He's not the first guy to have a boat engine haunt him into irrational thinking. I've been touched myself by that.

The head gasket became the last solution(the engine problems have been a roller coaster of ups and downs). The only problem I saw(and I may have been the only one to say it,...), was, there was no conclusive evidence the last one had any problems(even Roger admitted that but optimism took over I think).

But here's a question for you Ron. His crankcase breather on the side of the engine. Is that something that has been changed to a closed system on yours? Either way, how much oil is normal to come out of that breather(it's above the starter) in a strong engine? How much oil is likely to be exiting the breather in an engine with lower compression?

The smart thing is a compression test, but what fun would that be?