Logo
FULL SITE MENU

1979 VP 250a water in oil?

B

Bigpropsnotops

New member
I recently purchased a 1979 pacemaker wahoo with twin 250a volvos I started the port engine for the first time today on the hose started and ran great. When I was to the back to look at the exhaust for water flow sludgy water was coming out. I immediately shut the engine down and pulled the dipstick and of course milky oil. My first inclination is that the oil cooler has a leaky o ring or corroded tube. Upon further inspection of the engine I found the previous owner had left the exhaust manifold drain plug out. And I ran the engine with it out My first question is can running the engine with that plug out cause water intrusion into the oil system? And if not where would you go from there? Any help is appreciated thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
Bigpropsnotops said:
I recently purchased a 1979 pacemaker wahoo with twin 250a volvos I started the port engine for the first time today on the hose started and ran great. When I was to the back to look at the exhaust for water flow sludgy water was coming out. I immediately shut the engine down and pulled the dipstick and of course milky oil. My first inclination is that the oil cooler has a leaky o ring or corroded tube. Upon further inspection of the engine I found the previous owner had left the exhaust manifold drain plug out. And I ran the engine with it out My first question is can running the engine with that plug out cause water intrusion into the oil system? And if not where would you go from there? Any help is appreciated thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Having the drain plug out will not cause water intrusion into the oil. If anything, you will get a bunch of water in the bilge.

Not so sure about the source of water intrusion. My first inclination would be to run a compression check of each cylinder and go from there.
 
I agree with 1981Century. You can also perform a cylinder leak-down-test.


By the way, all of the Volvo Penta OHC 4 bangers are fitted with Closed Cooling Systems.

Are you seeing A/F in the engine oil, or seawater in the engine oil?
 
Thanks I will do comp/ leak down test tonight after work. another thing is I didnt notice water in the bilge while running with the plug out but had raw water flow from the exhaust but by the time I found the missing plug it could have dried/ran out of drain.
 
Yeah I know it's a closed loop system but the oil cooler is raw water cooled from what I can tell from my hose routing as it dumps the cooling water back into ext manifold. Also based on the free service manual I found online it shows the cooler being raw water cooled along with when I checked the A/F at the heat exchanger it seemed clean with no signs of oil contamination. The engine mounted raw water strainer mounted to heat ex. Showed a sheen on top when I checked there.
 
Yep going to pull it tonight will post back with the findings thanks for the help. Also how do I post pictures from my gallery on my phone to here? new user lol
 
Back
Top