www.iFourWinns.com

I had the unfortunate issue of being of coming home on one motor last weekend. The motor cranked but failed to fire. Got back OK after trouble getting into my berth because it was the starboard motor with the power steering that was the trouble. two days before I could get the mechanic to investigate and the motor now wont crank and removal of plugs has sea water flowing out of some pistons. Result motor stuffed and big $.
It appears the ingress has happened on slow speed maneuvering (reversing) in marina. Page 30 of the operators manual points this out. I am running volvo 5.7 Osi df set up with standard 8" risers. So now I am faced with replacing the motor has any one gone with 12" riser in the 2006 vista 348 ie do they fit and function OK. I am thinking this may have helped prevent this happening.
Seems crazy to me that such a simple thing could cause such a problem and I (the boat) was not loaded at all.
I addition with the teleflex morse set up you cannot lift just one leg. Why?
If I were ever faced with this situation again seems a flat screwdriver, spend 5 minutes undoing the exhaust elbows on the dud motor to allow any unwanted sea water coming back up the bullhorns to fall in the bilge would be infinitely better then in flooding the motor and causing the complete ruining of the motor. any thoughts?
FYI I paid for a reputable insurance company when I bought the boat and the result is they will cover the complete replacement. Lucky me, still no boat for 4 weeks probably.

The trouble with water ingestion is it can destroy the valves pretty much instantaneously. Water doesn't compress. So when the cylinder has water in it and the piston comes up all that pressure has to go somewhere. Usually it's through the valves, wrecking them in the process. Along with sometimes blowing the rings off the piston; scoring the hell out of the cylinder wall in the process. Meanwhile the broken bits of metal start getting pumped around with the oil and get lodged inside tight places like crankshaft bearing journals. This causes them to seize and/or spin; resulting in a wrecked shaft. It becomes a nightmare damn fast.

So if the ingestion caused a running engine to stop you're definitely screwed. If it was just the starter trying to turn it you may be in less trouble, but then you're still dealing with water getting in and contaminating the oil.

I don't have outdrives so I can't comment on the draining idea. But on the one occasion I had an engine quit on me (soft grounding) the FIRST thing I did was pull the plugs, and THEN cranked it out. Seeing no water coming out of the plug holes saved me from having a coronary. Turned out the sudden stop of the grounding caused the battery on that engine to fail (5 yrs old at that point). Had that happen in an old Pontiac wagon some years ago so it wasn't a complete surprise.

I'm on the 6th season with my risers and wonder if they're due for replacement yet...

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-Bill Kearney, 2005 348 Vista

Are you in fresh or salt? I am in salt and I'm in the process of replacing the manifolds that were put on in 2004 (boat was used each season except 2006 when the deck was being replaced that summer). So these have just 6 seasons on them. My manifolds were getting hotter than normal and the engine was running close to 180*, it used to run cooler, closer to 160, and I also saw some steam off the exhaust which I never saw before. The impeller, circulating pump and the thermostat are all new.
I pulled the manifolds tonight and found one passage totally clogged on one, the rest necked down from what new one looks like. The other manifold did not have a totally clogged passage but all the passages were significantly necked down with corrosion. So if you are in salt with raw water cooled manifolds then I'd say yes it's time to take a look at least. The odd thing was that the hotter manifold was the one with all the passages still open, the one with one passage totally clogged was the cooler one. But both were still too hot to keep your hand on after running on plane...

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88 Four Winns 200 Horizon
4.3 OMC Cobra-4bbl
2002 Walker Bay 10/2012 Suzuki 2.5
2008 Walker Bay 8

1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee 4.0/Selectrac
2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee 5.7 Hemi/Quadradrive II