i found water in my oil on my second time out this season today. Im wondering if its normal for this to happen if you dont use a water pressure regulator kit on the cooling system? If I get one of these kits to get the pressure down, do you think the water in oil problem will go away? It didnt do this on the garden hose on the test stand.
What kind of water temps are you running?
One of the first things I do after building a motor is pressure test the water jackets and exhaust manifolds with 30 psi of air. I have put 50 psi or more without any problems if everything is right. If it drops more than a few pounds in 30 minutes. Then I start looking.
There are more informed people than I out here but one of things that I have seen on a lot of boats is low temps or large swings in temps between idle and wfo. What happens is the cylinders are constantly contracting and expanding. This is hard on pistons and the cylinders do to clearance changes. This is extremely hard for the rings to seal when the cylinders are growing and shrinking. There was some research done on temps that I read years ago. When motor temps start to drop below 180 degrees, motor wear starts to climb do to several factors including oil temps.
Water temps effect the oil temps big time. When the motor is running cool, so is the oil. If there is condinsation in the oil, it won't boil off and just a slight amount of water in the oil increases wear drastically.
Would you get in a car and press the throttle to the floor right after you started it? I know there are exceptions when drag racing and such as some motors run better real cool but for a long lasting motor, you want to get the engine warm and keep the temps constant.
I have read a couple of articles from some jet boat websights about water creeping in the motor do to the high pressures of water coming out of the pump and to buy there regulator. I am sure that you will see some extremes in pump pressure do to high horsepower motor but typical motors don't make that kind of pressure.
What the water regulator does it make it a lot easier to control the temps and is required with a thermostat.