Well I wish I could say that it ended up being another great day but alas. It started good. Took my son who is 14, fishing out in the Gulf which he has never done. Trolled out of the jetties dragging 3 lines looking for anything. Trolled out to the whistle buoy which is 3-4 miles out. Pretty flat day but Drew still got nervous and wanted to head back in so after about an hour and a half, 2 Spanish Macks and some Bonita tuna he was done so we headed back in and mom came and picked him up. I went back out and fished alone, cruised around, anchored off the beach and went snorkeling, watched Dolphins, boats and a rather beautiful young lady on a paddle board wearing a black bikini that was way to small sorry I digress. On the way back I start hearing a strange noise and hind sight the right engine would kept giving me trouble cranking it. I would have to pump the throttle and turn it over a lot and a few times it would just stop turning over when I cranked it. Anyway got back in, pulled the boat and once on the trailer pulled the engine cover and see a bunch on salt residue all over the top of the right engine between the head and the manifold just in front of the carb for those of you familiar with the Chevy inline 6 just about exhaust port on number 3 cylinder. I have pulled the plugs and #3 is wet. Pulled the manifold and water is sitting on top of the exhaust valve and dripping out of the head onto the block. I have stopped for the night because I am about to cry
. Anyway the engine oil is saturated in salt water what ever caused this at this point I have no choice but to pull the engine because there is only one way I am going to get all this salt water out of this engine. Ok all that said what broke. The elbow looks ok and this looks like it's the new manifold. Could be head gasket blown, let water in number 3 cylinder which pumped out exhaust but what caused manifold gasket to blow spewing water straight up between head and manifold. If elbow is bad water would have gone into #6 not 3. Same thing if manifold was bad. Anyway I will know more tomorrow when I pull the head. This really sucks. Hind sight it makes sense that for the last two days this engine was idling low, hard to start, ran a little rough at start up and when cold, started having trouble turning over because water was compressed in #3. AllDodge or anyone else got any ideas. Want to come rebuild an engine with me. I will post pics later
