lost boat motor

Hey guys, I lost my evinrude 15HP motor in the drink a few weeks ago(rainbowLake nY). I picked up a under water metal detector and started running grid lines to find her again. The water is about 4ft deep (10ft in the deepest spot). I've had no luck, I did buy a 250lb magnet that will be here this weekend. I've spend two weekends diving down and trying to find it. There is a lot of vegetation and a small current. I was looking at sonar systems but I'm not sure how good these will be at finding a 77lbs motor? I can't afford the real expensive ones. Anyone have any advice on this? I'm thinking this weekend I will run the magnet on the bottom and continue metal detecting under water.

Re: lost boat motor

I once lost a motor in shallow water (3-4' deep), in a saltwater creek. I knew pretty much where I lost it, but it resisted my efforts to find it. After dragging hooks, using sonar etc., I was about ready to give up. A SCUBA diver friend of mine suggested a solution which worked well.

Anchor the boat where you think the motor is most likely to be. Attach a light line (75' long works) that sinks, to the boat anchor. Now weigh down the other end of the light line and attach a bouy so you don't lose the end. Now walk in a circle keeping the line tight, and on the bottom. When the line points to something other than the boat anchor, you have found something. Walk the line and see what you got.

Before I found my motor, I found two cinder blocks and three crab traps.

Re: lost boat motor

You do realize that most of that motor is aluminum, and will not be attracted to the magnet, right?

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Good that it's fresh water, but after "a few weeks" I expect the motor is probably ruined, especially in the crankshaft/bearings area, as well as the electronics. But keep looking and hopefully you'll find it...Is your boat/motor insured? Good Luck!

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I'm not sure how well that will work, the area is filled with logs and heavy underwater grass. I'll try it though The motor is aluminum but the internals I believe are steel. I think the head(bowl) is also steel as well. I really don't know how bad the motor is. It went down running with me, I'm lucky I didn't get hurt. I just remember the motor spinning around went into some heavy sediment. When I surfaced the water I marked the area with two trees on the shore. The inlet is about 20ft across and I was about 10ft from the shore so I know where it could be. It could have spun somewhere else as well.. I have a feeling it might have went under some logs that are down there.

Re: lost boat motor

robert graham said:

Good that it's fresh water, but after "a few weeks" I expect the motor is probably ruined, especially in the crankshaft/bearings area, as well as the electronics. But keep looking and hopefully you'll find it...Is your boat/motor insured? Good Luck!

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It's been two weeks to be exact, even if I found it I do have a rebuild kit and gasket kit for her. If anything I can cut my loses and maybe find another one. It was a good motor, makes me sick thinking about it.

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If you don't mind me asking. How did it come off the transom? I have a 9.8 on a jon boat that I have only used a couple of times. so I do not have much experience with outboards. Is there anything I should do to keep this from happening to me? Glad you did not get hurt. I bet it scared the crap out of you when it came off.

As far as finding it I don't have much help to offer. I did think of one thing. Would it work to tie a stong but small magnet to a fishing pole and make casts every foot or so draging it across the bottom???

Re: lost boat motor

clamp-on motors need a sturdy safety line tied to the boat for this reason.

I don't know how old your motor is, but a water-logged 15 is worth only a couple hundred bucks, less if it's old. I wouldn't be buying a lot of equipment to find it--no more than a snorkle. Consider as well your time--hours of searching, several hours to rebuild it.

Be ready to rebuild it the minute you bring it up, or have another tank waiting to keep it in until you are ready.

From what I understand, recovering a sunk motor, even in salt, is not that difficult if it sank not running, but is a major undertaking if it was running.

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That's a real bummer! I've know a couple of folks to find small outboards in nearby river and they were able to get them running fairly easy. One guy said as long as you dry it out quickly after pulling out of water it is OK. No idea if true or not.

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I didn't have the chain tied to the motor which was my fault. I was going pretty fast, there was some logs and stumps down there. Basically what happen was I hit several off them.. The motor went up hard on the transom and I think when it came down the propeller hit a stump. The boat went up and with me holding the throttle tight we both kind of went into the water. The motor went down hard because it was spinning. Will the motor run again? It's a 90% chance it will. If anything it will have to be taking apart, sand and what not will be in the carb and possibly into the cylinder. The first hit slowed me down to a stop and then the second was a final see you. If the motor was chained to the boat it could have been saved.

Once the motor is out and into the air you're going to want to pull the plugs right away. Spray the inside with WD-40 because the air will oxidize the metal inside. Later causing imperfections in the cylinder walls cause pre-mature ring wear. I'm sure the motor is fine.. the coil packs will be a different story though. The lower end will need to be drain of marine oil and it will need to be gone through. It's worth saving if I can find it, I'm sure it will run again. If not I'll just have to do a rebuild on the power block. I have the parts to rebuild so it's worth something to me.

Also there is a slight change the propeller is bent which could have caused the shaft the shatter.... hard to tell though

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Yep, a couple of weeks in fresh water & it should still be ok. After pulling it up I'd it take the cover off & dunk it upside down in a trash can full of fresh water to rise things off (and leave it in the water until you are rady to start working on it). As you said, next is to pull the plugs & spray in oil or WD40, turn it over, dry things off (hair drier works ok), check for a spark, put the plugs back in & try to get it going. Don't try to turn it over until you pull the plugs as at least one cylinder is probably full of water & it is hydrostatically locked (you said it went down running). Slim chance you bent a rod.

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So, what type of chain would be best to use to secure the motor to the transom, and better yet - where should the anchor points be on boat / motor?

Mine is not secured either (YET) ... thanks for sharing this. You could have just saved my outboard and a lot of headache.

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You do realize that most of that motor is aluminum, and will not be attracted to the magnet, right?

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this was my first thought seeing your magnet idea. iron, nickel, and cobalt is the only metel that a magnet will stick to you've got a fiberglass hood over the engine and an aluminum upper and lower unit i doubt your magnet will be of any use.

also 10 minuites under water and you will need a carb rebuild and a complete tear down of the engine. i doubt spraying wd-40 in the cylinder will do anything but waste time/money. it should have a cast iron cylinder that will probably rust with in a few hours so its already got rust growing. my guess is a few gaskets and some oil with a fresh rebuild it will run good as new. i cant imagine any of the electronics were damaged coils are sealed pretty good that would be my only concern and you may be able to get one used for $50-100 or brand new for ?? 150-200?.

I've know a couple of folks to find small outboards in nearby river and they were able to get them running fairly easy.

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if you take the easy route, yes it may run, but for how long? you might get an hour or a year, rebuild it you'll get a life time.

the only real steel on an engine other then bolts is the cylinder sleve, piston rings, bearings, and the crank. the rest is aluminum which wont have any effects other then water damage if you dont rebuild the engine.

not sure how well metel detecters work in 4-10 foot of water, and lets face it how much metel crap do you think you will find before your motor? pennies, empty beer cans, keys, lures, ect...

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I used to go to the boat races, and watch the tunnel hull boats get into each other before flipping @ 100+ mph. The marshals would get a line hooked to the nose as the boats would go under. They'd pull the boats to the surface, float'em and put them back on their trailers at the boat ramp.

Then, they'd pull the plugs, hit the starter and blow the water out of the motors. With a little starter fluid, they'd be up and running--ready for the next race.

I couldn't believe they'd do this on a factory built Mercury race motor--big, big custom built engines.

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How long will it continue to run? As a kid I lost our 2hp outboard off the back of our dinghy in about 8' of salt water. My dad followed the oil slick & found it. All we did was as I described and it has been running fine ever since. .. that was 40 years ago. ( I still have it.)

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How long it will last depends on alot of things, but one of the biggest is how long it sits in the water. A quick dunk won't hurt it much at all. 15 years ago, I used to do alot of four wheeling on ATV's. The group I rode with wasn't into speed, we were into mud. The deeper, the better. I had a penchant for finding the deepest holes and trying to make it through. I can't tell you how many times I drowned a Honda 300 (my record though was 6 times in one trip). Before any ideas get out there, I bought the ATV as a basket case, and completely rebuilt it from the ground up just for this.

We'd pull it out, remove the spark plug, remove the air box plug, hit the starter to flush it out, dry off the plug with a lighter, put it back in, and go find the next mud hole. At the end of every trip, I changed oil and diff fluids. That was a 1991 Honda, and I still have and use it every day (though with less frequent dunkings these days).

Not sure how this pertains to the motor sitting there for 2 weeks, but thought I'd share. Bottom line, quicker you can get to it, better off you'll be.

One other note, I think you said it was running wide open when it went for a swim. Contrary to everything I said above, that can be bad. If running at high RPM's it sucks a piston full of water, it can hydrolock and bend a rod. Hopefully it coughed a few times to slow down abit.

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it depends on how much oxygen is in the water because rust to start forming you need moisture (water)you have that a lot and you need oxygen so if you fined the motor i hope you do just keep it in water or better yet diesel for a day or two after that you can start working on it and wont rust

Re: lost boat motor

its an evinrude, it will run again.the inside of a 2 stroke crank case is pretty oily, through and through. so it will be protected form the water for a bit. i have a 2o chrysler siezed solid for 8 years, was sunk by owner, marina said its not worth fixing (what a qualified licensed marina cant pull out spark plugs) so it sat and sat and sat, then i got it for free, filled cylinders with wd40 freed it up constantly wiping out cylinders till they were clean, put the head on, It runs! this was 2 years ago it hasnt given me a problem. i a, sure this motor will run again. even if you were going at high rpm, i dought that you will have bent a connecting rod. because it will have sucked a spray of water in, not a solid cylinder full like it is was a 4 stroke, so it would have choked form the water andstopped befor hitting the bottom. what about your gas tank? the line disconected? this happened to my uncle in DEEP water and the line held the motor from doom(some how by a miracle. but your is in pretty shallow water, so i thought your line may be long enuff. GOOD LUCK

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I lost a 15hp evinrude in Canada in about 22 ft of water, scary experience. It was going to be $300 just to get a diver out there plus about #100/hour. They said because it went down running chances are it would be junk. Not sure if that's true. We had to get back to WI anyway so we left it. Told them about where it went down in case one of the locals wanted to fish for it as it happened just before we had to head back to WI.

Instead of chaining the outboard to the boat why not just bolt a piece of 1 inch Aluminum L bracket upside down across the top of the transom to keep the motor from falling off? You'd here the motor rattling long before the screws came loose enough for the motor to slip over the bracket, and it would just tip back instead of dangling over the side where who knows what could happen with it.

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Still working on this... im getting some crazy tones form a tree where i hit. The metal detector I have when it gets near a large amount of metal it makes a really high pitch tone. It's a pulse inductive MD... meaning that if I keep the head over the tone it will die. The smaller the metal the quicker it dies. The larger the metal the longer it tones out.. it's based of density and what not. Been three weeks so the damage might be serious by this time. I'm going to be up there this weekend and this is my last trip.. If I can't find it I'm going to let it go.:facepalm: