Boat is 28 Sports Express with twin late model Crusader 5.7, VelvetDrive 1:1 trans. A couple weeks ago on the way home from a short run, the port tach ran up high and power dropped. Pulled throttles to idle, shifted to neutral. Shifted Port to forward with some gas, nothing. Shut down engine and limped home on starboard. At the dock, trans fluid sprayed around, dipstick laying loose, almost no fluid in it. Brown water under the engine.
A few days later, sucked out all fluid and refilled it. All was okay till last Sunday, out with a prospective buyer, and it did it again but the dipstick stayed in. No water under engine, but a few days later there was some. Vacuumed it up and put paper towels underneath, no wet spots. Sucked out the trans and got 1-1/4 quarts of brown fluid. (should be 2 quarts of red fluid.)
So, it seems to me the likely culprit is the trans cooler leaking water into the transmission fluid, and trans fluid leaking out to the exhaust stream until there’s not enough fluid to run the transmission. Make sense?
That’s what I’m afraid of. It’s possible that the first time this happened a few weeks ago, I didn’t shut the engine down quick enough and some damage happened.