That explains it. That is a BIG boat!

Thanks for all the feedback.

I Think this is going to be my plan:

1. Soak Cylinders in Seafoam over the course of 3-5 days.
2. Run Ring Free Shock Treatment with 2 oz Ring Free/gallon fuel (total 6 gals)
3. Change Oil and Filter
4. Change Spark Plugs

Last time I changed my own oil I used Yamalube Fully Synthetic 5W/30. My oil is extremely low right now. Anybody see any issues topping off my reservoir with a cheaper marine oil simply to run the 6 gallon ring free shock treatment since I will change the oil immediately after?

I don’t want to cause damage trying to save $100, but hate to just throw money away as well.

If you ask on certain forums they will tell you that once you do the above and get her back on the water you need to "blow the soot" out of her!

A lot of Yamaha people say the SHO's need to be ran hard (ie High RPM's) to keep it from burning or making oil which is whole 'nother problem.

Hope you get it figured out and it isn't an expensive fix.

Well I hate searching for symptoms seeing others with same symptoms and never see the results.

So tried the soaking/cleaning with sea foam and ringfree slug treatments and it didn’t work.

Brought it to mechanic and had them run their combustion chamber cleaner. For a while it seemed as though it was working. Only smoked when I got it above 5500 rpms. Mechanic said to keep running it at 4500 with the ring free additive and maybe it would free up whatever was sticking, but they didn’t think it was anything major.

Well next tournament never got it above 4500 rpms and it started smoking heavily mid-day.

Took it to a 3rd mechanic. Said he put fresh oil and after 30 mins had water in oil, water on plugs, it was spewing oil out the top and burning way too much oil and smoking.

Said it would likely be cheaper to replace power head than to diagnose everything and repair.
Need a new power head.

Did the mechanic ever do a leak down to see if its power head are if have a bad head.

Leak down and compression checks were good.