"scott" jsodellatgmail.com wrote in
:

It's a tough little 3GM30F which ran pretty well for many many hours
with an unrevealed slightly leaky gasket which finally got worse
enough to overheat while motorsailing into a headwind off Canaveral
last January. The increasingly leaky head gasket (between cylinders
2&3 & the pushrod gallery) started venting into the freshwater cooling
side and blowing water out and also deposited unburnt fuel or lube
oil into the remaining coolant.
Messy -- and the low water level resulted in loss of cooling
efficiency.
Sailed the rest of the way to Ft. Pierce, planed the head, ground the
valves, put her back together with a new gasket and now she starts
*instantly* and runs like a charm. The only prior symptom was slow
starting when cold. More of the gory details plus some photos are
probably still in the archives at that www.yanmarhelp.com site.



They really are great engines. Sorry you lost the gasket.

When I worked at Charleston Naval Shipyard, may she rest in peace, a
painting contractor had a little Yanmar all covered in paint driving a
paint pump to a whole bunch of spray nozzles up the side of our big
building. It was so covered I could hardly identify it! Cooling water
came from a garden hose from the building's water supply and the exhaust
just spit it out on the street after cooling the header and waterbox
muffler.

I asked one of the painters how much trouble they'd had with the little
Yanmar. He said, curtly, "None that I know of and I've been painting
here for years. We just change the oil in it after every job, about once
a month." It seems no other maintenance was necessary...(c; He
estimated it had over 10,000 hours on it as it runs 26 days a month,
every month, only resting as they moved it to a new contract
overnight....24 hours a day on 3 shifts!

I want a Yanmar 36hp outboard motor on a nice, long aluminum boat with a
center console and wide beam for the river, myself. A Yanmar outboard
costs about the same as a Mercedes-Benz E-class from an MB
dealer...dammit.

They cost so much Yanmar dealers in the states don't have them!