Ok, so this is my first "family" boat. It is a 1985 Mark Twain 19' BR. It has a 3.8l OMC V6 with a Stringer 800 drive. I have had this boat for about a year now. No idea how many hours on the motor, but it is very clean, and the out drive was completely rebuilt by the previous owner right before I bought it.
MY situation is, we have been out 4 times in the past couple of weeks and the motor has what sounded like a valve tick at about 2800 rpms and above. Nothing major but it is there. Today we were running across the lake at about 3400-3600 rpm's for I would say 10 mins. I noticed the oil pressure started to slowly drop to zero or almost zero? I immediately stopped and killed the engine and checked the oil level. (By the way, the water temp did not go up.) The oil level was low, so I added a half a quart of oil. After a couple mins of looking things over to see if there was an oil leak and not finding one, I fired it back up. The tick from before was now much more pronounced but the oil pressure did raise slightly but more than 10-15 psi.
After getting back home I looked over the boat some more and didnt find anything external out of the ordinary. But when I checked the oil again it was full! I am stumped on what the issue could be and hoping there isnt any major internal damage if any. The only thing I can think of is oil pump is trashed? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!
MY situation is, we have been out 4 times in the past couple of weeks and the motor has what sounded like a valve tick at about 2800 rpms and above. Nothing major but it is there. Today we were running across the lake at about 3400-3600 rpm's for I would say 10 mins. I noticed the oil pressure started to slowly drop to zero or almost zero? I immediately stopped and killed the engine and checked the oil level. (By the way, the water temp did not go up.) The oil level was low, so I added a half a quart of oil. After a couple mins of looking things over to see if there was an oil leak and not finding one, I fired it back up. The tick from before was now much more pronounced but the oil pressure did raise slightly but more than 10-15 psi.
After getting back home I looked over the boat some more and didnt find anything external out of the ordinary. But when I checked the oil again it was full! I am stumped on what the issue could be and hoping there isnt any major internal damage if any. The only thing I can think of is oil pump is trashed? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated! Thanks!
