Engine Update

Well it turned out the engine problem was bad....not terminal but still bad. It seems that a bad oil cooler will put oil in the coolant but not coolant in the oil. It didn't take the tech long to determine the problem was in the head.($$$). He didn't really think the head was cracked since I had not had any overheating issues before the problem started. He suspected leaking "injector cups" which are a molded part of the head. It could be removed and sent to a shop for rebuild. Problem with that is it takes time which we didn't have a ton of & the shop could still find a crack which means it is no longer rebuild-able and we're back to square one. The cost of getting a new head versus a rebuild wasn't much in the big picture and labor is the same either way so we decided to go with the new head.

The head weighs about 250 pounds so they rigged up an I beam to pull it out.

 

The next pic is the top if the cylinders...more than I ever wanted to see of our engines!!

And the old and new heads on the trailer. Some parts are taken off the old and used on the new. 

And finally all cleaned up and going back together.

I will say that I was more than impressed with the guys working on the problem. The first mechanic arrived about 10 on Wednesday and we made the call to get the new head by noon. 2 mechanics worked on Thursday and had everything back together by noon on Friday!! One small problem though....1 of the injectors decided it didn't want to work in the new head. All were running fine before but only 5 were working now...they say it happens sometime....we were so close. They tried several tricks (none of which worked) and in the end they locked out the bad injector and we were going to Ft. Meyers on 1 engine...dammit!! At least we could run the engine long enough to maneuver in and out of marinas but the trip down took 2 long days at 7 mph.

So we're now in Ft Myers which will be our home port for the foreseeable future. The little bits we've seen seem very nice...when it's not raining...which it has been doing for the past 2 days...like record totals.

We did get over to the park near the marina between storms today.

So that's where we stand for now. We have the Detroit shop here in town scheduled in 2 weeks for the new injector. This should give the sting of this last bill time to wear off a bit. For any of our Cincinnati friends that still follow along we'll be in town for a few days starting next Monday. Hope we can catch up. After that we'll be down here and hope to do some boating in the area once things are all up and running again.