Weird Engine Troubles

[Dan in Alaska]

I live in Anchorage. My friend and his wife (our boating partners) are headed out of Seward this weekend.

[Tstone]

I'm not a mechanic, but it uses extra gas on that engine and the oil level seemed high. Is it possible that he has gas leaking into his crankcase?

[paul h]

Dan,

Sounds like a perfect excuse to upgrade to twin 175's

The only time I've heard of oil sludging up is from being run for extended time w/o changing it. Hopefully the repeated flushes will clean it out w/o having to tear it down.

I'd suggest running some fuel injector cleaner in your next tank, and if you haven't already, replace the internal fuel filters in the engine. It probably wouldn't hurt to replace the fuel lines if they look suspect.

The yammy 115's have had some known problems, though not with every one of them. One is running too cool and the pistons not sealing which leads to "making oil" another way to say fuel getting added to the oil, not a good thing. I don't recall if a warmer thermostat was a fix or not.

So with the tunnel supposedly open tomorrow, are you heading to Whittier or back to Seward?

[welder]

Paul, can you post a bigger picture of the boat in your Avatar ?

[paul h]

Paul, can you post a bigger picture of the boat in your Avatar ?

I posted it in the show your boat thread, but here it is again.

A buddy has posted quite a few of my pics, and a writeup of the maiden voyage on his forum.

http://www.fishyfish.com/paulhail/paul.html

If I were to build another boat, I'd weld one up out of aluminum. I didn't mind the woodwork, or the epoxy and glass work. But I reconfirmed that I absolutely detest sanding, fairing, more sanding, more fairing, priming, sanding, thinking I should fair some more but then going ahead and painting it so I'd finally get on the water. Not to mention doing that during a damp spring which made finding a weather window to paint a nightmare. Let's just say building a boat in your garage where the garage is 3" longer than the boat, and 1/2" higher was a challenge.

I love the way the boat handles and it's a good fishing platform, but it's just too small for our use, and I hate slowing down in a chop

[Sandy]

"but it's just too small for our use" . Sounds like we are hearing a bigger garage in your future. That one looks like a darn nice spunky craft. Good work.

[welder]

Alloy , did you say Alloy, Yeah Baby...............

5' longer 2' wider and 1/4" plate , bring it on .

[paul h]

I'm thinking of something along the lines of this

http://www.seawolfmarine.com/28/index.html

But I'd go with twin 300's on the transom

[rchanner]

I was just curious, Dan....how did this come out?

First trip on the "new" boat, twin 2001 Yamaha F115's. When we did the pre-season maintenance, the engine oil came out funny looking......clumps of oil, like curdled milk or blood clots. The "clumps" didn't have anything hard or metallic in them. We flushed several quarts of new oil through the engine and drained it, looking for more junk. A few more small clumps came out, but nothing serious, so we filled it up with new oil and ran the engine for 5-10 minutes on the hose & cuffs and drained the oil again. Some small dark clumps came out, but not many of them. Again, the "clumps" were not hard, like pieces of gasket, oil seal, or metal parts. They were just thick clumps of oil.

We filled it up again with new oil, and then ran it this weekend. When we first started our trip, this motor wasn't running very smoothly. It displayed more vibration and ran rougher than the port engine, like it wasn't running on all 4 cylinders. It didn't make full RPM and used more fuel than the other engine, according to the fuel flow meters. After a few minutes, though, the engine came to life and ran fine. We started/stopped several times, and it continued to run perfectly for the rest of the day. We put a few hours on the engines, and the initial troubles never reappeared.

At the end of the day, we noticed the exhaust port in the prop of the "troubled" engine had far more black soot than the other motor, which ran perfectly. Tonight, we're going to pull the plugs and take a look at them to see if they provide us any more clues. I'm thinking there was something clogging up a fuel injector, that eventually passed, or perhaps a loose spark plug wire that eventually made contact. As for the oil clumps, though, I'm still scratching my head. I'll drain the oil again tonight to see if there's anything still floating around in there. Maybe a contaminant got in the oil and congealed after sitting all winter long?

I'll report what I find tonight.

[paul h]

Chris took it out last weekend, you can read about that in the end of this thread

http://www.asrealasitgets.net/forums/ubbth....html#Post80205

and Dan and Crhis are planning a 3 day trip this weekend, so I'm thinking they must have gotten the gunk cleaned out.

I wanted to head out with them this weekend, but have too many kids activities in town

But I should be heading out Friday to see if I can't find a few halibut