[ATTACH=CONFIG]544686[/ATTACH]I also have a puke tank on each engine with 2 hoses going to each tank. When i drain my starboard engine only a bit of water comes out. Nothing out of the other engine. Keeps the valve covers cleaner

as the tanks are way above the engine, it allows the condensation to condense when it hits the "cool" tanks and is caught there..or at least thats my thought

That`s interesting. I modifier my oil fills and ran the lines to the flame arrestor hoping to 'pull' some air out of there but I`m not sure how much if any vacuum I get.




If I could pull some vacuum out of this ....

You are not really gonna pull much vacuum from flame arrestor. You would need PCV valves hooked to direct vacuum for that.

I was told by Nickerson Performance never hook up a pcv valve to a marine motor unless you want to blow it up. Actually when i first got my boat there was one in each valve cover and a hose connecting to a vacuum port underneath each carb. I did remove them when Nickerson built me carbs and flowed them to my engine specs. I really don't understand why a pcv valve would do harm to a marine engine unless pulling unburned fumes and moisture back into the intake to get re-burned could lean out the mixture.

I'd like a little elaboration on that as well.

Oil in the combustion chamber can cause detonation.

That said, Hp500 and other motors use an actual PCV valve, not just an open vent off valve covers routed to flame arrestor.

That's one of those blanket statements that are meaningless - and not supported by reality (Merc uses them, every heavy duty truck, etc). Could you blow up an engine from drawing oil in the cylinders? Yes if you stuck the valve in a valve cover with no baffle. If done correctly, the amount of oil drawn in will be insignificant. The valve covers used on most of merc engines are GM parts already setup with baffles in them for PCV.

I modified my engine to use a PCV - same part and arrangement as HP500s. Properly setup, it doesn't lose much oil to the intake. I set it up to eliminate the oil/engine smell after a hard run, a bonus is the occasional condensation is gone, and so is the water in the oil analysis.

With the water dumps closed off Water pressure 14-17lbs oil temps 220-225 @ 3200 rpms.Port engine Starboard engine same water pressure oil temps 215-220@ 3200 rpms.. and will the water dumps open 11-14lbs water pressure 215-220 @ 3200 rpms. port..Starboard 210-215 WOT 2 minutes oil temp got no higher than 230 Readings are before the cooler in oil filter housing. So the oil temps got a little better not as much as I expected especially after seeing those coolers so clogged. The water dumps definitely helped. As the water temp in the river cools off I'm sure they will drop more
Thanks again for all the help

I agree that could be it, but I chased a similar problem for two summers. Here are what I discovered....

1) my guage (Gaffrig) was mismatched with the sending unit. Apparently different ohms which caused the temp to read 2x actual.

One problem is never enough, so...

2) suspected bad oil thermostat. One attempt to fix, I pulled the thermostat to force it to flow through the cooler all the time. No fix. Later, we took apart the thermostat/mount housing and figured out the thermostat behaved the OPPOSITE of a water thermostat, so removing it meant never running through the cooler! Turned out to be s bad thermostat and now all is good.