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8.2 fuel sipper failure - what now?

tsonoqua

New member
Looking for general advice/comments.

Have a 1989 12-metre Cooper Prowler sedan bridge, with Detroit 8.2s, purchased in 2012.. Both engines rebuilt in the late 2000's, now with around 300 hours each. Both engines have been running nicely since purchase, including beautifully all summer this year, except the SB engine started drinking a lot of oil....but there was no obvious leakage anywhere. Back to home port, noticed a bit of overflow around the cooling reservoir cap, opened it up.....full of thick black oil. Bad.

Called mechanic (knows boat and engine well, did re-builds), who pressure tested oil cooler (tested fine). Then, given that next most likely issue was head gasket, started disassembling engine. No immediate problem seen with head gasket, and both head and block pressure tested just fine. Because no obvious issue found, and assuming that head gasket was still the most likely issue, started reassembling. Bad bad news: still leaking, both oil into cooling system, and water into engine. Thought is that once the head was back on and torqued down, that opened up a leak somewhere.

So, options seem to be:
1. Look for a new block (but these are old engines, parts getting harder and harder to find)
2. Look for an entire new engine (but same issues re availability)
3. Start thinking about re-powering (boat is good shape, and we like it very much; would take the precaution of doing a structural survey first, just to make sure it was still in good enough shape to warrant the expense of re-powering.)

Any/all thoughts/advice much appreciated.
 
Hi tsonoqua,
Sorry to see you're having problems. I will have to tell you up front that I don't have much experience with the 8.2
I have the manual but I'm grateful I never had to do much work on them.

It sounds as if you have a fairly competent mechanic on the scene but I never saw mentioned the injector "cups" in the head. Were those checked/replaced during any of the servicing?

I bring them up because you say "oil in water...water in oil". The injector cups are one place that sort of "exchange" might be able to easily take place. Also, they are a fairly high failure rate area on ANY diesel engine. One wrong move when installing them will lead to leakage that may not occur immediately but may show up "down the road".

Usually an oil cooler failure will result in the oil in coolant ONLY due to the large pressure differentials between the two systems.

But...anything is possible. Because, when the engine is shut down, oil pressure goes to 0 while, on a closed cooling system at any rate, the pressure stays elevated somewhat for a period of time.

One other area I've seen this occur is at the water pump shaft seal. Although,...again...it's USUALLY oil in water only.

Hopefully some 8.2 GURU here will step up with a better idea.

Good luck and keep us posted on your findings.
 
Head gaskets are always an issue with the 8.2L , a poor design and small head bolts. Parts are hard to find and expen$ive .
Personally I would not put a dime into them. A couple 5.9L Cummins would be a nice repower, lose overall weight and gain HP.
 
I like the 5.9 repower idea...if it comes to that. You certainly wouldn't have any problem with parts either...since DODGE has chosen to put one in every diesel truck it sells since 1990?...91?....a LONG time anyway! But they TOO have their draw backs with the common rail injection systems in later versions giving owners a fair amount of headaches.

But your FUEL SAVINGS would be significant, I'm guessing, if the boat does long trips.

I'm not a big fan of the 8.2 but they were widely used and abused back in their (and my) time and they did ok with proper maintenence. And. they were used in AT LEAST half of all the medium duty trucks on the road back in the 1980's.

I worked in a shop that had an "8.2 genius" that repaired those exclusively so the rest of us didn't have to. His take on the head gasket issue was that it was a "bad rap" and had more to do with allowing the engine to run over temp followed by poor repair techniques and inferior replacement materials. All I know is that pretty much 0% of the engines he did major repair to ever came back.

So, if you can patch yours up for not TOO much moolah...I see no reason to "distrust" them.

Good luck.
 
Thanks everyone for chiming in. Because it seems that the most likely issue was a fracture in the block casting - i.e a fault in the original block - insurance is going to cover replacement with a re-manufactured unit (except for the cost of the block itself, which is the failed part), and our mechanic does seem to be able to source a unit that can be converted for a marine installation. Whew. We did seriously consider re-powering, but decided that it wasn't the right decision for us based on the age of the boat and the cost. We've also been to a couple of boat shows to see what we could get for the cost of a re-power, and didn't find anything we like as much as what we currently have. So we'll stick with the Detroits for now (we do take good care of them, and our mechanic specializes in Detroits), with crossed fingers for continued parts availability, and hope that with some tender loving care we'll get several more years out of them.
 
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I once used used a phrase...and I'm PARAphrasing now so if it gets blocked again you will know what I meant....so here goes:

"The item is so small it cannot be seen with the UNCLOTHED eye"

Of course, the actual phrase is ***** EYE so let's see what they do with THAT.

But even so it STILL doesn't account for being so prudish as to bleep spe******t.


Glad you got some action taken on the positive side for your 8.2.
 
Hi Guys,

Sorry for the inconvenience. The word in question just happens to contain a word that we have to block for spam control. The letters are are replaced by asterisks spell out the name of a heavily spammed men's drug. spe{______}t Take away the SPE and the T and you are left with the word at issue.

PS - I've edited the original post to use the phrase "specializes in Detroits" you the meaning is clear.
 
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