[Judge Smails]

Sounds incredibly idiotic but I had the T/A outdoors & COVERED since the beginning of the year when massive electrical gremlins behind the dash forced me to park it, needing all my garage space for other things, and when I finally got around to working on it this wknd, with summer gone & all, I removed the dist to prime the pump and squirted some oil down the cyls. Went to start it up & after about a second it basically hit a wall. Hit the key a second time very briefly & just a "THUNK"! Tried turning it by hand & it went about 1/2 turn each way. Took out the plugs again and somehow a flood of H20 poured out of #7, with a considerable amount pouring out of #6. After turning it over by hand a few more times with the plugs out some (brownish) water dribbled out of #1 & 7. On the off chance I haven't already destroyed it with my stupidity, what do I do now? Wet-dry vac the spark plug holes? Pour alcohol & oil into the cyls & keep turning it over by hand after priming it again? Do all of those and then (hopefully) start it, get it as hot as possible with a 195F stat & THEN change the oil? Never had to deal with this before, marine or otherwise. Thanks in advance.

[Region Warrior]

Need to find out what caused it 1st.
Is there any water in the crank case?

[bonneville Joe]

Hmmm, sounds to me like you might have a blown head gasket or worse. $ permitting, it might be time to pull it and send it out for a rebuild and concentrate on the electrical stuff while the engine is getting a makeover. When your done you know you'll have both your issues finished instead of driving around going "hmm, I wonder when it's gonna act up again?"

[Judge Smails]

Thanks for the speedy reply RW. I didn't see any evidence of water in the oil when I took the priming tool out; looked nice. Obviously if it dodges this bullet it's going back indoors (grr). My guess would be a leaky shaker assy; we had numerous storms this spring where the wind would be BLASTING & ripped the covers right off for horizontal rain to get in but I never saw more than a tsp or 2 in the air cleaner afterward, checking periodically. Even though the carb appeared dry, it didn't have any vacuum issues when I parked it, certainly not enough of a yawning intake leak for this amt of water to get in.
Thanks also for the reply BJ, though unless I blew up the gasket(s) when I briefly tried to start it that shouldn't be a problem; ran fine when I parked it except for the voltmeter bouncing around & sinking accompanied by dreaded buzzing. The only good news is that the water wasn't green. ...and also my rear defogger works again...yippee...now I can continue never using it...

[gtohurstjudge]

The water came in through the air cleaner.......blow all the water out of the spark plug holes with compressed air, then squirt
oil in all the cylinders....it will be OK if you didn't break anything
when you locked it up. It is amazing the damage hydrolocking can
do. I'm in the car repair business, and one time I had to buy a customer an engine because a little antifreeze seeped into cylinder
no. 1 on a 350 chevy vortec engine while we had the intake plenum
off changing the fuel pressure regulator. When we hit the key to fire
it up, it started, then hydrolocked at the top of the piston stroke and sent number one rod right through the oil pan !

[Judge Smails]

Thanks gtohurstjudge and everyone for the replies-- I siphoned out what brown water I could (not by mouth, ack!) which resembled butterscotch pudding colorwise, poured MM Oil down the carb & into the cyls, primed it again for a couple of minutes, put dist back in, turned it over by hand twice & cranked it with all the plugs out a few times for a few seconds each with a steady 35psi of cranking oil press. Put plugs back in, ign back on, crossed fingers... The smoke just about blocked out what was left of the sun for the first few minutes, and the headers were smoking like hell from all the stuff that had spat out the holes during the cranking, but the vac gauge was steady again once it warmed up. Got it up to 220F & the oil up to 180F for a few solid minutes and was going to change it but it still seemed very clean, so...hopefully this giant leap backward has been negated to the point I can start focusing again on the original giant leap backward...
In the unlikely event anyone has been following this whole sordid affair, the nightmare wiring gremlins in the dash which caused the outdoor "parking", which in turn caused the hydrolock in the first place, survived the attempted purge without a scratch. D'OH! Details on the Electrical page...