Need advice stat- filled block with water!
 

My day just got pretty ugly. Since the weather was so good I decided to fire up the motors on the boat, they started and ran fine. Then I got busy with cleaning her up and sorting things for a couple hours, meanwhile I'd left the hose running on the starboard motor. Normally that would just push water through the block and out the exhaust but when I looked in the bilge water coming out the dipstick! &%$#!!!

First things first: What should I do? I just came in to type this out and will head back out and start pumping out oil / water with a suction pump (not going to be easy with cold oil in there and get as much as I can to start with, then will come back in to see what advice you gents may have. I seem to recall a thread where it was advised to fill the motor with diesel?

What would cause this? A leaking riser?

It might have came through the riser down the cylinders. Get the oil and water out with pump or however you do an oil change. Then pull spark plugs DO NOT CRANK IT OVER TILL PLUGS ARE PULLED and oil is back in the pan. I'm assuming the cylinders will spray water everywhere.

Keep replacing oil till it's clean. You should be fine. Find out how the water got in there. 3 ways, risers gasket/exhaust, intake gasket or head gasket.

there is a fourth,,a cracked block.

I wasn't going to bring that up until the others were verified. lol I went through that last year.

Status
 

Thanks everybody for the input. Just came in, here's the status report:
Pumped out about 7 gallons of water through the dipstick port using a hand pump. Nothings come out but water, and not much is coming out now regardless how much vacuum develops, so I think im down to oil or milkshake which is too cold to pump out by hand. Got both risers and the starboard manifold off, there was several cups of water ONLY in the #4 cylinder manifold chamber. Pulled the plugs on starboard side and only the #4 cylinder was full of water.

I havent taken off the other manifold yet as the first one kicked my ass, I have a herniated l5/s1 disc which I f'd up again about a week ago. I could only pull plug #1 on the port side (am I the only person that cant get most spark plugs out with the manifolds on?). But looking down into the manifold I can see no water like I did on the stbd side.

Im gonna head back out and button her up for the night and continue tomorrow. I'll see if I can reach that drain plug while im out there.

Yeah let me get that case of beer before going there :p
Im not sure it even got cold enough this year in Maryland to crack a block (I was away for awhile so maybe then it was). My winterize method is to pump -200 starbrite antifreeze until I see it coming out the exhaust, then I switch to the normal -50 pink stuff and put in another gallon. You would think thats idiot proof but who knows

No muffs here, boat sits on a lift. I have hose fittings in the bilge for flushing so it definitely pushes enough pressure to flow through the motor.

Hmmmm, I dont think its quite "tipped down" but it definitely wasn't bow up. I had the stern raised kinda high last winter when I put her away and I did just lower both ends today before firing her up without adjustment. I will bring a level out there right now and check.

Also forgot to mention in the last posts, I took the starboard riser, plugged the entry port, tipped it exhaust side up and filled the jacket with water through the holes in the tip. No leaks. They are Stainless Marine but almost 20 years old now (about 350 hours use or so).

Ok so its not angle of the boat. the deck is more or less level but the risers are definitely running downhill towards the stern.
Its 1 am im gonna call it quits for the night and get back on it tomorrow. Thanks for the support gents.

I had run the engine for about 2 minutes and shut her off, it sounds like it wouldn't have gotten hot enough (and I didnt run it long enough to fill up with 7 gallons, although the hose was running for about an hour afterwards). And if it was a leaking riser wouldn't the water have pooled up in more than just the #4 manifold chamber?

I stuck my finger into the exhaust port of the #4 cylinder that had been full of water and couldn't feel any water in there. That was about an hour after pulling the manifold and having water gush out of it. Im guessing this is not a good sign and maybe I need to start on that case of beer?

If the plugs are out, crank the motor. That will blow it out of on top of the pistons and suck it out of the ports. It would be best if you could pull the drain plug and drain the oil Pan empty yes you're draining it into the bilge. Want you to the point of adding oil, only add two quarts. That's enough to get you oil pressure. Run in about 3 minutes. Shut it off pull that drain plug again drain it empty. You don't want to leave the quart or so of water below the dipstick you want to drain that thing empty. It's going to take you 6 or 7 tries at 2 qt apiece to get it to start running relatively clean.

Thats what I was thinking about 20 posts ago, if the T-stat doesn't open the raw water stays in the block and the antifreeze never enters.

OK, made some progress, here's where we're at:
I was able to reach the plug in the pan. drained out a couple more gallons of water and then the oil which was completely milkshake. Towards the end of it the was definitely noticeable pink stuff: antifreeze.
I pulled the port the plugs. #3 poured water (matching #4 which had been full on the other side).

Note that after extensive fooling with the stats to get the right temps, I removed them last august after trying a lot of different options, so a closed stat didnt stop antifreeze from getting in the block.

Now something I hadn't gotten around to mentioning was that when I winterized last November, the starboard oil did look a little bit milkier than the port. I wasn't really sure and also thought at the time it was because of the cold water temps with no thermostat, and the motors not being exactly the same (when the motors were put in the boat in the spring, the starboard also had more milkshake until it warmed up in the summer). So I dont know if this is related or just a coincidence.

Whatever has gone wrong yesterday, if it was already an issue in the fall then it was much less so, since it seems that running the motor for about a minute caused the entire amount of oil to froth up (there was no normal looking oil in the motor).

Im heading out now to Walmart to buy a bunch of cheap oil. What should I do though considering that there is an obvious major leak inside the motor? Fill it with oil and run it for 30 seconds without raw water? Im assuming I need to run the engine to get the old milkshake dislodged and down into the pan.

Let me know what you think gents, your help is greatly appreciated here.

30 sec with no water to the sea pump will most likely smoke the impeller,

Take belt off sea pump or remove pump completely. Needs seals or impeller or checked out anyway. Crank motor to blow water out of pistons. Add 1 quart of oil. Crank motor looking at oil pressure gauge. You get pressure with 1 quart? Put in plugs and run it for 1 minute. Drain fill repeat.i cut a flat drain pan from a milk jug. Usually you can make a 2 quart pan that will fit. The closer to true empty it drains, the less times it will take to get watery oil out. NOW pressure test and start taking parts off. Cuz if you pull the intake, followed by the heads, it may be weeks before it goes together and gets run up to temperature. So you don't want oil system and bores sitting with watery oil. But just use the least oil you can use to get oil pressure.

If he tries to run the engine on 1 quart of oil he will be rebuilding it for sure, you're in good hands OP......Im out

These Merc 502's were fully rebuilt when they went in last year although the seller definitely misrepresented them (I spent many thousands replacing **** rotted out accessories) and I now judge the engine builder as somewhat dubious base on things he's communicated to me and things which needed correcting on the motors. I am doubtful about rotten intakes as I needed to replace one straight off before it went in the boat (the other one was fine).

I got a bunch of cheap oil at Walmart, will put 2.5 per run and keep an eye on pressure. Thanks

<div style="text-align:left;"><br /><br />I agree. What exhaust on boat? I'd wanna be pulling and digging into engine asap personally. Just sounds like that engine been an issue from day one. At the very least I suppose pressurize the system with air. Very easy to do right through the bypass with air and cap off the exhaust. Not a lot of pressure, and just listen with dipstick out. You could actually thread a air chuck fitting into bypass with adapter and pressure gauge. Multiple ways to check. <br /><br />A leak down after the fact would be next if it were me. Next prepare to pull engine worse case but might be further ahead if this engine been an issue from day one. Doesn't take long for water to start doing damage internally. Fresh or salt. </div>

Stainless marine. And im pretty sure they aren't the problem. I filled up the water jackets, not under pressure but they didnt leak at all, and I had only run the boat a couple minutes max, no time for them to get really hot.

Right now im just first worried about getting the water out of the motor. Got the risers and manifolds back on and about to start running clean oil through it but had to come in to warm up. Winds are around 30 mph its damn cold out there on the dock.

And yeah, I would really like to have those motors apart. Gonna have to see whats in the cards, after what I threw into repowering the last thing I needed or hoped for was to have to do it again. It would have cost me less to buy new engines after it was all said and done. If this wasn't my dad's boat I'd probably be giving up on it by now. Im also 70 miles by water from my engines guy, dont have a trailer or tow vehicle, boats on a lift out back. But I'll worry about that later, just need to get them dry inside now.

Alright, had my coffee, now back to the bilge!

Got a couple quarts of oil in and tried firing her up, but she kept dying which im not surprised given the temps out, even in the middle of summer these engines were hard to keep running till they built up some heat. She maybe ran 30 seconds total and I cranked it for another 2 minutes, pulled the plug, then had to come in cause its blowing hard and cold on the dock. Tomorrow and Tuesday are going to be high 40's, Wed will be mid 60's so thats probably when I I can next.

This motor (or both of them really) probably have to come out but given the difficulties in doing so it would probably be good if I can get a mechanic down to help me evaluate and decide what to do.

WTF? Just stop.

I have probably 6-7 spark plug sockets and only 1 that the wall is thin enough that it clears the manifolds enough it makes plug removal/install doable and easy.I'd lpve to tell you what it is but it's shrink wrapped in a boat I;ll be working on again in a month when things unfreeze around here. Doh.

double post. See below.

Oh, I'd put min of 4 quarts oil. I've seen many chevy V8's click/clack (lifters and such) with low volume stock car oil pumps under 4 quarts.

who said 1 quart? I'd turn in my medical marijuana card if I where you. And probably lay off the mushrooms too.

Thanks, you also advised me 2 years ago when my original 454's gave up after 15 years. I JUST missed the stroker 496's you were selling at the time, probably would have saved me a lot of $$ and headaches. It will work out alright, if its really a huge problem I may end up skipping another year, but the boat is family and sometimes you gotta deal with family issues.

Today I found a socket that works! Thx

You aren't hitting waves at 60 mph at 5500 rpm. If you see oil pressure at idle you have enough oil to idle. The less you fill, the less you have to mop out of the bilge. At 5000 rpm pump is drawing oil 6 or 7 times as fast as at 750 rpm.