Well, I think my boat might be done for the season

[BurnMac42]

Well like the title says I might be done for the season....got the boat out to the lake today to hopefully enjoy probably one of the last hot days in Ohio...

I backed it down to lake, put her in the water, and she fired right up...let her warm up for a few and then had my little bro push us off the trailer and I parked it at the dock to wait for everyone to come down.

I had shut the engine off while waiting for everyone..well, as soon as everyone was loaded up I went to fire her back up and she wouldn't start....it almost sounded like the starter was "frozen" or something.......

I didn't want to damage anything so I manually loaded the boat back onto the trailer and towed it to a mechanic who miraculously happened to be open during the holiday. He graciously offered to just do a quick lookover to see if we could salvage the holiday...

Once he had everything ready to crank (he removed whatever wire would allow the engine to actually fire) we cranked it once and he had me stop immediately....he said without tearing into the boat he believes it might be worse than just the starter...he said I might have water in one of my cylinders

Now, the engine was just replaced last year by a Marine Power Certified shop so its under warranty (lord I hope it is or my wife will light me on fire) but I'm still completely confused on what could cause this?

She started right up when I was backing her off the trailer and then whammo, water in the cylinder?

Has anything like that happened to anyone else???

Oh my boat is a 2000 21v RE with the Mercruiser 350....

[ChrisSnow]

Pull the plugs. Turn it over to clear it out. Then replace and run it for a while. Sooner the better you don't want rust in there!

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

[boatwakes]

It'll be from a leaking exhaust riser to manifold issue. Yes, common issue when a few things aren't don't properly but like chris said, pull the plugs on all cylinders and then use the starter to crank it over. You'll see water shooting out of the affected cylinders. It may be one bank, but it won't be just one cylinder.

[BurnMac42]

I'm dropping the boat off to a certified dealer this afternoon....anything I should suggest they look at? The engine was replaced last winter due to the previous owner not winterizing it properly so its supposedly "under warranty" which was a big selling point for me but we all know how warranty work can go...

The dealer who did the work is not the one who is working on the boat now (I bought the boat out of state)

[BurnMac42]

The dealer sent a video of water spitting out one of the spark plug holes....they said once they cleared the water out, swapped the oil, swapped the starter, she fired right up....they are going to take it and drop it in for a while just to make sure.....

Should I be concerned about the exhaust risers, etc if the boat doesn't get hot tomorrow during the drop in? I just want to make sure they take a look at everything while the boat is down there and torn apart vs getting it back up here and taking it out only to have the starter fixed but still getting hot....

[ericinmich]

It's not clear to me from the posts if you know where the water came from and if that was addressed. Like stated above, likely an exhaust riser.

So, if the problem was fixed, run it, then change the oil one more time, then run it... should be good to go!