Flushing adapter

[DanielC]

This is the flushing adapter I made.

The yellow hose goes to the water supply. The hose at the top of the picture goes to a bucket. The gray 90 degree nipple goes to the boat.

[DanielC]

This is the flushing adapter hooked up to the boat.

[DanielC]

To use the adapter, get a hose long enough to go from a water faucet to the adapter in the boat. Hook them up to each other. Turn on the water supply at the faucet, and turn on the hose valve on the adapter, to bleed the air out of the adapter. Turn off the hose valve on the adapter. Hook the adapter up to your boat, the picture is a direct drive boat. Put the short hose in the five gallon bucket, and turn the bucket valve on. Slowly turn on the hose valve, the bucket should start filling with water. When some water gets into the bucket, start the boat. With the boat at idle, the bucket will slowly fill or drain, depending on your boat. At my house, a GT-40 engine, with a good raw water pump, will very slowly fill the bucket at idle, and off idle the bucket will start to drain. If the bucket is full, it will drain the bucket in less than a minute, with the water supply shut off.
I can use the adapter in three ways. As explained above, just to run the boat.
I can also run the boat with the bucket filled with anti freeze and the hose supply shut off, to suck antifreeze into the engine.
I can stop the boat engine, and turn off the bucket valve, and open the supply valve. This will pressurize the suction side of the raw water pump, and you can look for leaks, that would draw air into the cooling system.

[DanielC]

I thought I would bring this up to the top, Winterization seem to be on the minds of many Nautique owners in the northern hemisphere.

[DanielC]

This would be the October 2009 bump to the top.

[coulseyd]

I know a lot of you guys use the 5 gallon bucket trick, is there any reason I can't just attach a hose right after the raw water strainer and flush away (made a similar adapter, but just a bushing and MPT to hose adapter)? I would assume that any excess pressure would just make it's way out the exhaust. Do you see any issues with doing this?

[DanielC]

I do not think that would hurt the engine, but it is not normal operation, I would not feel comfortable doing it on a regular basis. Yes, I know I sometimes use my adapter to pressurize the engine water system, but I do not make a practice of it.
I only use the pressure if I am trying to find an air leak on the suction side of the raw water pump. Most of the time.

[WakeSlayer]

Most house pressure is about 40psi. That is not going to hurt anything. particularly when the motor is running. It is taking some of the pressure with it. When I do hook up to a hose, I start the boat just before the hose, and shut the hose if just before the boat. Soem guys also put a hose on the water intake, put that in the bucket, and then also put a hose from the house into the bucket. Then there is no pressure, yet a constant supply of water. Technically, that is probably a tad safer if you have really high water pressure, but I really do not feel that the direct hose connection is an issue.

[DanielC]

It is time to bump this to the top of the stack of topics.