Aargh... Milkshake Engine Oil... WTF? (Port Engine, 2016 AR240, ~300 hrs)

[Damsroy]

Fantastic news!!!
Looking forward to understand the root cause of the head failure once we get back to our normal life.
Stay safe.

 

[Bluewater272]

...well, moving strait into the eye of this shit storm, northern NJ, NYC area. lol.
yeah,I never said I was smart. And my timing sucks a$$, lolol.
Yes, I’m in the medical field, my life will be very very interesting for the next few weeks, or months!
Family staying behind, for now, hopefully they will be safe in STL area.

hopefully, see you all after the storm if we make it!


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Good luck with the move, let me know if you venture further south in Jersey. Nice boating on the Delaware and southern Jersey shore.

 

[InmyElement]

Welcome to the East...Glad you worked everything out with the boat!

Your not kidding heading right into the storm..Stay Healthy!

 

[2kwik4u]

Glad the boats fixed! I haven't forgotten about the shade I need to come get, been crazy days lately.

Be safe in the urban jungle you're headed to. We're all pulling for ya man!

 

[swatski]

Good luck with the move, let me know if you venture further south in Jersey. Nice boating on the Delaware and southern Jersey shore.

Thank you sir, will do.
as much as I love our midwestern rivers - I’m so excited and looking forward to be by the ocean again!
we’ll be pretty close to Hopatcong, too - for surfing! hopefully things will cool off by summer, I see a lot of Atlantic get togethers in the future - Jersey Shore - style, lol. Featuring @Bruce “The Situation”, “DJ” @Scottintexas, and “Jwoww” @Betik, lolol.

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[rkluck]

Glad she got fixed. Stay safe up there and hopefully before long you will have your family with you!

 

[Ken Sherlaw]

Thank you sir, will do.
as much as I love our midwestern rivers - I’m so excited and looking forward to be by the ocean again!
we’ll be pretty close to Hopatcong, too - for surfing! hopefully things will cool off by summer, I see a lot of Atlantic get togethers in the future - Jersey Shore - style, lol. Featuring @Bruce “The Situation”, “DJ” @Scottintexas, and “Jwoww” @Betik, lolol.

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Another option not that far from Hopatcong to the northwest is Lake Wallenpaupack in the Poconos which may be a bit less crowded and offer surfing opportunities. If ever in that area, let us know. We have a slip there this year for our new 242X and will be doing a lot of surfing ourselves hopefully! We are newbies though (at surfing). Stay safe. We are in west NJ so not as hot a spot but still impacted.

 

[swatski]

Another option not that far from Hopatcong to the northwest is Lake Wallenpaupack in the Poconos which may be a bit less crowded and offer surfing opportunities. If ever in that area, let us know. We have a slip there this year for our new 242X and will be doing a lot of surfing ourselves hopefully! We are newbies though (at surfing). Stay safe. We are in west NJ so not as hot a spot but still impacted.

We will definitely check it out! The new home is in the Caldwells so the Hopatcong is very close, but it may or may not be a good option with all the algae of late, and the weekend crowds. A weekend on Wallenpaupack will be enticing!
We have done a fair amount of wake surfing with our Yammie, if the boat runs well this season we are going to want to do a lot more surfing, we love it.
My family all enjoy surfing on the port side/regular (even though I hate the left, lol) which makes it much more doable - changing sides with Yamaha is what limits their surfability, it just is not easy.

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[Ken Sherlaw]

We could use some tutoring! We will be doing a lot of trial and error experimenting and YouTube video watching and hopefully learning. I've been a slalom skier all my life and we've done our fair share of wakeboarding over the past few years behind an old I/O ChrisCraft but surfing is new to us and adjusting to jet boat will still take some time. We only got the new boat Labor Day and only got out twice with it last year. So never filled the ballast bags or experimented with setting up a wake yet to see how good it will be for surfing. Certainly hoping for the best though! After all the recent events, we are really looking forward to getting out on the water a lot this summer and enjoying some down time (out of the house)!

 

[rkim808]

Just a quick update - apologies I can not post pics of the actual damage and any more detail - I will fill those in when I talk to the mechanic.
They are about to close (per county orders) and managed to finish with my boat - the motor with the new head assembly is back in, everything appears to be working. I could not talk to Pat due to C19 issues and restrictions they put in place in the dealership.

The crack in the head (I'm told) was not by the casting bung, rather in between cyl 1 and 2 - that's all I know. There will be pics. I'm told it required very high pressures (60psi?) to reveal, but they did it after a local machine shop failed to show the crack. Yamaha took care of the parts/new head assembly (thank you Yamaha and YES) and I will know all the other details and post here - hopefully soon - this is all I can tell for certain for now.

The long and short - the Swatski AR240 is BACK!!!
View attachment 114636
View attachment 114639

This was last week, as I visited my empty lift and wanted to cry (I'm leaving town - moving, lol) ?
View attachment 114638

Today ???(brought her back in the middle of a storm, couldn't be happier!):
View attachment 114637
She is staying here for now until things cool off, then she is going to travel and hit salt.

Huge shoutout and thank you to the St Charles Boat and Motor - Jerry the owner/dealer, and Pat the mechanic. They went above and beyond, as this was not a usual repair. COVID makes their lives miserable on top of it now.

Thank you to SCBM, love these guys.

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Congrats my Brother, great news Cheeeeeehuu!??

 

[Damsroy]

@swatski Did you end up understanding the root cause of the failure? What should I do differently so that it doesn't happen to me?
Was it a part defect? Overheating caused by listing the boat for surfing, overheating because of the excessive soundproofing (i believe you mentioned a comment from the dealer related to this). Something else?

 

[906Tony]

Quite the story, glad you got it fixed. I just spent some time reading this and Im dying to know what are the theorys of the cause. Is it possible damage from overheat situations? I'm guessing not since they are kind of common, but still would be good to know.

 

[tdonoughue]

Good question, but I am betting there is $20 for anyone who can definitively tell @swatski the answer to that question. Unfortunately, he is one of the ones around here that, if he can't tell you, no one probably can...

 

[swatski]

@swatski Did you end up understanding the root cause of the failure? What should I do differently so that it doesn't happen to me?
Was it a part defect? Overheating caused by listing the boat for surfing, overheating because of the excessive soundproofing (i believe you mentioned a comment from the dealer related to this). Something else?

Quite the story, glad you got it fixed. I just spent some time reading this and Im dying to know what are the theorys of the cause. Is it possible damage from overheat situations? I'm guessing not since they are kind of common, but still would be good to know.

Good question, but I am betting there is $20 for anyone who can definitively tell @swatski the answer to that question. Unfortunately, he is one of the ones around here that, if he can't tell you, no one probably can...

Sorry guys! Total dereliction of duty on my part; I feel bad; I've learned a ton from the members of this forum and wish I could give more back.

The thing is, my little engine ordeal coincided with my move across the country and, quite honestly, was not the highest priority... lol... at the time we searched kids new schools, sold and bought a home and started new jobs - all in the middle of... you know what, lol. Fun times.

Yamaha took care of everything under YES; I understand it involved a new head assembly; I understand they wanted the dealer to provide a proof of the engine head being cracked; I understand it required some high pressurization trickery to demonstrate.

The parts (the complete head assembly) were initially on back order, after parts were delivered to the dealership things moved very quickly.
I could not, unfortunately, obtain any pictures or reports of what exactly happened, or really any word directly from Yamaha.
No real surprises there, but - also no bill, so kudos to them for helping me out, under warranty. Overall, I was impressed.

Here is what I learned, in a nutshell:

1. Saint Charles Boat and Motor is a solid dealership that I would highly recommend to anyone considering a boat purchase; like most mid-sized dealerships they are somewhat limited; but they know what they are doing, they are honest, and they do what they say.
2. Extended YES warranty maybe worth the money?
3. The crack in my (port engine) head was not easily demonstrable; I was told it required excessive pressure to visualise dye leak (I don't know the exact psi numbers but apparently fairly high), needed to be done in a setting of a machine shop with specialized equipment.
4. Having had some prior history and familiarity with Yamaha warranty work I was not surprised to hear nothing about the specifics of what had to be done and what was damaged but I'm inclined to think my case is probably not entirely unique, in the realm of their 1.8 power plants.
5. The results are perfect (knock on wood, lol); hope I'm not jinxing myself here! Basically, now at 30-40 hard hours later I have experienced zero issues; the oil is clean; engine performance is indistinguishable between the two, both reaching 7,500+RPM at WOT, top speed of 45+mph - commensurate with my current heavy duty impellers selection. The only visible sign of the ordeal are 4 odd extra hours on my port side engine hour meter.
6. I make sure the engines are cooled off completely before flushing on a hose (see my rationale below).

As far as (potential) root cause(s), I can only speculate. Therefore, my comments must to be taken with extreme caution!

My thinking is the damage I experienced may, conceivably, develop as a result of a particular engine flushing sequence, most likely in the setting of some underlying material defect/weakness.
In one scenario, following service manual procedure for flushing (the engine is on before water flow is on) if the engine somehow becomes too hot before the flushing water flow starts flowing the rush of cold water could stress head casting material (?).

This would not ordinarily happen if the procedure is followed starting with a cold engine, as is in most cases. Notable exceptions however include flushing shortly after the boat is pulled out with engines still very hot; that has happened in my case on occasion, my ride home from the ramp used tom be very short and would like to keep the engines hot if changing oil.

Inadequate initial water flow could be a contributing factor? - those red flushing hoses tend to kink inside the gunnels mitigating initial cooling action; if that's followed by a gush of cold water (when the hoses become "unkinked")... perhaps parts could get stressed? Funny, I do recall hearing almost like a hissing sound on some occasions upon relieving the water flow by manually straightening one of those red flushing hoses inside the storage compartment. Could this lead to or aggravate stress cracks? IDK. Of course, I did not think much of it back then. But now I do.

The above scenario would not apply to situations when hot engines are restarted while sitting in the water after a stop. No matter how long the stop the pump would still be submerged and the cooling passages would still be full of water or steam; that may change however when cooling passages dry out on a ride home in hot weather and the engines are still hot?

Complete speculation, and likely flawed.
Given the crack was found, it 's considered a manufacturing defect.
Is it possible I might have aggravated a defect by allowing the engine to heat up too much prior to flushing? I kind of doubt it. But, who knows? Good news is - if the latter is a contributing factor - it is avoidable by flushing cool engines only.

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[Elliott]

FWIW - In terms of flushing a hot engine, I am 3+ years and about 100 hours of flushing my engine while it is hot. After I return to the marina, the forklift places the boat directly on one of the wash racks. I am flushing the engine within 15 minutes (walk to the truck to get the wash/flush equipment, pull the drain plugs and cleanout plug, spray the interior and exterior of the boat with anti-salt solution, flush the engine with water for 2 minutes then anti-salt per directions). Considering that we often fish, anchor at a beach 20 minutes away and just spot lock to picnic and enjoy the water, I would think that I have flushed the engine approximately 100 times. So far, no problems of any kind.

 

[swatski]

I did not mean to imply flushing a hot engine has any adverse consequences.

Other than under very specific conditions of initially obstructed flow. Thinking hard of what could had possibly gone wrong in my case, I recalled my flushing hoses, notably the port side one, had had a tendency to kink and obstruct the flow. On at least one occasion I recall that engine seemed to had gotten pretty hot - before water started flowing. Adjusting the hose, manually, inside the storage compartment fixed the flow but by that time the engine might have been too hot? as in - borderline overheating? IDK, just speculation.

All speculation, as I stated. What my experience teaches me, overall, is - if there is no flow I would pay attention to kinked hoses, that's all.

Incidentally, the hose draining water from the stern platform was kinked shut in my boat when I bought it brand new. That was posted along some discussion somewhere here on the forum ca. 2016.

Just sharing my observations.

BTW - while we as a family are currently shopping for a new, larger boat we decided to keep the AR240; so I would say I feel pretty strongly about the brand.
But... things break. And that's how many of us make a living.

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[Betik]

Two boats huh ??? Well when you are ready to get a Bentley and no longer have a for that white LC, please let me know so I can pull money out my 401k to get it