Message 6 of 6
Posted by member Edward Cartner on Thursday 3 September 2015

Thank you, Ray and Simon for your interest and concern. The engine is a Yamaha 80 four-stroke. It took our engineer a week to get to grips with the matter, and then he had some difficulty separating the shaft and gearbox from the engine proper (I could not bear to watch at one stage). Anyway, the mid-shaft bearing had indeed failed and the water pump was not good either. His theory is that although the engine records only 200hrs, it is 13 years old and has rested idle for long periods. The bearing, and the impeller, being water-lubricated, have in effect 'dried out' so that when we as new owners started to subject the engine to regular repeated use, it fell to pieces - hence the white smoke. It's a bit like a car left to its own devices for too long: seals and bearings are affected and liable to fail under renewed demands. I can go along with this: the boat's paper record from new shows about eight years with little use demonstrated by engine hours. I'll just have to 'bite the bullet' on repair costs (parts yet to arrive) with full replacement hopefully a distant possibility. The boat itself is in excellent condition and, being in a dry-stack berth, at least she is not thrashing about in this very poor weather.

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Message 4 of 6
Posted by member Ray Dubro on Friday 28 August 2015

Hi Edward, Sorry to hear your news. What a disappointment! A problem like this after just 200hrs or so is unusual for any outboard, let alone a Yamaha. Any idea what could have been the underlying cause of this bearing failure? Just out of interest, is this a two or four stroke Yamaha? Regards, Ray.

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Message 2 of 6
Posted by member Ray Dubro on Wednesday 19 August 2015

Hi Edward, This is something that you should to keep an eye on, in case it escalates into something more serious. The white smoke you are seeing is more likely to be a puff of steam which could indicate the beginning of a head gasket failure, allowing coolant into one of the combustion chambers. Normally this would be accompanied by a misfire which you have not mentioned. Check your spark plugs to see if one of the plugs looks a different colour to the others and carry out a compression check. You should then have some indication if there is a problem. If your engine is a 2 stroke, it's very easy to confuse smoke with steam. White smoke = steam which evaporates quickly Blue smoke = burnt oil (the smoke lingers) black smoke = rich fuel mixture If your engine continues to run sweet then there's probably nothing to worry about. Only time will tell.

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