water in oil

[87regal]

this is the second year i have owned my boat. I have an 87 regal empress 200 xl with an omc 4.3l. Last season was my 1st and it was great. Season ended and it was winterized. On my 1st trip out this season the engine was really hesitant. I pulleds the spark arrestor off to see if the choke was closing on me and noticed a lot of condensation in the arrestor. I pulled the valve cover vent tubes off and they were blowing out a lot of steam. Then i pulled the dipstick and saw some milky white stuff mixed with the motor oil. Went right back to the dock and started pumping out the oil. It looked like cream with a touch of coffee. I am a newbie but i am leaning toward head gasket. what else could it be and what could have caused this. When i pumped out the oil last year it looked fine. It had new clean oil and this was the 1st time out this year.

 

[TilliamWe]

Re: water in oil

87regal, you came to the rigfht place to ask. Don S & rodbolt will be bombarding you with info soon. Just one thing to remember about marine engines, water has another way in besides the headgaskets:<br />the Exhaust manifolds. You are gonna want to start there, before you go pulling a head off.

 

[Don S]

Re: water in oil

Sounds to me like the block wasn't drained or winterized properly.<br />Cracked block, head, or intake manifold could be the problem.<br />Best thing to do is isolate the engine, from the exhaust cooling system and pressure check the engines cooling system to see where the leak is.<br />With bad manifolds you will not get water into the engine while it's running.

 

[87regal]

Re: water in oil

well i winterized it myself, so i hope thats not the case . When i winterized it i drained all the petcocks then ran 6 gallons of Rv antifreeze in it. Do you think that wasn't good enough? How do i go about isolating the the engine cooling system from the exhaust cooling system? Also what kind of pressure should i put into the test?

 

[Don S]

Re: water in oil

Is it raw water or fresh water cooled?

 

[87regal]

Re: water in oil

raw water cooled.

 

[Don S]

Re: water in oil

When draining the block, did you remove the block drains and make sure they weren't plugged with debris? If not, you may have not gotten the water out of the block, nor antifreeze in.

 

[Don S]

Re: water in oil

Forgot.......Block of the hoses to your exhaust manifolds and pressurize the block from where the water enters. Some creative plumbing usually helps.

 

[87regal]

Re: water in oil

Actually they were plugged so i did remove and replace the petcocks with new ones. When i removed them plenty of water came flowing out. Oh and thanks for the help/info. I really appreciate it.

 

[rybad]

Re: water in oil

Look at the block, see if it looks cracked anywhere. <br /><br />When you winterized, did you make sure the engine was at operating temp. before running anti-freeze through?? If not, you may have been pumping the anti-freeze right out the exhaust, and it may have appeared to run throught the whole system.