New Thread for my Transom Leak!
Figured I would start over and lay out the whole long and sad story. I wish I had an extra 5 grand laying around that I could just take the boat to the shop and say "fix it". Just not my nature even if I did.
My boat is an 05 Rinker 270, 5.0L Horizon MPI with bravo III. Has around 300 hours on it or so the meter says.
Water in the bilge has always bothered me. It seemed sometimes it would have some, sometimes it would not. I THINK the times not were at first just when we ran the boat for the day and did not use the A/C. Here in FL, when you run it in the summer time it sure seems to generate a lot of water. So, kind of went back and forth on whether water should be there or not and where it was coming from. Summer before last things seemed to have changed for the worse. I had a coupler go out. Now the only recollection of me striking anything was months before it went, I came around the corner in the river I boat most and I think I hit a submerged tree that had fallen over the bank. I was not going real fast but I felt it, seemed to be tangled, had to back up to get untangle and went about our boating day. There some scratching of the out drive but nothing major so did not give it another thought until months later the coupler went.
So, I get the coupler repaired and now it seems I have a lot more water coming in the boat than before. So I am on a mission- I bring the boat home and put powder around the thru hulls and use my fake lake to put pressure from the out side of the boat and get nothing. Get nothing when I run the boat on the muffs. Keep using the boat,...sometimes it has water in the bilge and sometimes it does not but then it also starts to really stink- I come to the conclusion that my waste tank must be leaking but it does not seem to all the time- crack up high from pumping out and sucking down the tank? Eventually, I pull the tank out and low and behold, about an inch up from the bottom there is about a 1/8" hole in the tank, perfect hole not a split. Apparently, TP would clog up the hole and then as stuff moved around in there it would un plug and leak and then as it leaked down, would plug up again. Sorry if your eating dinner reading this. So, I pulled it out, put a plug in it, put some glue around it and that seem to solve my problem of leaking, I thought. So, at the marina, and the bilge pump comes on during the night. Never really did that before other than my leaking waste tank and that problem fixed so where is the water coming from. I had a week off and left the boat at the marina and was determined to see where it was coming from. I eventually did see a trickle of water, not a lot but a good steady trickle coming in and figured, great, must be the bellows. I was getting ready to start a new job, lots of unknowns so we put this on hold for a bit to get life smoothed out. After about 3 months, I went ahead and ordered all the bellows parts, gimbal bearing and new seal kit for the drive. I have a good friend that was a former mechanic/service manager for a couple of shops around town that had all the tools. Only thing that really gave me a fit was that bearing. I broke the merc tool getting it out, stripped the threads. Ended up with a slide hammer from auto parts store and eventually got it out and back together. Figured all my problems are solved- except it still leaks and it leaks worse. I put it in at the ramp. The water seems, as near as I can tell coming from the area around where the water pickup tube comes through, the speedo and the trim wires. My friend got down there on another trip to the ramp with a little camera he stuck down by the Y pipes and he thought it was coming from there- Like maybe it had rusted out and got knocked when the motor went back in from the coupler and cracked it or something. I brought the boat home today and ran it on the muffs and no water is in the boat. I put my phone on a a selfie stick, not sure what I thought I would see as there was no water in the boat anyway, but saw nothing.
Just below the plastic piece where the speedo tube fitting is, you can see the metal is stained with water as it collects on the flange there. It is from that area. I guess my delima now is, is it from one of those parts coming through the transom or did I crack the transom assembly and lose the seal and now is leaking, and worse after banging the hell out of that bearing to get it out. The only other test I can think of to do to confirm it before shop time is- and one of the guys on the forum fixed his leak this way but I don't see it as a safe even semi permanent solution-run sealant around the the outer gimbal ring/transom and see if it stops leaking. I suppose if the gimbal ring is cracked, it would still leak it and if those other parts mentioned (speedo, water pick up and trim wires) are leaking on their own it would still leak. The starter is so low on the motor, I don't think I can put any amount of water in the boat on land to see where it might be leaking out.
I really need to get this fixed and back to boating- been side lined for 8 months now. Any other ideas????
