*I am not a mechanic, but I have a reasonable amount of mechanical knowledge*

Looks like we cracked the head on a stock 35hp Vanguard. Haven't taken it apart yet, but we have oil leaking out of the bottom of the engine and looks like it threw a rod.
The engine is on an 8 year old mud buddy. The frame is in good condition, it has the upgraded Mercury trim unit, and the wiring harness is in good shape.

We were planing on upgrading the motor anyway, and are currently looking at the Mudbudy HDR, Gatortail, and Boss motors (leaning towards the HDR). The new motor will go on the boat, so the blown up motor will probably be sold.

So what are my options?

This is what I see:
1- Sell the motor as is with a blown up engine. (Does anyone want to take a stab at what its worth???) I suppose I could pull the engine and sell the frame, but I don't see any reason to do that.
2- Buy a new 35hp vanguard and slap it on. I think i can get a stock 35hp for a little over $2,000. But would it be worth putting 2K into an older frame? What would it be worth at that point?
3- Buy a juiced up vanguard from someone like Bayou Rentals, and slap it on the old frame
4- Buy parts and fix up the motor. I don't personally have internal engine repair experience, but I have a couple of friends who are mechanics that would help me out if I got in a bind. The project interests me, and it would be fun to play with....but I might be in over my head.

So what do y'all think? Any thoughts or comments are appreciated.

Zach

Man that all depends on what you want to spend. I would guess the frame may fetch you $1000. But that might even be high. If you're satisfied with the hyper frame (no reverse) throw a new block on it and roll.

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If the block is still sound, new parts and the work isn't very difficult. And that frame would sell for more than 1k, easy.

Tear that one down and see what's wrong. If it really is just a cracked head, that's a relatively inexpensive fix. If it threw a rod or you have a cracked block or something, you're gonna need to look into it a little more to see what repairs are necessary. I would look into fixing that one before just giving up. No better time to learn than right now. They're pretty simple to work on, just start tearing it down...

If you decide to part it out, let me know might have a need for some extra parts.

Good advice from cb5331. Tear it apart and identify all the broken stuff, then make the decision on what to do. It'll be a good learning experience for you. Worse case scenario would be, I think from what you have said would be to purchase a new long block. Don't know how much they are but the last short block I bought was around $1100.
If for some reason you choose not to repair/rebuild the motor and want to get rid of the frame, let me know. I'm very interested in it.


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Definitely follow the advise given and do a complete teardown and inspection. It would be a great opportunity to send off all rotating parts to have them balanced.... providing all is well.

These motors get so hot that cracked heads appear to be pretty common. I wonder if installing a larger oil cooler would help any?

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