[C320-list] Perkins Perama M30 Overheating

[Mark Cole]

My wife and I motored our boat over to a local boat yard for a haul-out yesterday.  About 20 minutes into the 1 hour trip, I noticed the water temp gauge was up to 220° and there was grey smoke (steam?) coming from the exhaust.  I shut the engine down and checked the raw water strainer.  There was a little gunk in the strainer, but not much.  Everything else looked OK, so I started the engine up again; there was cooling water coming out of the exhaust and water temp was back to normal.  We motored the rest of the way to the haul-out and the temp gauge stayed at 175° the whole way.  I went back to the boat this morning to start on the long list of stuff to do.  When I checked the bilge, there was maybe a gallon of water with antifreeze in the bilge.  I opened the heat exchanger on the engine, thinking it would be empty, but it was full.  When I dipped my finger in, it didn’t smell like antifreeze…  Is it possible that the heat exchanger burst when the water temperature went up?  Does that mean I could now have salt water in the engine block?  Anybody dealt with this before?

Mark
Fiddler’s Green, #8
Tacoma, Washington