Kevstar1212
Cadet
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2019
- Messages
- 12
Okay guys sorry in advance this is gonna be a long post but I’ve done a fair amount of research on your forums and tried to rule out a lot of stuff before making a post of my own. So I’ll try to be thorough with my situation. Been reading a lot on here and it seems you have a good group of guys who are very knowledgeable.
Bought a 1979 searay 24’ cuddy cabin. Supposedly ready to go, turn key. Fired right up on muffs, sounded good, warmed up and didn’t overheat. Lots of new parts he supposedly replaced because he did a starter on it when he bought it and just went through and replaced all the general things that could go bad, ( water pump, alternator, fuel pump, stat, water separating fuel filter, plugs, wires updated to electronic ignition. He didn’t have current tags on it and I didn’t take it out on the water and test it. Looking back, I’ll never buy another boat without running it on the water. I learned my lesson.
1st attempt
on Lake Erie. Started at boat ramp, idled out through to the lake fine ( about 10 minutes of no wake) temp looked good, ran fine, got to lake and my neighbor was driving ( brought him along as I’ve never boated on Erie Myself and he has a boat and been fishing Erie for 52 years. Anyway we got up on plane and went out about 2 miles and relaized we forgot something in the truck turned back and as we were heading back it started loosing rpm eventually stalled out. If started back up but only ran briefly and then died and kept getting shorter time running. Tried changing fuel water serperater and it wouldn’t fill it back up. Towed in, went home pulled fuel line stuck in gas can and it fired right up. Had hard time trying to suck fuel from tank, replaced check valve and fuel line, put back together and it fired right up and ran.
Second attempt.
Launched , idled fine, got on lake , got on plane went about 4 miles out, stopped and started idling in gear setting up poles playing with fish finder. Idled about 5-10 minutes or so and it stalled out. Tried restarting and it ran and then died again, it would start with heavy throttle and stay running with lots of throttle and but if I went to neutral and tried to go in gear it stalled. Noticed this time that the gauge was reading hot and jumping around a lot wasn’t sure if gauge was even accurate. . Thought maybe it was just from running and stalling out and not cooling and engine getting heat soaked. Got towed back once again.
Third attempt.
Launched boat, idled out to Erie went out and payed close attention to temp, temp rose and started jumping around every time I put a load on the boat and rose Very quickly. It got to the red ( doesn’t have numbers just yellow, green and red) and I backed off and idled , got back into channel and it stalled out and I used a electric trolling motor to get back to the boat ramp.
Fourth attempt.
I replaced t stat and ignition coil. Also brought along a IR temp gun and a kid out who is a pretty good backyard mechanic and his family has a boat. Was thinking something was wrong and loosing spark or carb cutting out when warm. Gauge jumped around a lot and wanted to take actual temp reading to verify if motor was running hot or if just bad gauge. Went out and ran it idling around in channel leading to lake because it was 3-5’ waves on lake and I didn’t wanna get stuck stalled out on lake in big waves. Ran boat for 2 hrs idling and taking off in channel and still couldn’t get it to stall. Every time I gave it much more than idle the temp started climbing. Finally I went into channel and circled around around 2k- 2500 rpm let it get up to the red and came in and the temp dropped. We had hard time getting good readings but when temp gauge was up near red we had around 160 on intake near the temp sensor and 140 on hoses leading to elbows and 190 on hoses from manifolds. Went back out let it get up to the red again and came back in and idled and it didn’t cool down quick like last time. Seemed to slowly drop as we idled around and then it stalled out. We quickly changed out ignition coil which temped out at about 170* and it started right up and got us back to the dock. Decided I def had a overheat problem which was leading to the stall out.
Fifth attempt
changed out impeller which didn’t look bad, but was due to replace anyway. Took whole lower unit to marina and had them look at it. They said housing was fine just replace impeller. Did that and took out on local lake, idled around and put under load and it started climbing again. And didn’t seem to cool down quick. Ended up going back to trailer. Never stalled out though.
Got home and Removed a exhaust elbow and opened up cover on end of manifold both looked pretty good, manifold looked pretty good no major flakes on inside of it. Exhaust riser was a little crudded up and had a little bit of rust scale settled on gasket but seemed to have plenty of flow. Checked hose feeding water from impeller and it filled half a 5 gal bucket in 30 seconds. Put back together and then removed the stat on advice of marina and see if extra flow would change anything. Put prop in a garbage can and ran about two minutes. Manifolds and hoses to them got very warm but hoses to elbows didn’t. I was wondering if exhaust was back-feeding from the elbows into cooking hoses.
Marina suggested replacing hoses with clear tubes to monitor flow. I did and had lots of air and almost no flow of water. All hoses had water on both ends and air in the middle. And the had big bubbles slowly come from the stat housing.
Im at a loss. I’m leaning towards heads or gaskets but I feel like there’s still some stones left un turned in the cooling system. Would bad heads or gaskets completely stop the flow of water ? Weird thing is I swear that even when I wasn’t seeing water move in the hoses I though I still had water coming out around the bellows. I don’t get any water coming out the prob when running on muffs. I can tell overheat is getting worse but just not sure what else to check.
With cooling system before really looking hard into heads and gaskets.
Thanks again if anybody actually read this whole post but I didn’t want To waste the time of a bunch of guys telling me things I’ve already tried.
Bought a 1979 searay 24’ cuddy cabin. Supposedly ready to go, turn key. Fired right up on muffs, sounded good, warmed up and didn’t overheat. Lots of new parts he supposedly replaced because he did a starter on it when he bought it and just went through and replaced all the general things that could go bad, ( water pump, alternator, fuel pump, stat, water separating fuel filter, plugs, wires updated to electronic ignition. He didn’t have current tags on it and I didn’t take it out on the water and test it. Looking back, I’ll never buy another boat without running it on the water. I learned my lesson.
1st attempt
on Lake Erie. Started at boat ramp, idled out through to the lake fine ( about 10 minutes of no wake) temp looked good, ran fine, got to lake and my neighbor was driving ( brought him along as I’ve never boated on Erie Myself and he has a boat and been fishing Erie for 52 years. Anyway we got up on plane and went out about 2 miles and relaized we forgot something in the truck turned back and as we were heading back it started loosing rpm eventually stalled out. If started back up but only ran briefly and then died and kept getting shorter time running. Tried changing fuel water serperater and it wouldn’t fill it back up. Towed in, went home pulled fuel line stuck in gas can and it fired right up. Had hard time trying to suck fuel from tank, replaced check valve and fuel line, put back together and it fired right up and ran.
Second attempt.
Launched , idled fine, got on lake , got on plane went about 4 miles out, stopped and started idling in gear setting up poles playing with fish finder. Idled about 5-10 minutes or so and it stalled out. Tried restarting and it ran and then died again, it would start with heavy throttle and stay running with lots of throttle and but if I went to neutral and tried to go in gear it stalled. Noticed this time that the gauge was reading hot and jumping around a lot wasn’t sure if gauge was even accurate. . Thought maybe it was just from running and stalling out and not cooling and engine getting heat soaked. Got towed back once again.
Third attempt.
Launched boat, idled out to Erie went out and payed close attention to temp, temp rose and started jumping around every time I put a load on the boat and rose Very quickly. It got to the red ( doesn’t have numbers just yellow, green and red) and I backed off and idled , got back into channel and it stalled out and I used a electric trolling motor to get back to the boat ramp.
Fourth attempt.
I replaced t stat and ignition coil. Also brought along a IR temp gun and a kid out who is a pretty good backyard mechanic and his family has a boat. Was thinking something was wrong and loosing spark or carb cutting out when warm. Gauge jumped around a lot and wanted to take actual temp reading to verify if motor was running hot or if just bad gauge. Went out and ran it idling around in channel leading to lake because it was 3-5’ waves on lake and I didn’t wanna get stuck stalled out on lake in big waves. Ran boat for 2 hrs idling and taking off in channel and still couldn’t get it to stall. Every time I gave it much more than idle the temp started climbing. Finally I went into channel and circled around around 2k- 2500 rpm let it get up to the red and came in and the temp dropped. We had hard time getting good readings but when temp gauge was up near red we had around 160 on intake near the temp sensor and 140 on hoses leading to elbows and 190 on hoses from manifolds. Went back out let it get up to the red again and came back in and idled and it didn’t cool down quick like last time. Seemed to slowly drop as we idled around and then it stalled out. We quickly changed out ignition coil which temped out at about 170* and it started right up and got us back to the dock. Decided I def had a overheat problem which was leading to the stall out.
Fifth attempt
changed out impeller which didn’t look bad, but was due to replace anyway. Took whole lower unit to marina and had them look at it. They said housing was fine just replace impeller. Did that and took out on local lake, idled around and put under load and it started climbing again. And didn’t seem to cool down quick. Ended up going back to trailer. Never stalled out though.
Got home and Removed a exhaust elbow and opened up cover on end of manifold both looked pretty good, manifold looked pretty good no major flakes on inside of it. Exhaust riser was a little crudded up and had a little bit of rust scale settled on gasket but seemed to have plenty of flow. Checked hose feeding water from impeller and it filled half a 5 gal bucket in 30 seconds. Put back together and then removed the stat on advice of marina and see if extra flow would change anything. Put prop in a garbage can and ran about two minutes. Manifolds and hoses to them got very warm but hoses to elbows didn’t. I was wondering if exhaust was back-feeding from the elbows into cooking hoses.
Marina suggested replacing hoses with clear tubes to monitor flow. I did and had lots of air and almost no flow of water. All hoses had water on both ends and air in the middle. And the had big bubbles slowly come from the stat housing.
Im at a loss. I’m leaning towards heads or gaskets but I feel like there’s still some stones left un turned in the cooling system. Would bad heads or gaskets completely stop the flow of water ? Weird thing is I swear that even when I wasn’t seeing water move in the hoses I though I still had water coming out around the bellows. I don’t get any water coming out the prob when running on muffs. I can tell overheat is getting worse but just not sure what else to check.
With cooling system before really looking hard into heads and gaskets.
Thanks again if anybody actually read this whole post but I didn’t want To waste the time of a bunch of guys telling me things I’ve already tried.