I bought the boat back in Nov '10 knowing it had a few problems to work through and most recently I have found the most challenging. Here are the facts. 1995 Chris Craft 23 Concept with a 5.8 OMC/King Cobra. I've run the boat on the lake twice now both times it ran rough for a while but finally cleared out. All old fuel had been removed from the tank and fuel filter replaced to eliminate fuel as the potential problem. Yesterday I was replacing plugs when I noticed the port rear-most cylinder was full of water. Logic told me to next get a compression reading on that cylinder. After blowing as much of the water out I was able to get a solid 140 lbs of pressure which seemed to hold. This most likely ruled out a blown head gasket or cracked cylinder. As soon as I removed the compression gauge I ran the engine on the trailer with ear muffs. When I shut it down, the cylinder immediately filled again with water. Where could this water be coming from, intake side? Exhaust side? Cracked head? Best scenario seems to be something wrong with the exhaust manifold? Worse possibilites may be a cracked intake, head or block? Any ideas from you experts? Obviously it will need to be torn down to really diagnose but am hoping its a cracked exhaust manifold jacket or intake. A few more facts: I do get the signature white smoke while running on the trailer which is a tell tale that water is going thru the cylinder. There doesn't appear to be any water in the crankcase oil. Since I've had it it has been kept in a garage that gets no colder than 40 degrees so it has not frozen. I cannot however speak for what the previous owner may have done to it with regard to winterization. It was previously stored in a dry boat rack.
