Grog

I wish I knew this a year ago when the motor was out. I knew that was a weak area but I didn't know something could be done about it. I paid lots of money to the clowns that built the motor to know this kind of stuff. Given my experience with them, I guess I'm not surprised.
At this point, I am praying it was the intake manifold gasket or a leaky riser gasket and not a head or block problem.

Cig - The intake and blower are back on and I didn't pressure test the block. I figured that it was a waste of time since I knew it leaked. I did however eliminate the exhaust manifolds by individually pressure checking them. Both tested good.

Grog

Just the amount of water I had told me that this wasn't condensation. I have had condensation probems in the past though. It's just another problem I need to eventually work out.
I am going to bypass the oil cooler for the first few test runs to make sure my oil temps get up a bit and to eliminate the oil cooler as a source of the leak. I run an oil temp gauge so I can keep an eye on it.

cig1988

If you still have the headers off, pressure test the block. I had a Merlin head with a pin hole (defective casting). Would be alot easier to do this now. Besides cost of gaskets.

RBeyer

I went through a similar situation only ProCharged. Mine was a head gasket problem use Cometic gaskets and stud the motor if its not. Also check water pressure, you may want to put a relief valve on.

Grog

FINALLY got everything back together. I did one oil change after a 5 minute idle in the driveway with a can of engine sludge remover and six quarts of cheap oil. I bypassed my oil cooler because I wanted to get my oil temps up quickly. Then off to the lake for a real test....

I ran for a solid hour seeing oil temps to 240 or so. Water pressure around 22#. Pulled the dipstick several times and all looks good!!!!! I didn't even see any residual sludge from the old oil so it looks like I did a good job cleaning things up while it was apart.

Today I need to drain out the cheap oil and toss that silly cheap Fram oil filter. Put in some good stuff in and I should be good to go!

CONCLUSIONS:
It was either an exhaust manifold riser or a leak at the intake manifold water port. I suspect that a crack in the iron somewhere or a head gasket failure would have shown it's ugly head right away yesterday. It could still be the oil cooler since it was bypassed yesterday. I may just replace the stock merc cooler with a nice polished aluminum one and a t-stat.

IN ANY CASE, THANKS TO THE MEMBERS OF THIS FORUM THAT CHIMED IN WITH ADVICE!!!!!!

GOODT

glad to hear you got it

US1 Fountain

That's great. My money is on the intake gasket not sealing. Did you torque it differently this time?

Grog

I don't know how it was torqued last time but this is how I torqued it down:

25 ft-lb, then 30 ft-lb, then 35 ft-lb. Each time it took me about six times through the torque sequence until the first bolt in the sequence was at the correct torque.
I hope exposure to temps does not relax things too much. You have to remove the blower to access four of the intake bolts.....so I can't easily check them.

US1 Fountain

That is exactly how I had to do my blower intake. Just a simple 1-2-3 and I might as well have hooked the water line to the oil fill. The person I ended up selling the blower and intake had the same problem when he installed it on his motor and thought the intake was warped. (I checked it at work and it was under .005 runout overall) After informing him to do the roundy round sequence, he was good to go.

Grog

BTW...

If it was just an exhaust manifold riser leak all along, I still don't regret tearing further into the intake. You would not believe (or maybe you would) the amount of yellow snot that was hanging from the underside of my intake manifold. It would have taken forever to clean all of that crud out of there by simply changing the oil.
It also gave me some peace of mind knowing that a thorough torquing operation was performed on the intake bolts.

I still have some condensation issues (which I think are standard issue for a marine blower setup) that I have had from day one to work out. Back to the search tool.....keyword "condensation".