Well, my friend and I just pulled our 1970 slickcraft out of storage
(my uncle's driveway). We had the old boat cover on it, and a tarp
over that we didnt have the original bows, so we mad some by ripping
down a 2x4. Needless to say, these didnt last the winter, and a bunch
of water was pooled up on the tarp, and resting on the engine cover.

We get it back to his garage and open the motor cover, and it was
covered with water, every little divit or vally on top of the motor
had water in it, and it get's better. We try to turn it over, we get
about a 1/4 revolution using the starter, and it doesnt move. We put a
breaker bar on the crank and try to turn it by hand, it wont budge. So
we figure the cylinders are rusted alittle. so we pull the spark
plugs, every cylinder was full of water with alittle oil mixed in.
(one cylinder had more oil than water in it. we then drain the "oil",
which turned out to be about 7 quarts of water and 3 quarts of oil.

We figure the water came in through the carb. (the stud that holds the
flame arrestor on is alittle too high, so the previous owner just
drilled a hole in the cover.)

There's a few things i dont really understand:

1. How did all 8 cylinders get water in them?, did it just leak past
the valves?

2. How did the water get into the oil pan? We're thinking maybe a
freeze plug in the bottom of the intake manifold, which would open a
hole to the lifter valley. We've had some varying temperatures,
(enough to melt the snow and then cold enough to refreeze it)

We just redid the headgaskets last summer because we had a few cracks
in the water jacket in the lifter valley. So we are hoping it's just a
couple of freeze plugs, but I'm expecting the worst.
We're going to do a compression test on all the cylnders to see if
there's anything unusual there. Are there any other tests we can do to
determine how much damage there is without tearing it apart?


Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated. Oh BTW the motor is
a Chevy 307.

It is possible that it ran down the carb, the valves will seep water past
them even closed if it sits long enough. You have enough issues that a tear
down is probably inevitable. You might do a pressure test on the cooling
system before you do. Get all the water out of the cylinders, spray some
wd40 down them and get the engine freed. Get as much water out as possible.
Clamp something in the ends of the water lines going to exhaust except one
and the line going to the transom for incoming water. Adapt a radiator
pressure tester to the open line to the exhaust and fill with water and
apply pressure. If it won't hold pressure start looking for the water.
Either in the oil pan or one or more of the cylinders. Replacing head
gaskets won't fix cracks in the lifter valley. What else did you do? If
you tried epoxy or something similar that may have cracked out. It is
difficult to get anything to survive the expansion and contraction of the
block.

"Jeff Zimmerman" wrote in message
om...
Well, my friend and I just pulled our 1970 slickcraft out of storage
(my uncle's driveway). We had the old boat cover on it, and a tarp
over that we didnt have the original bows, so we mad some by ripping
down a 2x4. Needless to say, these didnt last the winter, and a bunch
of water was pooled up on the tarp, and resting on the engine cover.

We get it back to his garage and open the motor cover, and it was
covered with water, every little divit or vally on top of the motor
had water in it, and it get's better. We try to turn it over, we get
about a 1/4 revolution using the starter, and it doesnt move. We put a
breaker bar on the crank and try to turn it by hand, it wont budge. So
we figure the cylinders are rusted alittle. so we pull the spark
plugs, every cylinder was full of water with alittle oil mixed in.
(one cylinder had more oil than water in it. we then drain the "oil",
which turned out to be about 7 quarts of water and 3 quarts of oil.

We figure the water came in through the carb. (the stud that holds the
flame arrestor on is alittle too high, so the previous owner just
drilled a hole in the cover.)

There's a few things i dont really understand:

1. How did all 8 cylinders get water in them?, did it just leak past
the valves?

2. How did the water get into the oil pan? We're thinking maybe a
freeze plug in the bottom of the intake manifold, which would open a
hole to the lifter valley. We've had some varying temperatures,
(enough to melt the snow and then cold enough to refreeze it)

We just redid the headgaskets last summer because we had a few cracks
in the water jacket in the lifter valley. So we are hoping it's just a
couple of freeze plugs, but I'm expecting the worst.
We're going to do a compression test on all the cylnders to see if
there's anything unusual there. Are there any other tests we can do to
determine how much damage there is without tearing it apart?


Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated. Oh BTW the motor is
a Chevy 307.

We used a air grinder on the cracks to open them up alittle. Then I
ran some weld across them (pre-heated with cutting torch first, used a
regular mig welder). Ground down those welds to remove some of the
pits, then ran a few more stringers over those. then topped it off
with some JB weld. (I took a night school class with a local iron
workers union, I'm Ohio bridgecode certified).

The coolant pressure test is a good idea, we'll have to give that a
try. Is there any other reason for how the water got on both sides of
the cylinders (besides freeze plugs or cracked intake)?

We thought it was head gaskets because usually when you get coolant in
the oil in a car, it's typically the head gaskets. Thats gonna suck if
we have to redo the gaskets, we probably only have 10-15 operating
hours hours on them.



"Lawrence James" wrote in message link.net...
It is possible that it ran down the carb, the valves will seep water past
them even closed if it sits long enough. You have enough issues that a tear
down is probably inevitable. You might do a pressure test on the cooling
system before you do. Get all the water out of the cylinders, spray some
wd40 down them and get the engine freed. Get as much water out as possible.
Clamp something in the ends of the water lines going to exhaust except one
and the line going to the transom for incoming water. Adapt a radiator
pressure tester to the open line to the exhaust and fill with water and
apply pressure. If it won't hold pressure start looking for the water.
Either in the oil pan or one or more of the cylinders. Replacing head
gaskets won't fix cracks in the lifter valley. What else did you do? If
you tried epoxy or something similar that may have cracked out. It is
difficult to get anything to survive the expansion and contraction of the
block.

"Jeff Zimmerman" wrote in message
om...


1. How did all 8 cylinders get water in them?, did it just leak past
the valves?

You mentioned that at least one cylinder had an oil/water mix in it. I
would guess that somehow there was a path where water leaked onto the engine
and found its way into the block. I would suspect that it entered through a
faulty gasket or a crack in the lifter galley, that water ran down the flame
arrester, under the intake manifold and pooled in the valley underneath,
filling up to a point that it found a path into the crankcase.

If water continued to enter this way it would eventually fill the crankcase
all the way full. I would expect it would eventually come out the dipstick,
but it is possible that the dipstick sealed well enough to allow the level
to go a little higher.

Once the oil/water level in the crankcase rose above the level of the
pistons then it would start to leak past the rings into the cylinder. The
rings do have a small gap (especially when they are cold) that would allow
water to leak past. If the water level got high enough to flood the rocker
arm covers then water could leak past the valve guides into the exhaust and
intake manifolds to flood from that side as well.


We're going to do a compression test on all the cylnders to see if
there's anything unusual there. Are there any other tests we can do to
determine how much damage there is without tearing it apart?

I would not have a lot of faith in that motor, but if you can tolerate the
likelihood of it failing fairly soon it might be worth trying to get it
running again. I would expect that there will be some major rusting of the
cylinder walls, especially right at the point the rings were sitting all
winter. If the cylinder walls are pitted then the rings are going to wear
pretty fast. Based on the previous work to repair cracks that you have done
I would think that a major overhaul or new engine is in order.

Rod