im guessing this isn't too good

I was just over my friends house and we got into talking about his boat and whatnot and he mentioned he forgot to winterize it....we live in NY and i don't know if its jsut me but i think that its not that great for a boat to not winterize it. what are the chances that it'll run and what can potentially happen?

Well, depends on the engine exactly what will happen. If you are lucky, nothing, but if you are not lucky, cracked block here you come... thats 2-5k depending on the engine

for sure a cracked block if it was not drained. and maybe seized or severly rusted cylinder walls if you run in salt. i wouldnt wait until spring to find out. i would try to help it some even if you are to late. and an external crack can always be welded too. so i would get into it fast.

Some ideas...

Do not crank it over with the spark plugs in it!!
If you have a cracked exhaust manifold and water has entered the bore, water will cause the engine to hydraulic when the piston rises on the compression cycle!

Drain the water as if you were winterizing it and check for oil in the water.

Pull the dipstick, if there are streaks on it that look milky, then something has allowed water from the cooling system into the oil.
When blocks crack, many times they do so in the valley under the intake manifold, behind the pushrods where coolant circulates around the cylinders.

Pull the spark plugs out of the engine and crank it over, watch for water pumping out of the spark plug holes.

A failure in the water side of the exhaust system is much less painfull than in the heads or block.

If all of the above tests show no water in the bore, I would put a fresh set of spark plugs in it and try to fire it up. Monitor what is going on closely for awhile and roll the dice..

If it is cracked, all is not necessarliy lost.
Several years ago, a friend and I were trying to help a lady out with a small block chevy in a family boat that had a block cracked as I described above. It had been sitting through two winters because her husband had died.
We pulled the spark plugs, cranked it over, and pumped the water out out of the cylinders there was quite a bit. Then we pulled the intake manifold and located the crack in the valley as described above.
We pulled the valve cover and popped the rocker arm off so we could get the pushrod out and get a clear shot at the crack.
Then we heated up the cast iron block using a rosebud tip on an acyetelene torch, until the area around the cracks were starting to glow.
As soon as my buddy moved the torch off of the site, I welded the crack up using ni-rod on a stick welder, set at 90 amps. (NiRod is designed for use on cast iron.)
We then went over it with a little JB Weld, and reassembled the boat, after checking to make sure the intake manifold was not cracked.

We ran a little Marvel Mystery Oil in the fuel for awhile, and the boat has good even compression and leakdown numbers..

That boat has been running with this repair at least every season since we fixed it in 1991. It gets run hard, too. I know, I bought it...



(Message edited by sam8 on February 06, 2005)