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.
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.