SO37 Volvo Penta MD2040 oil leakage

[madimuc]

Hello everyone,

My new 2004 Sun Odyssey 37 'Legende' has installed a Volvo Penta MD2040 motor. The motor is leaking oil in the oil sump gasket area. So an experienced mechanic wants to deinstall the whole engine to replace the gasket. Unfortunately, this approach appears to be costly for this kind of maintenance.

Has anyone replaced this gasket without removing the whole motor?

Remark: MD2040 is the 40HP engine which is bigger than the usual one on the SO37 with 30HP.

I appreciate your support.

Marc

[Don Reaves]

I just emailed this question to the mechanic who worked on my engine this past summer. He and his helper spent about 2 hours removing the engine and another 2 hours putting it back in once the repairs were complete. It does seem like a lot of extra work just to replace a part that would cost a few dollars at most.

I can tell you that once the engine is out, it's a really good time to replace the engine mounts. I was able to do this myself, saving quite a bit on labor costs.

[Don Reaves]

I got a reply from the mechanic who worked on my engine last summer. His reply was terse, "Yes most likely."

On my 2004 SO 35 with the standard 35HP Yanmar, there is so little room between the oil pan and the engine bed that you can't even add piping to get the oil out. I seriously doubt that you could remove the oil pan to replace the gasket without lifting the engine at least several inches. Doing that would require disconnecting almost everything required to remove the engine, so it wouldn't save much labor.

[ianqv]

Hi All,

Just to share my experience in replacing the Oil pan without removing the engine.
To be clear, I have a 2001 S/0 37 with a Volvo Penta 2040.
It is easy to remove the oil pan / sump without removing the engine.
The worst bit is scraping off the old gasket from the cylinder block.
Apart from that, no issues.

I have been chatting with Marc, but just wanted to share this with everyone here as well.

Cheers

Ian

[Don Reaves]

I'm glad to hear that it's possible with the SO37 and MD2040. Perhaps it is even possible with my boat/engine combination, though I will likely not find out, having changed out all the gaskets recently with the engine out for other repairs.

[Charlie-Bravo]

Hi Marc.
Having fiddled with boat engines a bit, I can see that for a professional engineer to take on the task, engine removal would give him the opportunity to spend less time replacing the gasket , and would give the job a greater chance of guaranteed success , and at a cost that can be defined ,  quite how long he would need to be upside down in the engine bay trying to squeeze into the restricted space available to replace it in situ would be difficult to estimate, and from his/ her point of view could result in him/ her being a busy fool, so no surprise on the recommendation of engine removal. .....  all be it at your cost.

As Ian seems to have achieved the task , and therefore showing it to be possible, (I read he even said 'easy' ) , the question is , do you fancy having a go at it? 

If you can twiddle a spanner, and don't mind contortionist positions I would have a go, gasket replacement won't be rocket science, and it would save quite a bill, even if it took you days!
it might even save you enough to buy the new engine mounts and more.

But if not a spanner twiddler...... I guess you have to pay the bill.

Hope it all turns out well for you, parts4engines does reasonably priced engine mounts as Don will testify, and they may be ripe for replacement by now if not already done.

CB