I have a
Yanmar 2GM20, had a push rod that fell into the pan. Had no clue what to do, as we had only had the
boat about 3 months, and we were dealing with dead
batteries while vacationing at
Catalina Island. Got towed to Oceanside by
Boat US (GREAT SERVICE!). One advantage of their
insurance no cost for me for what would have been a $2500 tow.
In any case the
mechanic in Oceanside found the problem and got the push rod reinstalled, changed the oil and sent us on our way the next day.
Not sure how common a problem this is, we had about 300 hours on the engine at the time.
By the way, when this happened, we had just gotten a jump start from Boat US on a
mooring in
Avalon Bay. Planning to
motor around the island to charge the
batteries, got to the mouth of the bay, the engine made a "Clank Clank"
noise and then died. Boat US tried to jump start us again, no go, towed back to our
mooring got a
mechanic who spent several hours (with a new battery) trying to get the engine to start finally we tried the decompression levers and found that wth one of the cylinders open the engine would almost run. That was when he took off the valve cover and saw that the push rod was missing.
We have been sailing/motoring with this same engine for another 3 years, have about 500 hours on the motor now. NO problems.