OTish: Boat Engine

Not personally but I have known others to loose a lot of oil with the dipstick missing. Best inspect when the engine is running, if at all possible.

For £200k I would suggest a survey is mandatory. Not all surveys include the engines but I'm sure it's possible.

I would want the whole thing cleaned professionally because disposing of heavily contaminated bilge water legally might be expensive. I would then inpect the clean engine bay and dry bilges before repeating the test run, after which I could then check for oil (and other) leaks.

For something like that I would probably have a proper survey done anyway.

every inboard boat engine I have ever seen has a very long thin dip stick tube for I would have thought obvious reasons so even without the dipstick in place would only spit out egg cup full of oil

it could be whatever is used as an engine breather is blocked or something much more expensive

I wondered if oil was added via the rocker box, and that cap had been left off. However I agree that it could be a breather problem, or something much worse.

As someone else said, I'd be getting an expert opinion too.

I think you?re right to be concern. Engines blow out oil when crankcase pressures get too high which could be due to piston ring/bore wear. I think he?d be well advised to get a second opinion.

Tim

Boats will have a low oil level warning which is different to low pressure, engine wrecked light that cars have. Need to verify that it was low oil and not oil pressure.

Some boat engines are handed, particularity twin installations. The one that runs backwards could sling oil up a dipstick tube as they don't move the dipstick. Get the owner to show him how to refit the dipstick properly or he will repeat this for himself. Car engines the dipstick is on the side that the crank descends on so the oil isn't flung up the tube.

I once saw a car go though auction that arrived with the filer cap missing from the rocker cover. That was an almighty mess and knocked about 10% off it's sale price.

Need another run to check that doesn't happen again and a survey. He should ask how many gallons it used on the demo run. A day out could be £100, that's why they sit in the marina all year. Fuel tanks are always hundreds of gallons, like 3 to 4 hundred.

Boat - a hole in the water that you shovel money into, the bigger the hole the more money it takes. Hope he's got £20k/year to spare as the rule of thumb is 10% of the value goes on maintenance each year.

I've heard it said that boats and horses are the best indicators of the economy. The stock market faithfully follows the direction of value for high cost, high maintenance assets.