2012 Sport Nautique 200V Hydrolock

[Gprsh924]

Get the boat ready Saturday morning for a slalom run. Lower the lift into the water and go to fire the engine....it won't start and the starter is making a horrible banging noise. Check it out, motor is not turning. Just replaced the starter 6 weeks ago. Pull the boat out of the water and take it to the local dealer...hydrolock. Water in 2 cylinders and they are writing up an estimate for 2 new exhaust manifolds they say have cracked because of heat expansion. 2012 with 360 hours, oil changed every 50 hours, winterized and summerized at the same shop since new. We are second owners, bought it 3 years ago with 180 hours. Any idea what could be the root cause here? Is this common? Ways to avoid in the future? Thanks

[surroundsound64]

Stupid question, but was that the first time you've ran it since winter?

i guess not because you recently replaced the starter... any chance someone sabotaged it?

[surroundsound64]

Or did your impeller shread and you overheated it accidentally last outing?

[Gprsh924]

We have put about 50 hours on it this summer. It ran fine the weekend before, my dad didn't notice any overheating. He parked on the lift, hoisted it out of the water, then when we went to use it last weekend, not start. We still need to check out the impeller. I hope we haven't pissed anyone off enough to shove a hose up the exhaust, but you never know.

[j2nh]

Something doesn't sound right. If the boat is running correctly, stopped and put on a lift for a week it is not possible to get water in cylinders and crack exhaust manifolds due to heat.

Any chance somebody "borrowed" the boat between the last weekend you used it and now? If it's overheating you look at the impeller or seacock but that doesn't explain water in two cylinders. Any chance the belts picked up water from the bilge and it got sucked into the air filter? I have heard of this happening.

Keep us posted.

[jharris]

Any chance you have a shower installed. I was with someone a couple months ago and they let the shower pump run while the boat was off and it filled some cylinders with water. Not sure how and I didn't take the time to figure it out. I just had to pull him home about 4 miles.


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[Gprsh924]

So the only explanation we’ve been given by the dealer is “heat expansion” that caused the exhaust manifolds to crack, letting water in to the cylinders. It could be possible it was running hot and we just didn’t notice it, but I feel it’s unlikely. Boat has the electronic ignition keypad, so not sure how it could have been borrowed (no indications of any sort of use either).

We we had to have the starter replaced a few weeks ago. We are now wondering if this has been an ongoing thing that caused the darter issue the first time and now happened again more severely. The dealer is suggesting to replace the impeller, but we haven’t spoken to them yet to see if that is preventative or if it is damaged and needs to be swapped.

No shower on the boat. I’ll keep you posted when we learn more. This situation sucks, but most interested in making sure it doesn’t happen again.

[surroundsound64]

I don't really buy the heat expansion... unless it overheated.

[Paxdad]

I agree with surroundsound on this one. As I had a hydro lock take place due to a knock off Chinese garbage impeller from Nautique parts and it took out my starter in the events that followed. In my instance I saw the temp gauge rapidly rising and immediately turned off the engine and that's when the hydro lock occurred. I am still disgusted this day with how Nautique Parts handled it when they admitted that they do use Chinese Parts and had a bad batch.
They sent me a replacement impeller in the same white box. That box is setting in my spare parts with do not use written on it. At minimum a replacement starter and PCM oEM impeller would have made me satisfied!!

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[NautiqueJeff]

You seemed pretty happy with the response from NautiqueParts at the time. I don't see any mention of hydrolock in your posts from then. Also, to be clear, after this bad batch of impellers in 2014, NautiqueParts no longer sells anything except OEM impellers.

https://www.planetnautique.com/vb5/f...ad-at-40-hours

http://www.tigeowners.com/forum/show...ller-shredding

[charlesml3]

How could a bad impeller take out a starter? That doesn't make any sense.

-Charles

[a0128]

How could a bad impeller take out a starter? That doesn't make any sense.

And how does a bad starter cause a hydrolocking issue? I thought hydrolocking was caused by water in the cylinders. Pulled this off the Interweb.

"Hydrolocking is when an engine either seizes or suffers catastrophic failure due to the ingress of a substantial volume of water in the cylinders. With an internal combustion engine effectively resembling a form of air pump, the internals are all designed to deal with the compression of air. Water on the other hand is virtually incompressible unless a huge amount of pressure is applied to it and even then it barely budges.

If water fills the combustion chamber, the rotation of the crankshaft will force the pistons upwards to try and compress the fluid. With the reaction force from the water being larger than the maximum stress the engine components can cope with, something has to give. If the engine is of small capacity and therefore doesn’t generate much force during reciprocation, the motor may simply seize up, grinding to a halt. This can also be the case if hydrolock occurs when an engine is simply idling rather than rotating at any great speed.

This is the least-damaging result, with the engine needing flushed by removing the spark plugs and turning it over to spit the water out. The engine should be fully checked, removing the inlet manifold and cylinder head to check for any further damage and to rid the powertrain of any residing water. Changing any gaskets that could have possibly been affected would also be a wise call."

[Paxdad]

Jeff,
Make no mistake I was plenty pissed with them behind the post but chose not to air that out but make folks aware of the inferior part.


When you attempt to restart the motor with water in the cylinder/cylinders something has to give and in my case it was the starter. Water does not compress very easy as pointed out above. The starter engages on the flywheel and the flywheel is bolted directly to the crank. So that should clear that up how the starter can destroy itself in a hydrolock condition.


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[DW SD]

It seems to me an exhaust riser gasket could fail and let water from the exhaust cooling passages leak down the exhaust manifold in to a cylinder(s).
This affect might be more pronounced (or simply part of a perfect storm to fill cylinders with more water than their quench volume) depending upon the angle that the boat and then engine is at once lifted.

I'd say very lucky if just the starter vs a bent connecting rod!!




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[Paxdad]

DW SD could not agree more. In my case the water was in fact sucked in from the exiting exhaust which is symptomatic of a hydrolock. It is also called a "dieseling effect".
I had just left the ramp and was idling, when I saw the temp gauge start to rise and immediately hit stop. It never overheated and I then made two attempts to start it after opening the engine hatch to inspect. I recognized the strain on the starter and immediately started pulling the spark plugs only to find water in two cylinders.


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