The official “Szalty Air” '07 Sea Ray 260DA Sundancer thread

[AttilaS]

I see the flush hose attached to the starboard exhaust manifold. Did you check to see if it’s sucking air into the pump? If that spring loaded connector doesn’t close properly, it’ll let air into the pump. Maybe that’s your issue? Put a good sealing cap on it to test. The blue cap that comes with the kit gets brittle after 2 years and won’t seal a leaking fitting.

The pictures in post #19 made me think. If you haven’t already, maybe you should replace the water hose that leads into the transom. Your earlier picture didn’t show a bad case of “bravoitis” but if you had that much growth and debris inside the lower intake ports, it’s very possible that something is stuck inside the hose.

Thanks for the suggestions. I did check the flush valve and it doesn't seem to be leaking. You are right on the transom hose though. When I checked it, I was just looking for any build up at the transom wall that was similar to other pictures I had seen of bravoitis. I didn't actually try to back flush the hose while the outdrive was off and confirm nothing was stuck in the middle of it somewhere. Thinking back now that seems like an obvious thing I should have done. I'll have to pull it back out, but at least once out that is a pretty quick thing to check. The hose itself looked pretty new which is why I didn't change it.

 

[AttilaS]

Well I pulled the boat out of the water again, pulled the drive and the water hose between the water pump and transom. I then pushed a flexible line from inside through the transom out to the drive through the water intake hose and slide through without any issues. Very easily with no hint of any blockage. Sigh.

I guess that is another possibility eliminated. Anyone have any other ideas while it is out?

 

[KevinC]

Well I pulled the boat out of the water again, pulled the drive and the water hose between the water pump and transom. I then pushed a flexible line from inside through the transom out to the drive through the water intake hose and slide through without any issues. Very easily with no hint of any blockage. Sigh.

I guess that is another possibility eliminated. Anyone have any other ideas while it is out?

Check your belt routing. I made a mistake on the routing once on my 260DA with the 5.0 once. After doing the impeller I put the belt back on wrong - probably hot and in a rush - everything worked fine at idle - once you rev'd up it overheated. After looking it over I noticed the mistake and corrected it. The problem was small but there was just not enough wrap of the belt on the water pump so at higher RPMs it was slipping.

-Kevin

 

[Espos4]

Well I pulled the boat out of the water again, pulled the drive and the water hose between the water pump and transom. I then pushed a flexible line from inside through the transom out to the drive through the water intake hose and slide through without any issues. Very easily with no hint of any blockage. Sigh.

I guess that is another possibility eliminated. Anyone have any other ideas while it is out?

Did you ever backflush the power steering cooler?

If an impeller ever had pieces break off, they’d be stuck in there and blocking water flow.

Have you inspected the thermostat for proper installation? They are easy to install incorrectly. I don't think it’ll give you low water pressure but something to check and it’ll also give you a chance to see the condition of the water passage inside the intake manifold.

 

[Espos4]

Well I pulled the boat out of the water again, pulled the drive and the water hose between the water pump and transom. I then pushed a flexible line from inside through the transom out to the drive through the water intake hose and slide through without any issues. Very easily with no hint of any blockage. Sigh.

I guess that is another possibility eliminated. Anyone have any other ideas while it is out?

Did you install an OEM Mercruiser water pressure sensor or a knockoff?

Sone people have had issues with poor quality aftermarket replacements.

 

[AttilaS]

Thanks everyone. You guys are great.

I have not back flushed the power steering cooler, was thinking about that as I put everything back together this evening. I think I will try that tomorrow morning before it goes back in. Any particular method that works best? Can it be removed from the boat altogether easily and flushed outside?

I did change the water pressure sensor with OEM part, just as a precaution.

Belt routing is good and the motor doesn't overheat at all. Even when I was only getting 3psi last summer it ran fine with no abnormal temps.

I haven't checked the thermostat since it was a new motor recently installed.

 

[AttilaS]

I put the boat back in the water.

I looked at the steering cooler, but since it is just after the pressure sensor I think a blockage there would increase pressure and cause cooling issues vs result in lower pressure. So I didn't do anything with it.

I ran it just a bit from the launch ramp to my slip. It steadily builds pressure up to about 2000 RPM where it gets up to about 9PSI. Then as you go a little over that it then starts to fall back down to 4-5PSI and will stay there no matter how high the RPMs go. That seems to me it would either be due to air being introduced once a certain level of suction is reach or a hose is collapsing under a certain level of suction.

Just to double check again that it wasn't the flush valve, I put a clamp on the hose to pinch it tight and that made no difference.

I read about connecting a clear hose after the pump to see if any air bubbles are seen. I may put something together in a bit to try that and see what I get.

At least now the pressure is high enough that I don't get a warning until a bit over 4000RPM, which is beyond my usual cruise speed. Still I don't like the feeling of things not being right.

 

[AttilaS]

I found some clear hose and adapters, so I can put them inline on the pump output and see what it looks like. I also got a vacuum and pressure guage so I can confirm the water pressure sensor is reading accurately. Also going to connect it on the inlet side to see how much vacuum is generated. Hopefully this will give me a better idea of what is going on.

 

[AttilaS]

While doing anual service on my dinghies outdrive, I decided to clean it up a bit as well. It is an old Mercury 5hp 2-stroke I got for free last year. It had been sitting for a few years and didn't run well. I rebuilt the carb and cleaned things up a bit and seems to run great now. Used it a bit late last year. It had a decent amount of paint chipped off in places, so I scuffed up the areas a bit and then primed and painted with the extra Mercury paint I had left over. Pretty quick job just to make it look a bit nicer and cover up the bare metal. It is stored dry and only in the water when in use at Catalina, so this should be good enough for a while.

 

[AttilaS]

I stopped by the boat again and connected a pressure/vacuum gauge inline of the flush valve, so I could see what the suction looked like both when it was only sucking in water through the out drive as well as when it was sucking in water via both out drive and hose connected to the flush valve. Below is what the setup looked like.

So this way with the valve on the hose shut, I was able to see vacuum generated when the engine was running and pump was sucking in through the outdrive. The vacuum generated went up a bit as RPMs grew. When I open the valve for the hose, I actually see a small amount of positive pressure even at higher RPMs.

Given this and the fact that at just over 2000 RPM I get the same drop in water pressure read on the output of the pump whether the flush hose is connected or not, I think I can conclude that the problem is not related to any restrictions on the input side of the water pump. If it was an input side restriction, I should see a difference between when the flush hose was on or off.

I didn't get a chance to connect some clear hose on the output side of the pump yet, but I'll do that next.

 

[AttilaS]

After quite a long wait I received new isinglass enclosure for the front as well as new bimini canvas and zipper that runs along the arch. It was a little tedious installing new snaps in the canvas, but overall install went very smooth and will be nice when we head out on a cold morning.

After installing, I took them all back off and stored them laid out flat in the cabin. The old ones were opaque and dark brown, so I suspect previous owner had left them out in the sun non-stop.

 

[AttilaS]

Been a while since I posted an update, but I have made progress.

A bit over a month ago a spot opened up at Cabrillo Way Dry Storage, so I jumped on that and moved my boat over there. They use a crane to launch / retrieve my boat any time I need, which is quite nice since it now is stored out of the water while not in use. It also gives me a nice place to store my trailer and costs half of what it did to keep it in the water (when I include monthly cleanings). When you consider bottom paint and other maint costs from it being in the water then the saves are even higher. I'm sure this isn't for everyone, but it suites my usage of the boat very well which is going to / from Catalina island once every 3-4 weeks from Spring to early Fall. The marina is also the closest point between mainland and Catalina, which is very nice (just under 20nm). I don't particularly enjoy the back and forth trip (love being out there though), so the shortest distance possible is nice. The employees running the dry storage have also been so helpful and accomodating. It has really been a pleasure dealing with them so far, which is a nice added bonus.

Regarding the water pressure issue I've been having, I was going to install a section of clear hose on the output of the sea water pump just to see if there was any air bubbles being introduced at higher RPMs. While doing that I also inspected the input hose again and noticed a small crease in the hose. Most of the hose running from the transom to the water pump is a wire reinforced 1 1/4" hose, but there was also a short section of about 7" that was a conventional water hose that went between the water pump inlet and a T that split between the connection to the transom and the flush line. When I had the hoses off, it looked like the short software hose was a bit longer than it needed to be and because the rest of the hose was very rigid and curved around a bit it could potentially be bending the soft hose. I decided to trim the soft hose about an inch, reassemble and put into the water the test it.

At the dock I ran up the RPMs in neutral and right away saw that the water pressure was higher than it had been in the past. It was still dropping above 2000RPM, but increased by about 2psi. I tried to look down closely at soft section of hose and sure enough it was still kinked a bit a collapsing. After all this it was actually very nice to something conclusive.

I pulled the boat back out and got a section of reinforced hose that I replaced the soft hose with. Took it out for short ride and sure enough the water pressure was now holding even better at close to 10psi. It still seems to drop a little bit at higher RPMs, but is nowhere near the point of the overspeed guardian kicking in. I was able to run at full throttle with no issues, which was a really nice feeling. Not that I ever really run it that high, but just knowing I could if I wanted to and didn't have to be carefully watch the RPMs and keep below an artificial limit to avoid the alarm. Since the hose from the transom to the drive is only 3/4" and it also doesn't appear to be reinforced I assume there is some restriction there that is preventing the pressure from continuing to climb up at the higher RPMs. For now I'm not going to worry about and will just enjoy running it.

Plus it didn't take long to find the next thing that wasn't working right. I took the boat over to Catalina twice since and last time there I decided to try running the generator a bit. I hadn't run it since last year. I opened the seacock for water into to it and then tried to start it. It almost immediately fired up, but then died a few seconds later. Tried starting a few more times, but all it did was crank and never given another hint of actually starting. I'll have to find a manual for it and start looking over things. I have no idea what kind of maintenance it has had in the past and only know the previous owner claimed to use it occasionally and it ran ok during the survey last year.

Oh well, I link tinkering with things and this is not a high priority item, so I'm not concerned. I'm sure I'll figure it out. Up to now it's been most working on the boat, but now that it is running well and we are using it I gotta say it is pretty cool. I never thought I'd ever have a boat and still can't say for sure if this will be a longer term thing, but at the moment we are in a good place with it.

 

[aerobat77]

I had a low water pressure indication on my 06 240 with a 5.0mpi for years and it drove me crazy . I never got an alarm and the boat never overheated so i checked with a manual gauge and the actual water pressure was higher than indicated by the sensor so i finally started to ignore it .

Not sure here but i doubt your overspeed alarm has anything in common with the water pressure and if indeed the waterpump is bad or the belt slips the engine WOULD overheat.

 

[AttilaS]

Have done a few more trips out to Catalina and the boat is running great.

I did the service on generator. It was definitely due, but nothing looked to be in extremely bad shape. Impeller was still intact. Plugs looked not too bad.

It still doesn't want to run though. Again on the first attempt it started and ran for a few seconds and then died and would never start again, just crank. I can hear the fuel pump running. When I changed the fuel filter there was no fuel in the line leading to it, but the old filter had a little fuel in it. Based on the fuel line routing I assume it just drains back from the line into the tank. It feels like a fuel issue. Seems like there is an additional pump that helps prime the lines. I assume that is what I see inline between the generator and the fuel tank. Not sure if that is working. I'll have to try running the engine again and then see if the generator start up again.