Winterizing with Pail, Hose and muffs

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carver 2557

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I hear different people talking about winterizing with a pail of antifreeze hooked up to muffs.
Has anyone ever done it this way?, and if so do you remove the thermostat b4 starting the engine?.
 
Yes. A merc with a bravo. No I did not remove the the Tstat. Flush it with a hose at idle to warm things up. Then fill the pail (I used a large galvanized square tub) with a bilge pump and spare battery. I also had to rig up a shower curtain to collect the exhaust water that came out near the transom.
Add in AF until the tester says you are good to go since water in the block will dilute it. You may want to drain the block after the flush to reduce the dilution.
 
Bilge pump??. Do you have to pump from the pail. or is a gravity feed good enough?..
 
I put the pail under the drive because it took a while to circulate the AF. If I was going to pour it into a raw water cooled engine I would pull the hoses from the tstat and pour it down all of the hoses. Having been there, I opted to use the approach above.
 
My son used to have a boat with a RWC I-O. I helped him winterize it. Took the T-Stat out, hooked up a short piece of hose to ear muffs and stuck a funnel in the other end. Turned on engine, poured in a couple of gallons of AF and it was done. No worries about whether or not the T-Stat was open.

If the engine had been FWC, I would have done the same except not taking out the T-stat.
 
Unless you remove the 'stat, or drain the block first, this is risky because if the stat does not open all the way (and it likely may not on a cool fall day winterizing) you can wind up with exhaust manifolds full of AF and engine with diluted AF/Water.
When I winterize the raw water cooled I/O I manually drain the engine and manifolds after fogging the engine. Then I back fill the engine through the upper end of the big hose on the front (the one that goes from the thermo housing to the front circulating water pump) till it comes out the neck of the thermo housing. Then re-connect that hose. Next fill the exhaust manifolds through the feed hoses till full. Lastly I drain the water out of the raw water intake hose by pointing it down in the bilge and fill the hose till AF runs out the water intakes.

Sucking AF in through the impeller works OK on closed cooled engines but on raw water cooled engines its a bad idea. Easier, safer and uses less AF to do it the way I described above.
 
If you do it that, drain some antifreeze wate mix out of one of the block drains and test it. You will likely find out you don't have near the freeze protection you want or need. You have a better chance if you pull the thermostat. Best solution is to drain your block and backfill. you'll sleep better all winter.
 
If you idle the boat (with the prop off of course) with a bilge pump pushing AF into the muffs as I outlined, you will not have any need to pull the Tstat or hoses. If opt to flush and not drain before using the AF you will wind up using more AF to get the tester to indicate success.
The only down side to this approach is that the exhaust ports up near the transom will spill coolant all over the place unless you rig a curtain into the pan. I used a 2'x2'x1' deep galvanized pan and a shower curtain and it worked like a champ.
If you used a small plastic swimming pool a few feet in diameter you might not need the shower curtain. Seen the pros do it this way a gang of times before I went this route.
As long as you test the AF in the pool after it cools down a bit you should be good to go. If it does not pass the test drain out coolant add more and repeat. Once the block is warm it all goes very quickly.
 
Well here's what I did. Removed tstat, drained manifolds and block. Drilled a hole in the bottom of a 3 gallon pail and installed a garden hose fitting. Attached the other end to the muffs. Used a 5 foot section of hose. Placed pail on swim platform. Filled pail with antifreeze and started engine. Shut it off when pail was empty.
 
If indeed you hit all of the drain plugs you are probably good to go. If I was going to run the engine and push it out, I would have collected some to test it. If you had puddles of AF after it ran and they looked good, well, that probably says all you need to know.
Me, I always tested what came out of the exhaust. Even when we Winterized the 6-71TIs on Freedom, I always collected exhaust coolant and tested it to ensure it was sufficient.
 
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