Sea Foam Scared me pretty good

I have an old engine that was purchased in 1978. A couple of years ago I had the carburetor worked on for the first time and got the engine running good.

I read about using Sea-Foam in the engine and gas and thought that was a good idea. I heard nothing but good stuff about sea-foam. It's very good for cleaning up older motors especially two cycles.

I sprayed some sea foam inside the spark plug holes and put the spark plugs back in the engine. I also put a few oz of sea foam in my 6 gallon portable gas tank along with some new gas and new oil. Mixture was 50:1 and then the sea foam.

I don't use the motor much so the boat sits around a lot. I noticed some dark oily stuff leaking out from the joint where the lower unit connects to the bottom of the exhaust housing. At first I thought that I was leaking lower end gear grease but after checking the two plugs they were found to be ok and sealing tight. I called around to the repair shops and explained what was going on. I went to Iboats.com and did some searching there.

I think I figured out what's going on and wanted to put this on the forum for other's to read. Just in case it happens to you.

Actually there is nothing wrong with my engine. The sea foam is doing it's job. It's de-carboning the inside of the exhaust housing and the oil that I see leaking out of the lower unit and exhaust housing joints is just exhaust particles that are being dissolved by the sea foam. The sea foam that I sprayed inside the cylinders dissolved a lot of old built up carbon and it's dripping down the inside of the exhaust housing and leaking out at this joint. I found that there is no gasket at this joint so that's why it's leaking out of this joint onto the bottom of the outside of my engine. So there is nothing to worry about other than getting some small amounts of oily carbon on my garage floor.

So is you have an old engine and run sea foam in the gas don't get alarmed if you see some oily exhaust. It's just the sea foam doing it's job.

I called the shop and explained the problem to one of the mechanics and he thought I said the top of the exhaust housing. I said the bottom of the housing. Big difference. I didn't tell him about the sea foam. He looked up what it would cost to take off the entire engine head and he said it would cost me over $400. I almost fell over dead. After talking to him a while longer on the phone we got it figured out and then he said it would cost $125 to take the lower unit of and run some pressure tests. If they found a leak or something that would have cost more. After I went to Iboats and did some research I called the mechanic back and he thinks it could be the sea foam doing it's job. I sure am glad it's just the Sea Foam working and not an expensive repair bill.

I am ready to go fishing again now that I know my engine is ok.

Regards,

Moose1am

Moose, are you a member at iboats? I'm an iboater and been there since 2004, very informative site.

I joined Iboats yesterday so that I could post a question. I found what I was looking for without posting however. I just did a search for "oily exhaust" and found plenty of good information in the Johnson/Evinrude engine forum.

I had heard that it was a very good site to get information regarding boats and engine repairs. It's a great web site.