Here is the main question __How bad is it when you get water in the heads? It?s a long story,,heres some background,,just got a 1997 2100 LSR with a 350 8 cyl 2 barrel thuinderbolt. Got it in june ran it twice on the lake had fun,,by the end of the second run noticed it was hard to start but being new to boats didn?t really look at the gauges much but I know it had gas,,the third time we took off and it overheaded within ten minutes,,got hot smoked and it just died out and wouldn?t restart. Took it to a mechanic I heard a few good things about. The guy said it had sand in the engine so they did a total rebuild,,$5000 later I am on the lake taking it out for a test run just putting around at idle for 20 min,,then spead it up a bit to 2000 rpm,,I hear an alrm going off but I think it?s the depth finder it goes off right away,,the temp guage is slowly going up but I see it lower when the t-stat opens but it seems the temp keeps going higher and higher before the t-stat opens,,so the temp guage is going up and down,,the alarm goes off again I slow to an idle,,its about 190degress,,goes down to 170,,alarm goes off, so I try to limp it back in bu then alarm sounds it jumps up to 220 degress and won?t restart,,ligh faint smoke in the engine compartment and a sound like frying bacon on a pan. I get towed ,,go back to the mech,,first he says my temp guage is bad,,( it sure seems like it overheated to me),,I ask why didn?t it restart,,he says my starter is bad too,, they just put in a new starter for the rebuild,,then when I call back he says he found water in the cylinder heads,,he thinks maybe it was some backwash from the test run in his tank..being I juts had the engine rebuilt ,,how bad is this water in the heads? Will I need to have a total new rebuild done again? Will it weaken my new rebuilt engine? Should I look for a new mechanic,,I think the starter is fine, I think maybe they put the t-stat in wrong or the messed up when they reconnected engine,,he says he ran it for 2 hours with no problem after the rebuild and it was fine??
