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AOYS
ATLANTIC OFFSHORE YACHT
SERVICES
SOUTH FLORIDA |
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This is a 2001 Sea Ray 26' Sundancer with a single
Mercruiser I/O MCM 5.7 Litre/Bravo Three Package. The owner had met me a month
ago and mentioned that he had a company install a new engine in the boat. After
a few months the engine shut down and would not start. He told me the mechanic
came back and diagnosed the problem and took the boat away saying the engine
failed and that he would take care of it under warranty. When we talked at his
house, the boat was being worked on under warranty. A month went by and he
called me and asked that I come over and look at the boat. I agreed.
When I arrived at the boat, the bilge was covered in milky
oil that was ejected from the engine. Clear telltale sign that salt water from
the cooling passages breached a head gasket or manifold gasket and made its way
into the oil pan and overflowed into the bilge. Engine was barely turning and
clearly had hydro locked. At that point, I called the engine dead. Not worth, in
my opinion, putting any labor into an engine that sat full of salt water for a
week.
I asked him if it wouldn't be better to let the guy deal
with it, since he installed it and the answer was that this mechanic was not
answering his calls. I ordered a brand new Marine Power long block package
($3995.00) on the spot and scheduled delivery to the Palm Beach Yacht Center for
Monday the 18th of August 2008. Due to Hurricane Fay, we finally started tearing
it apart Thursday and the new engine arrived Friday.
While I was running errands last week I ran into the
mechanic that installed the new engine that failed. I recognized him by way of
the signs on his truck. I mentioned the boat to him and he discussed in length
with me what he felt was the problem. He told me that he had installed the
engine and that after 8 months he received a call from my customer stating that
it overheated and now would not start. He told me that he went out to the boat
and found that the salt water pump had an impeller failure. He replaced that and
it was still not running right. Not sure how, maybe a compression check, he
determined internal failure and took the boat back to his shop, pulled the
engine and determined that one of the pistons had a hole in it. He took me out
to his car and showed me a piston with a quarter sized hole in it's top. He said
he replaced the piston and reassembled the engine, returned it to the customer
in running condition and advised him that it was detonating and running lean and
that he would need to address that or it would happen again. We talked in
depth about the problems and he blamed them on the customer for overheating it
and running it hot. I asked where he had purchased the engine and he told me
that it was rebuilt by a small shop in Delray. See first pic in the gallery.
I mentioned my encounter to my customer and he said it
never ran right from the day he rebuilt it the first time. That after the second
rebuild/repair, he took it out, it overheated, he waited for it to cool,
restarted it and the alarm never came on again. He motored it slowly back to his
dock. He also told me that this mechanic told him he was buying a new engine and
charged him $11,000.00 for it installed.
Upon disassembly, I discovered many loose and missing
bolts but more alarming to me was the disconnected vacuum line from the throttle
body to the fuel pressure regulator.
To be continued.
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Disconnected
Fuel pressure regulator vaccum line. |
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atlanticoffshore@aol.com
