omega2
Well-Known Member
Here's one for you engineers/techies. Four years back we cooked our Port engine, but managed to recover it as it did not freeze, however we then had oil getting into the water jacket and clogging up the header tank stack, this was no big deal as we have spares for nearly everything on these 35 year old Sabre 180's, so from time to time we removed the stack and put a clean one in. Every avenue was explored to determine the cause but we got nowhere until we were advised that maybe the block itself was cracked in an area were the oil gallery is close to the water jacket. Steel seal was administered and the problem went away for a while i.e we stayed cool and not much oil was being lost, so we carried on, the boat is used purely for fishing and distances no greater than 10/15 miles are traveled. In any case we got two! Recently we now find that water is getting into the sump i.e the oil level is rising, at first we thought of selling it to the Arabs as a new way of oil production. People have been suggesting that the head gasket has gone but I am not convinced, I pressure tested the water jacket via the header tank filler to 15 lbs per sq inch and it held for over 20 minutes, with the engine cold, then released the pressure and tested with the engine warming up and as the thermostat opened at about 55 degrees the tester gauge rose to about 17 lbs and remained stable, there is quite a lot of steam and "blowing" coming out of the rocker box, and our bottle and tube from the breather is gathering a lot more water than ever. There are traces of water in the rocker box but no mayo yet nor on the dip stick, the engine starts and runs fine, no hydraulicing Lots of smoke on start up to be expected with these old Fords, slight white smoke when under load, But we are sure that one of these days one or all of the pistons will come flying out of the engine box. When if ever this weather warms up I am afraid that the port engine will get pulled out and replaced, got another one in the garage.
