volvo penta help (freeze plugs exhaust over heating...)

[GinnyC]

To start off with I have very limited knowledge of boats. My husband and I bought a boat 2 yrs ago knowing nothing about them...We have a 2007 chaparral ssi 180. with a volvo penta 3.0 engine. in board/outboard. This past fall we didn't do anything to winterize the boat( please don't throw rocks at me) Between his deployment schedule and me being pregnant the boat fell on the back burner. We had taken it out a few times last summer and one of the times the boat was over heating .. come to find out the intake propeller had cracked so we got that fixed. Then we went to take it out a few times after that and it wouldn't start. My husband didn't have time to mess with it so it sat. We always did flush it out with clean water and bunny ears after each trip and it sat at our house not in the water and we live on the pan handle of FL so however we did have a colder winter then normal here. So most recently we had a friend come over and help us with the boat. He informed us of a few things we need to be doing like using gas that is ethanol free and he also got the boat up and running by spraying some starter spray in some part of the engine ( i forget where) but as the boat ran for a bit again that long exhaust pipe started to smell and get smokey( it looks like whatever protective coating that they spray on it looks like from when the propelling was broken it got so hot it started to melt that outer layer off. He asked if the boat has always run a bit rough which it didn't use to but since the last repair it has. SO they let the boat run for a bit turned it off and on ect. Well a couple days later my husband went to start it up again at the house and this time he attached the hose to the engine itself not with bunny ears and the engine sounded fine running however there was no water coming out of the back exhaust, we did notice a fair amount of water pooling under the engine that was coming out of a hole from the exhaust manifold. So we quickly after a min or 2 turned off the boat. I did a bit of reading online come to find out the place where the water is coming out is called a freeze plug or core plug. So now I'm scared we did more damage to the boat because everything i have read talks about cracked engine. I did check the oil and it looks fine doesn't look milky but the engine didn't run as long the next day. Any advice would be appreciated. So trying to figure out how we would know if the engine was cracked ( I pray its not) also how much are we looking at getting this plug piece replaced.

 

[Scott Danforth]

Welcome aboard, and please thank you to you and your husband for his service.

prior to jumping to any conclusions or guestimate at price, we need to determine exactly what is wrong.

a few issues. if a core plug is indeed missing, you will most likely have a cracked block.

However if you melted the rubber between the riser elbow and the exhaust pipe that would also leak.

running a boat motor without cooling water flow will do a few things. first it melts the raw water pump impeller. then the motor overheats, leading to things as innocuous as a melted exhaust hose to a catastrophic overheat where the head is warped, the pistons are scored and the head gasket has failed.

I wont even begin to assume to know everything that may be wrong in your case, because there is not enough information. however running the motor not on the muffs however directly to the motor did indeed melt your impeller since water was not flowing thru the impeller which lubricates and cools the raw water pump. At a minimum you are looking at repairing the raw water pump.

I will recommend the following:

connect your garden hose to the location where the supply hose from the transom shield connects to the thermostat housing. turn on the water and look for leaks. then take a picture of the leak and post here. we can confirm if it is a core plug leak or a crack

if you do not find water leaking, you may need to perform a system pressure test. (do a search on iboats, it is covered in the stickies at the top of the forum)

regarding your exhaust tube, if you blistered the paint, there was no water flowing and the rubber running to the tube and the exhaust flapper will have melted as well. The rubber exhaust hose should be removed for inspection. since you are in north florida, I assume you are in salt water. I would also consider removing the exhaust riser and inspecting the manifold and riser.

once we determine the extents of the damage from overheating, we can determine course of action and ultimately cost.

 

[GinnyC]

Thank you for your time in helping us newbies out my husband is ready to sell it for scraps he keeps saying never again will he buy an inboard/outboard. Water was only coming out of that Core plug/freeze plug no where else could we see water leaking form anything; after the water drained from the bottom of the boat i found the piece its like the size of a 50 cent piece laying at the bottom of the boat. We thought to put it back in or replace it but only problem was we don't know a lot so i didn't want to do more damage (I'm waiting on our friend to call us back with the name of a guy he knows who isn't as expensive as the big shops.) Now I've blown a piston in a car before and cracked a car engine so is the noise similar because when we had it running the other day the boat sounded normal minus the water pouring out of the hole in the manifold. And if there was water in the engine would i be able to see this milky oil from looking at the dipstick?

 

[GinnyC]

edited to addd We never ran the boat without water running I was just saying he had the garden hose hooked up straight to the engine theres a spot it screws on, verse doing the bunny ears.

 

[jerryjerry05]

From the sounds of the problems.
You should take it to a mechanic who can troubleshoot and give an estimate.
The freeze plug(not really a freeze plug)shows the block got very cold and froze to some extent.
You can still have a cracked block and still have good oil.
The crack can leak water to the outside. In a pinch you can still run it with a small crack to the outside.
Since it got that cold? the riser/ manifold is probably cracked.
The plug came out and it might have ruined the inside.
Look around there are some good guys out there who will help.
I'd help but I live 6 hrs away.
The post you wrote is very hard to read. Break it down into smaller paragraphs.
Will make it easier to read and respond to.