Boat filled with water and milkshake for oil in engine Suggestions?

[mjwiseman07]

Long story short drain plug left in boat while on trailer and filled with water. I let a family member borrow one time while out of town for a while and found it full of water and a chocolate milkshake for oil in engine. I just got back to find this so a little upset right now. It is a 2001 Bayliner Capri 1954 with a 4 cylinder Mercruiser.

Mainly looking for tips and suggestions it has never been in saltwater and the water in the boat was rain water. It has never been run with the bad oil in it I know this for a fact. As I checked it before I let him borrow my boat. Appreciate any help you can provide in relation to the engine!

Did the following so far

-Cleaned any water out of cylinders
-Pulled valve cover and cleaned as much moisture out as possible.
-Drained oil and put new in
-block drain and manifold drain

Thanks

Matthew

 

[alldodge]

Howdy and sorry to hear

Its either rebuild or replace. If your comfortable with turning wrenches and can find a bad hull with a good motor this would be the cheapest. Find a good machine shop and rebuild yours. A new long block crate motor, or reman

Donner motor - 500
Rebuild - 1000
new crate - 3000
reman - 2000
Complete drop in from Merc - 6K

 

[mjwiseman07]

Howdy and sorry to hear

Its either rebuild or replace. If your comfortable with turning wrenches and can find a bad hull with a good motor this would be the cheapest. Find a good machine shop and rebuild yours. A new long block crate motor, or reman

Donner motor - 500
Rebuild - 1000
new crate - 3000
reman - 2000
Complete drop in from Merc - 6K

The Donner motor you mentioned above do you have a link to that? I am ASE certified so can do mechanical work. Really appreciate your help!

 

[alldodge]

No don't have one, need to look on craigs list, ebay or other in your area to find an boat that the hull isn't worth fixing. Many have found a boat for 500 or even less with a trailer, so they remove what they want then haul the boat to the dump

 

[old bird]

You got new oil in it ? Fire it up !

 

[alldodge]

You got new oil in it ? Fire it up !

Agree, do I feel dumb :facepalm: give it a go it may be OK

 

[bruceb58]

When a bilge fills with water, it is very easy for the water to enter through the main seals.

Pull and replace your starter though..it will eventually fail.

 

[mjwiseman07]

Glad to report it fired up and ran great. It had very little water get in the engine. Really surprised but now time to fix my shift shaft seal and then I am on the lake! Thanks for the help!

 

[alldodge]

A happy ending

 

[bruceb58]

Have you pulled your starter yet? It will eventually fail. I had the exact same thing happen to me and the starter failed a few months later. It was a rusty mess inside and it was from fresh water inside.

 

[boatman37]

I would do another oil change before running it too much. May still be some water in there that didn't get cleared out last time.

Could there be water in the fuel? Should he drain the fuel tank too?

 

[bobcox]

You should not need to replace the engine. Keep changing the oil. Last time this happened to me I did a flush suggested by an old pro boat mechanic: put a gallon and a half of diesel fuel in the crankcase and ran it at idle for a while to flush all the water out, then drained the diesel and replaced with fresh oil. Made my hair stand up to do it but seemed to work.

 

[alldodge]

Don't see how diesel which is very little weight oil do anything to absorb or mix any different then regular oil. In the old days some would run a couple quarts of diesel with regular oil t try a clean out the sludge. Don't think I would want straight diesel and run even at an idle for a while, but this is just my opinion

 

[bruceb58]

There is no way I would run diesel as the sole motor oil in an engine, even for a minute! I would rather have the emulsified oil in there before I put diesel in.

 

[bobcox]

Yes, I used oil and diesel together. But he said just diesel would be fine, that there was no load at idle so not much danger to the bearings. I suppose you could also do it with the starter, just be careful not to burn it up. I think the idea was the diesel being thinner would circulate much more and wash into tighter spaces than the motor oil to get the water out. Water is thinner than oil so its hard to get it all out with just oil.

 

[mjwiseman07]

So at this point I cleaned all gas out of tank and put new in. I ran it sitting on trailer ONLY AT IDLE to operating temp shut off and changed the oil(oil looked pretty good still milky). This time put in lake ran for very short distance maybe total of 50 yards, probably 1/4 throttle never above. Pulled out of water changed oil showed some milky color but better. Took out one more time ran it doing same thing and then changed oil again. This time oil looked really good and I put in my normal operating oil. Will probably change oil again after running the boat this weekend. I will be constantly monitoring the oil and still think I am going to take it easy afraid to push my luck. After running this weekend and monitoring the oil the following weekend I may go ahead and run it normal. Appreciate everyone's help!

 

[bruceb58]

That's what I did. I changed the oil a couple of times.

 

[Dooboz74]

I had the same problem as you. But mine was from a bad cylinder head to intake manifold bolt. It was bad from the factory. I fixed the head threads at a machine shop. I ran a gallon of diesel fuel and 3 quarts of of tranny fluid at idle for about 10 minutes. Had good oil pressure the whole time. Changed it 3 times with less diesel each time. Last one was just tranny fluid for about 30 minutes. Changed oil filters each time. It still had a little milky fluid. I took it to the lake and ran it around 3000 rpm under load to get the motor good and warm. The milky stuff went away after that. The engine heat evaporated the left over water. A full season so far this year and the oil is so clear it looks like it came right out of the bottle. I'm not saying theirs is the correct way to to do it but it worked ok for me. I like the tranny fluid as a cleaner. Plus I used to bottles of sea foam engine cleaner in the oil on the next to last oil change. Is worked good I think. Best of luck.

 

[wahlejim]

You are changing the oil filter, correct? That will trap a lot of that milky crud. Beyond that, when you get down to a small amount of water, run it full throttle for awhile to help steam the water out of there.

 

[mjwiseman07]

You are changing the oil filter, correct? That will trap a lot of that milky crud. Beyond that, when you get down to a small amount of water, run it full throttle for awhile to help steam the water out of there.

Yes, any time I change oil I do that. Good call on running wide open I will do that.

Thanks

Matthew