md17c white smoke / steam?

[sisutl]

hello all

1st post here.
the last time i ran the engine i noticed excessive wht smoke or steam which isn't normal.
my girl friend had been living aboard for a month in victoria working on her pilots license. i showed up at the boat the day before we were set to leave , checked the dip stick and it showed oil just on the very tip. she does burn a bit. as i've been having starting issues , (old batts? ) i wanted to make sure it was going to fire up. as it takes forever to put oil in and i was only going to fire up and shut down i didn't top up the oil as i would do this the next morning before leaving.
fired it up , started no prob , shut er down , went to movie.
the next morning i checked the dip stick again this time the oil showed all the way full???
kinda perplexed and with a lot of running to do ( 3 days) i added a bit (1 L maybe) to be on the safe side. the whole run up she was spewing wht smoke intermittently , especially when the thermostat would open. i'm wondering if it is too much oil causing this?
i also fueled up on one of the gulf islands where i may have picked up bad fuel.
otherwise this engine runs fine.
any thoughts suggestions?

 

[Mark Maulden]

is it smoke or steam? FWC or raw water cooled? What maintenance has been done in past few yrs? Can't explain the difference in oil readings except that maybe you didn't have the stick all the way in when the tip reading was observed. I would be sure to get the oil quantity right. To much will cause frothing from the cylinder skirts dippin in.

 

[anchorclanker]

Unless its overfilled with oil, its sounding like a head gasket.

Check the oil again, and determine if its just oil, or a water mixture making it a cream color. Check the oil filler cap and breather to look for the same creamy oil, and if possible look inside the filler cap hole at the valves and rockers to see if they are covered in it. If your oil was pretty black, the mixture could be more brown/chocolate color. Start it up and remove the oil filler cap, look for steam coming out heavily. Is it knocking more than usual?

 

[sisutl]

thanks for the replies.
engine is rwc , maintenance has been reg oil and fuel filter changes ,impeller , etc.. i'm leary to do much more . when i first got the boat ( 6 yrs ) i did a bunch of work to the engine. cooling hoses , added strainer , new alt. when i was changing out the cooling lines i ended up breaking the thermo housing putting the last ( of course ) hose on to it. the whole bottom corner where the hose goes on just cracked right off. managed to get a new one ( $500!!!!) .
the mechanic i was dealing with said not to mess with anything else . i'd like to pull injectors , etc, but kinda scared as parts are few and $$$$$$.
no milky color to the oil , engine runs great as it always has.
not sure how to tell if it is smoke or steam???
curious also as to the reg running rpm for these engines , i usually keep it in the 1500 - 1800 range. temp is usually in the red but drops to the green when thermo opens.
cheers and thanks again.

 

[anchorclanker]

Don't just go by the gauge, check it with a heat gun or another gauge.

Smoke slowly thins out, steam dissipates into thin air.

Best to start from scratch starting with compression. However, just pulling the injectors may give you your answer. Look to see if they both look the same. If one is really clean or wet, your probably going to pull the head.

 

[Mark Maulden]

Clanker is right. Get an infra red thermometer and check it out. They are real cheap from Harbor Freight. The raw water cooling is what would "scare" me especially if it has really been operating "in the red" in salt water. I see you're in Campbell River and I'm assuming BC. If you truly have steam, then you might be pulling heads and see what things look like. What does the water amount look like at the exhaust? You could also have salt deposits in the mixing elbow choking off water flow. And be forewarened. The same could also be happening in the heads/manifold. I have this same engine and I rebuilt it last winter excepting crank/cam as it still had good oil pressure. I bought the boat 1.5 yrs ago and mine has been FWC since new. If it had been RWC, I wouldn't have bought it. So, if it's truly steam, you might in for some expensive repairs/parts or a repower. You can read about my escapades a few pages back. It made sense for me to put some money into this engine as I did 95% of the labor myself. $500 for a T-stat housing sounds pretty ludicrius (sp?). check out Marine Parts Express.com. BTW, I had the same engine (RWC) 30 some yrs ago in the same type of boat. It was RWC. They changed T-stat designs and I ended up drilling a 3/16 hole in the T-stat because of overheating.......

 

[Sir Rondo]

Hi guys, I don't want to hijack anyone's thread but this one seems to have gone dormant. I have the same engine and same problem. Also RWC. I am getting steam out the exhaust and a light oil slick also. No water in the oil but seemingly, oil in the water output.
I have take temps with a heat gun and gotten some alarming numbers from around the cylinders #3 and #2. I'm counting 1,2,3 from front to back. 240 degrees from #3 and 220 from #2. 180 from #1 and the heads themselves were fine.
I have sent an oil analysis away and should be getting results back this week. I only did that to get an overall picture of what I'm dealing with. I've only had the boat (a 1980 sailboat) since Jan/12 and the hour meter read 1275. I have trouble believing that.
Mark, I read your thread. What a story that was. I hope mine is less painful. Ouch!

So if anyone is still interested in this topic, I'd sure like to talk to those with experience and I hope the OP will come back and let us know how it's going. I'm just up the strait from him on Vancouver Is.

Cheers!

 

[Stretch]

I had noticed my exhaust had more and more steam coming out of it and finally, warming up to 180 degrees, too much for the 3gm30 engine temperature. I mentioned my problem to an other club member and he grinned and told me to hook up a garden hose and back flush the bark bits and floaties out of my raw water pickup intake, as he walked down the dock to save another boater with no driveshaftconnected anymore[he had a bung collection for other boater]
I hooked up my hose to theproper hose on the engine turned on the city water pressure slightly and darned if a little pile of flotsam didn;t pop up beside the boat.
[Thanks for the PNW trick Scott]

 

[Sir Rondo]

That's very interesting. I think I have bigger problems due to the oil slick on the water but it wouldn't hurt to back flush anyway. Thanks for the tip, I will try it asap.