www.iFourWinns.com

After 20 years of large trawlers, I recently got a weekender boat, a 2004 288 Four Winns Vista with 270hp Volvos and the duo-prop outdrives. Boat had 150 hours on it when I got it. After 3 hours, port engine filled with water and siezed. First thought, improper winterization. Not the case, block and water cooling jackets sound. Only possible explanation left is water intrusion from exhaust through risers back into engine.
Ordered new engine and the "Y" section of the exhaust, where it joins to exit via the lower unit, now appears to have a piece with Baffles, which would be a good idea if you were concerned with water intrusion. Volvo of course says that they have "Never heard of such a problem." but of course can't seem to explain why they might have engineered something into later models to prevent a problem, which they say they have never had. I can't see a company making this modification without some improvement in mind, but they won't admit to it.
Has anyone had this issue before. (not being a jerk here-but I am a 500 ton, all oceans Capt. and while I have not spent a lot of time on gas boats of this size, I do know better than to reverse hard with one engine off, back into currents, operate on one engine with the idle outdrive down, etc. so that is not it.)
Any information would be very much appreciated as I am now afraid that each engine is a ticking $10,000 bomb until we know what went wrong.
Thanks very much

When brand new, my 2002 5.7 engine had an unexplainable propensity to overheat as I was putting around waiting for my wife to park the truck after dropping the boat in the water. In one of these instances, I tried to restart my engine and apparently deiseled it sucking water into at least one of the cylinders.

The end result? Apparently the starter motors are extremely torquey as I managed to rip it right off of it's housing as my engine was now hydraulicing (water in a cylinder doesn't compress very well).

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2002 Funship 214
VP 5.7 GX Si
2003 Tahoe

I don't know for sure the model years affected...but there was a recall on the gaskets used by Volvo between the manifold and the riser...if these gaskets fail it's possible for the engine to suck the cooling water for the manifold into the cylinders...I'd ask about that...see which engine years are affected...there was a thread about this over at http://www.thehulltruth.com some time back..
My old 88 OMC 4.3 has an unusual design for the manifolds...the manifold and riser are cast as all one piece (called the 'batwing' because they kind of look like that) and I like this design because there is no joint between the manifold and riser to leak...unfortunatley they are hard to find but I bought an extra set when I saw the price of them starting to go up. Merc tried a similar design but discontinued it...don't know why...I'm sure it's more difficult to cast than a 2 piece riser/manifold....Merc now has their dry joint system...which makes a lot more sense than the old system where your engine depends on two little gaskets to keep the water out of it.

Keep in mind if you are in a salt water area...and this is a raw water cooled engine...you're only going to get roughy 5 seasons on the manifolds before you have to pull of the risers and inspect how rusted the sealing surfaces for the gaskets are...

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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