Shortly into the 2012 boating season, during the 4th of July week, my F-242SS met its ‘demise’.  After cruising around for a while one day with some family members, we anchored for a couple of hours. . .   then went to start the boat to head back to the dock . . . the starter just made a click, the engine did not turn.

I initially thought that it was a battery/starter problem, but after a few days of trial and error, I decided to pull the spark plugs . . . Water came pouring out of the left side cylinders.  (Oh boy) . . . that was the last thing that I expected, just after a rebuild. . . . a hydro-lock.  I then checked the oil level and it was up a quart, indicating water in the oil.  It was not milky though, so the problem had just happened.

Anyway, I brought the boat home and did some diagnostic work . . . ran a compression test . . . and realized that the engine had a ‘thumping’ noise and sensation as it turned over.  This would imply that one or more of the connecting rods was bent.  I tried to turn the engine over with a breaker bar to do a leak test, but the engine reached a hard stop partway through a revolution.

Rather than force the engine rotation, I decided to pull the engine from the boat and take the cylinder heads off.  This revealed the extend of the damage and the cause.  It appeared that the cylinder heads had started to rust through around the valve guides and was letting sea water go directly into the cylinders.  The water in the cylinders seem to cause a mild, then increasing hydro-lock in the port side of the engine.

Since the ‘rotating assembly’ of the engine had been damaged, a replacement engine would be a better choice than trying to rebuild the engine entirely.  I looked into the cost and sources for replacement engines, and it ranged between $3K and $6K; probably $5-6K being the better choices.

Soooo, looking at that amount of expenditure, I decided that it was best to put the money towards another boat.  I had already been looking at other boats, so the motivation was there.

I listed the boat on Craigslist as a ‘fixer-upper’, priced it accordingly and sold the boat within 2 weeks.

The new owner had some experience with high performance boats and also had an engine to put in it.  He even thought that he could rebuild the existing engine.  He was excited about getting a nice boat that he could enjoy with family & friends.

So, it was a win-win.

My lesson learned was to periodically do a cooling system pressure check, in addition to the more traditional cylinder compression and leak tests.  A cooling system pressure check may have indicated the rust-through issues during my prior year’s engine work and saved a whole bunch of money and agony.

I hope to get another Deep-V performance boat someday, like the 242, but perhaps a bit bigger. . . maybe a 292.  Meanwhile, I purchased another Formula  . . . an F-330 SS, which should prove to be a nice full-sized day boat.

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