drained the oil/diesel mix and did an oil change two more times running the motor about 10 minutes at idle (with the drive down) between each oil change. Used cheap oil and filters. On the third oil change, good oil and filter go in.

Now, I'm mixing sea foam into the fuel to clean the injectors. The engine is running nicely. This has all been on the port motor, the starboard motor is still being rebuilt.

Next up - I'll put new gimbals, seals, gaskets and bellows on both out drives. After sitting that long you want to replace bellows (as mentioned above). And if you're gonna go that far, may as well replace gimbals. Of course both drives will be flushed and new gear oil put in.

I'm not sure if the above methods were the exact best way to go, but they seemed logical and worked.

Stan

Stan,

Thanks for the tips, I have a 28 SS with twin 454' and original log headers. It is next to impossible to get to anything in the engine compartment.

I have just finished making new battery frames to change the boat from the old 3EE batteries to conventional 27 marine batteries in plastic boxes. I have just finished he Port side, the Stbd is a different stor., The SS engine compartment is so tight, I may have to pull the right exhaust header to install the battery frame, box and battery!

Oil changes are about as difficult, I usually disconnect the lines to the remote oil filters and crank the engine. The oil filters are about the only thing easy to get to on this boat.

Spark plus on the outsides arn't too bad, but the 8 inner plugs often requires pulling one of the center headers/risers. Pulling either or both inner header requires using a hoist, if you slip and the header falls it will break off all 4 spark plugs. A spark plug change in the boat can easily take 4 to 5 hours. The only thing more difficult to get to than spark plugs is the starter on the Port engine.

Ha - yours engines sound as packed in as mine! My 26 footer has Merc 320s and with the original log headers too. Plugs on mine are a nightmare too. I always break at least two plugs when replacing them. Not to mentioned aches and pains from bending my body in weird positions.

There's NO room in there to work with both motors installed. So with one motor out, I'm installing remote oil drain tubes. I could probably do it with the motors in, but with one out it's super simple. Anyway, you run them out the bilge drain hole to do an oil change. Eddiemarine.com had the cheapest ones: https://www.eddiemarine.com/store/ca...l&p=11991&c=49

If you want pics of my pre-oiler let me know. Totally simple to build and worked great. I also built a custom hoist to pull the motor.

Got any pictures of your Cig? Good luck on getting her ready for the water!!! :)