The Ships Logg

The Volvo Penta 5.7 Engine after the finished rebuild in 2015 A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about hydrolock.   In the article, I mentioned that I had experienced hydrolock on a previous boat and that it caused damage to the engine.   To be more precise, it took the engine out.   Here is how I handled that situation. In July of 2014, I experienced something that no boater wants to experience.   I great day out on the lake turned ugly all of a sudden when my engine went down hard.   At the time, I did not know exactly what the issue was but based on the sound that it made, I knew that it was not a simple fix.   Earlier in the day, my engine had ingested water, something that I had experienced before.   I knew how to handle it though.   I pulled the plugs out, yanked the kill switch cord and cranked the engine over several times, allowing the water to be expelled from the cylinders.   After drying the plugs, putting them ba...

If you have ever experienced hydrolock on your boat engine, you may already know that it can turn a great day on the water into a really bad day in a hurry.   What is hydrolock?   To put it simply, it is when water gets into your engine cylinders.   While this can also happen to car and truck engines, it is more likely to happen with marine engines because of the environment that boats operate in and it is more likely to happen on boats that have exhaust systems that release exhaust under the water’s surface. First, let’s talk about how the typical 4 stroke gasoline engine works.   There are four steps (hence the term four stroke) that a cylinder goes through for each combustion cycle: 1.          First the intake valve opens and the piston moves down which sucks air and fuel into the cylinder. 2.        The intake valve closes and the cylinder moves up which compresses the air-fuel mixture...