[OMC-Boats] Shadedown voyage

Well, I completed the restoration on my Explorer and took it up to the lake today for it's first shakedown run.  I had my boating buddy Jon, the guy who went with me when I bouthg it along for moral support.  The plan was to back the boat in and while still on the trailer, run it to insure water was properly circulating before launching her all the way in.  No water, no launch.  Anyway, we ran into one minor problem that thwarted the much anticipated launch and one that may affect the whole status moving forward.

When I bought
the boat, we ran it and ran the outdrive in forward and reverse briefly
with no unusual noises.  Later after I got it home, in looking at the
outdrive, it had the look of someone having serviced it so I made a
mental note to double check the fluids before actually putting it in the
water. 

This morning before heading up to the lake I checked the oil levels but
couldn't make any determinations on how much oil was present and since
this was my first OMC I stopped at West Marine and picked up a quart of
Type C gear lube to top it off.  In the parking lot, I removed the
lower unit drain plug to check the condition of the oil.  It drained a
little bit of clear water and nothing else.  Hmmmmm....gee....something not
right about that!  It should have more than a couple of black drops in
there.  So I immediately undid the drain plug for the upper unit and
found no oil there too.  Hmmmmmm......  It doesn't leave one with good feeling. 

I had run it briefly a couple
of weeks ago on muffs and had the outdrive in gear (sans the prop) and
could not detect any usual noises that one might associated with
toasted gears.  Jon and I talked it over and came to a preliminary
conclusion that I hope is the case.  The
boat has not been registered since 1992 but had the look as if someone
had started a restoration job on it before me and never finished it. 
The outdrive has the appearance of having been dismantled and put back
together again.  Overall it was very clean with some minor finger
smudges.  We're thinking (or is that hoping!?) that when it was put
back together, the work stopped before the oil was could be added (he
says tongue in cheek and fingers crossed).  Between the upper and lower unit, I put in
nearly two quarts of fresh lube oil.

We continued up to the lake and backed the boat down into the water with myself in the boat leaning over the engine compartment to check for leaking.  I immediately heard the gurgling of water and discovered that while the port side exhaust hose was hooked up, it wasn't tightened fully.  I tighted it down and we backed it into the water a second time.  I didn't hear water gurgling (a good sign) but as soon as I started the motor it was obvious there was an exhaust leak.  Turns out the hose was not seated properly and when I finally was able to get it seated, it would no longer meet up with the manifold.  While the hose didn't look all that old it was not plyable enough to get it to reconnect so I bailed on the effort until I could get a new hose 1.5" longer.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for round two sometime this week!  Oui Vei!!

-Bill
Dallas, TX
1970 Evinrude Explorer - 155 Buick V6 OMC Sterndrive
http://www.photobucket.com/evinrude_explorer
Received on Monday, 18 May 2009