Blown head gasket on my 08 moomba xlx

[Brandoncyruss]

Hey everyone. I ended up buying a 2008 moomba mobius xlv gravity games edition a couple of days ago. First mistake i made, was paying the guy cash. 2nd mistake i made was not running it very long before i bought it. I bought the boat about 6 days ago. I have it in the shop to get it winterized, and got a wonderful phone call that my head gasket was blown, water in the oil. I'm not very mechanicaly savoy and obviously got myself into a little predicament.

I'm going to end up getting this fixed. Is there ANYTHING you guys would have done while you have the motor torn apart? anything that just makes sense to replace while in in there? I'm honestly contemplating fixing it in and just trading it in on something new. I'm a little scared as far as maintenance goes that the head gasket was blown with that low of hours, what could have caused that? The mechanic said the motor sounds good, he ran it for 20 minutes and it didn't lose or gain any oil making him 95% sure it's just a head gasket.

Any advice would be awesome!

[beat taco]

I would have the heads resurfaced and put it back together. Pretty simple job.

[Brandoncyruss]

Appreciate the response Jake. After listening to the motor and seeing how little of water was in the oil I'm going to start off with flushing the oil 3 or 4 times and seeing if it stays clean. When i bought this, there was ALOT of water in it. I'm going to hope that this will solve the problem.

[trayson]

Hope you got a good deal on it. I'm sure once it's fixed, it'll be good as new. no reason to dump it after it's fixed.

How would it blow a head gasket? Well, the impeller could have failed and the engine overheated and there ya go.

[Brandoncyruss]

Paid 32k for it, went to bend, Oregon to pick it up. Either a $500 fix or a $5000 if it needs a head gasket and vdrive seal.

[Brandoncyruss]

Hey Trayson. saw the vid of you surfing, we're pretty close to each other! Last year my buddy and I started in march in the columbia, for some reason we were the only ones out there haha! You guys at a lake or in the columbia?

[lee]

If it has a bad gasket it will continue to make oil. Just change the oil and run it and see if you get any water in the oil.

[trayson]

Paid 32k for it, went to bend, Oregon to pick it up. Either a $500 fix or a $5000 if it needs a head gasket and vdrive seal.

$32k is a pretty rad deal. But $37 is still within the realm of what one might expect to pay, so it'd be less of a deal, but still a nice boat.


Hey Trayson. saw the vid of you surfing, we're pretty close to each other! Last year my buddy and I started in march in the columbia, for some reason we were the only ones out there haha! You guys at a lake or in the columbia?

We live in Vancouver, so mostly launch at Marine Park (near the I-5 Bridge) and we typically play on the southwest side of Hayden Island.

[beat taco]

Start with a leak down test, then a block check if you have a leak where you use dye to confirm the block isn't cracked. But I would do the leak down before wasting any time or money on changing oil.

[lee]

You still want to get the oil/water out of the block.

[Brandoncyruss]

Hey Guys. I might have lucked out. The guy i bought the boat from is splitting everything with me. The mechanic changed the oil and ran it for 30 minutes... seemed to look fine. Good compression. No milky oil. Planning on taking it to the river and running it and monitoring the oil.
Appreciate all the input fellas.

[beat taco]

Hey Guys. I might have lucked out. The guy i bought the boat from is splitting everything with me. The mechanic changed the oil and ran it for 30 minutes... seemed to look fine. Good compression. No milky oil. Planning on taking it to the river and running it and monitoring the oil.
Appreciate all the input fellas.
My very extensive experience with bad head gaskets is that they can sometimes fool a compression test since they build pressure over repeated revolutions. They always fail a leak down test. So if a mechanic ever says you have a bad head gasket, the very next step anyone should take is to confirm the condition of your engine with a leak down test if that was not the method the mechanic used to diagnose the gasket. This eliminates any guess work. Some failures are obvious while others are not. Looks like you most likely got a bad diagnosis in the beginning, congrats. I just wanted to clarify what I was saying in my post above for anyone who may need to diagnose a problem like this that is reading along.

[Fastest1]

Water in the oil is pretty common in boats. Especially if they have been sitting. Its as much condensation as anything else.

The fact that operating temperature is pretty low too. In an automotive application oil temperature is right around 230f. Water boils off during the normal operation. Many times boats run much cooler never vaporizing the moisture in the crankcase. I believe this is one of the leading causes of short engine life in boat applications.