Skipperkent
Cadet
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2018
- Messages
- 7
ok I’m new here on forum for first time and I’m not very experienced with boats but have a little not a lot of knowledge on engines. I have a 1988 Bayliner 1750 Capri that was givin to me. It was overheated and had several problems that I fixed. The one thing I didn’t do and should have done was do a compression test. I will get to that in a moment. Info:the boat is identified as 232AMRGDE has a 2.3l engine and is an OMC. It had a cracked riser elbow, a pitted exhaust manifold, no thermostat, a melted housing for the impeller on the stern drive in back. I replaced the riser, exhaust manifold, thermostat, new water pump on engine and the whole housing assembly including the impeller on the stern drive in back also replaced the bellows while I was there. New starter, rebuilt carberator, new fuel pump, new distributor cap, new spark plugs and wires. Changed gear oil in back and changed oil in engine.. The boat sat in a garage for 10 years untouched before I received it. Everything done then I tested it out on land with a 55 gallon barrel of water. In neutral the prop turns freely. It had very little gas in it so I added 10 gallons and one gas treatment. Started it up and with a few tweaks to the carborator it ran like a charm sounded great and when I gave it acceleration it was still sounding good. Smoking a bit but I thought that would be normal for all the gaskets and what not. Decided it was time to put in the lake and give it further testing. Started right up and we started out into the lake ran great until we gave it some acceleration then it just bogged down and died. It always would run great just above idle speed but when we tried to open it up it simply bogs down and dies. Was told it could be compression so decided to check that out. Should have done it very first thing before repairing everything but didn’t. Compression after warming it up was 105, 105, 98, 95. Seems pretty low. I can’t start the boat unless it’s in neutral so had to take an attachment off to manually give it full throttle, that didn’t seem to make a difference in my compression readings. Tried putting a little sea foam into spark plug holes then retest after warming up but still no higher readings. Was told it might be an accelerator pump but it was a rebuilt carborator but replaced it anyway still dies after giving it gas. Had my engine mechanic look in the 2 barrel holly carb for gas flow when we gave it gas and seemed to be spraying very well. Only dies on the lake, on dry land in a barrel test you can give it gas and it’s fine. So after all this info my question is are those compression readings too low and is there anything else I can try before opening up the overhead cam and digging deeper into the engine which is probably going to be left to either a boat mechanic or engine repair or rebuild guy. If it’s not a cracked block and after all the cash I’ve already spent on items that can be reused either in another block or after I have this block serviced, can the work be done while the engine is in the boat or would it have to be pulled. My guess is that it just depends I guess on what’s wrong. I know I could probably just go buy another running boat for the same amount of money but with all the new parts including that dang new exhaust manifold that ran about 700$ I’d like to just be able to keep my own money pit lol. Ok sorry for the long description but that’s where I’m at. Does anybody know what I can do before I decide to look deeper to get those compression readings up or how I would go about it if the engine needs some deeper work. Thanks again to whomever took the time to read this whole post. Ive always read where experts want as much info to give their advice so there it is. Thanks