13 replies to this topic

[gmt]

I want some input, can I be missing something?  This is my first year winterizing this boat (2007 Speedster 215hp), I bought it used this summer.

When using the flush connector with a garden hose at the rear of the boat, does that water from the garden hose circulate throught the exhaust system AND the intercooler system?  Meaning, if you were doing a fresh water flush to wash out salt water, I am assuming that the flush adapter allows water to circulate through both the exhaust system AND through the intercooler.  (I don't boat in salt water, I am just using that as a circulation example)

If that is the case, could you use the flush adapter to circulate antifreeze through both the exhaust system and the intercooler and prevent the need to disconnect hoses and drop antifreeze into areas with a funnel.

I have use this technique on my inboard ski boat for years. My inboard has a fresh water flush hose that I use to winterize the exhaust system.  I made a special plastic bucket with a garden hose hydrant in it's bottom, so I can shut the flow on and off to a garden hose attached to it.  I fill the bucket (3 gallon) with 50% anti freeze mixture, hang it form the ceiling of the boat house and start the engine and the mixture get sucked in and comes out of the exhaust.  It sucks down 3 gallons in about 20 seconds, but I can see that I am getting full circulation.  I repeat the procedure on "the other side" of the thermostat to get the antifreeze into the engine block.  I have to do this because the boat never has a chance to come up to operating temperature to open the thermostat.  This has worked great for the past 10 year with this boat.

So could this work with my 2007 215hp Speedster?  Just suck up a mixture of antifreeze through the flush adapter?  Would antifreeze get everywhere it needs to get to, exhaust and intercooler?  Then the only other thing I would do is spray some lubrication down the spark plug holes.  I probably would not try to fog down the engine.

Thanks, I am interested in your input.
Gordon

[seadoofanatic]

To my knowledge this will not work especially since your boat has the closed loop cooling system.  I don't believe the water that you are flushing with will ever make it into the intercooler.  The shop manual has a detailed explanation of how to properly winterize your boat and there is also some pointers for Rotax engines listed on this site here, http://seadoosportbo...nterizing_Rotax.

[Pete Z]

My neighbour is a tech at a Sea-doo/Ski-Doo dealership and he winterized my boat last week-end. It had already been run up with Stabil and oil-changed so he did the pump grease first then hooked up a short hose to the flushing attachment. Using compressed air he blew through the flush fitting until there was no more water coming out of the pump or exhaust outlet. He then started the boat and revved it a few times up to 4000-5000 rpm to blow water out of the exhaust. Then he hit it again with the air compressor although basically no water came out that time. He tells me that is all that is required to get rid of the water from the engine intercooler etc. However I was a little sceptical so at my suggestion (for my peace of mind) we did the same sort of thing you are talking about and poured straight antifreeze into the flush fitting with a longer hose and funnel held higher than the boat. He then blew that through it again with the compressed and we got antifreeze coming out of the pump. After that he lubed the throttle body, pulled the fuel rail and sprayed a lot of fogging oil into each cylinder through the injector ports. Then we turned the engine over again for about 5 seconds with the throttle body held wide open to distribute the storage oil. Now apparently I am more than good to go. I do plan on pulling the intercooler and draining any condensate out of it and at the same time I might pull a sea-water hose and just check for evidence of green, or at least lack of water. If anyone feels that this is incorrect, I would would like to know as they are calling for -5 celcius overnight pretty soon.

[gmt]

Pete Z,

Very interesting story.  You are explaining exactly what thought would happen.  I also like the compressed air idea.  I probably will try that.

I see no reason why this would not work and get antifreeze everwhere in the exhaust system and the intercooler, but I wanted other people's ideas.  Thanks for posting.

Maybe we will get some other opinions.

Gordon

[arboldt]

Please let us know next summer how this worked. It sounds like it might simplify things a lot. I had posted in the "How-to" forum how I did the intercooler (http://seadoosportbo...ng-intercooler/). With placement of the in and out nipples, I'm concerned the compressed air might not remove all the water -- the manuals said to use full strength antifreeze because, with the water remaining in the intercooler and exhaust manifold, it would then be the right strength. That is, if you put in a normal 50% mix, it would be diluted enough to not be effective.

Are you in an area that gets really hard winters (i.e. -20 F or colder)?

[gmt]

I use my boat in fresh water in Northern Alabma, but I have considered trailering the boat down to the Gulf Coast and using it in the bays and the intercoastal waterway.  If I did that, I know it is recommended to flush out the salt water with fresh water by using the rear flush connector.  I am assumming that this would get fresh water into both the exhaust system and the intercooler system because they both use external water supply.

So, I called the Gulf Shores, Alabama SeaDoo boat dealer and talked to the service department and asked them what they recommended for flushing after salt water use.  Some of it is a long story, but basically it confirmed what I thought, the flush connector will push water through both the exhaust system and the intercooler system.  This is how you would remove salt water.

So the next logical thought is, why can't you use this flush system as an access point to allow anti-freeze to get into the exhaust system and the intercooler system?  I do not see a reason why it would not be a very simple way to winterize with antifreeze.

My question is, why is it even necessary to run the engine?  Does the flush port even have any connection to the pumping system that draws up external water to cool when boating?  Why can I just use gravity flow?

Thanks for the comments.  Any other thoughts?

Gordon

[Pete Z]

FWIW I got a second opinion from a buddy that is a very good marine mechanic and winterizes lot's of SCIC Sea-Doo's. He says that what I did is in fact more than sufficient. BTW it's not uncommon for our nightime lows to hit -35 to -45C in January & February. I guess I'll find out for sure come spring, but I'm leaving it as is and I'm not too worried about it.

[gmt]

Pete,

I did some further research also, looking at the service manual for the cooling system I can see exactly the flow of extenal water through the system.  There is no question that the flush adapter gives access to everywhere that water is located.  The question is:  is gravity inflow enough to get everywhere through the "capillary" effect?  I really like the idea of the compressed air.

I also saw that it is the spinning of the impeller area at the jet pump that causes pressure to force water into the system.  It is not a water pump.  Therefore, I see no reason to have to run the engine during the flushing procedure since the jet pump is not submerged and there is no way for it to generate pressure because there is no water around if you are "out of the water."

I am doing mine this weekend.  I'll see how I do?

[Pete Z]

I ran mine when putting the antifreeze through it to get the fuel stabilizer up to the injectors. My buddy uses a 12v bilge pump in a bucket of a/f to get it distributed through the system, but he couldn't see any reason why gravity feed followed by compressed air wouldn't work too. However I still might build a 'winterizing bucket' with a pump like his for next year.

[gmt]

OK,
I winterized with antifreeze through the flush port as planned.  I hooked a hose with a quick connect to the flush adapter and then had a funnel on the other end of the hose elevated to the level of the tower.  Without the engine running I poured full strength antifreeze into the funnel.  After approximately 1/2 gallon of antifreeze was poured an interesting thing happened.  Old river water was draining out from under the boat, out of the grate.  It was as if the antifreeze pour was pushing the old water out of the system.  In fact, that WAS what was occurring because after approximately 3/4 of the gallon was poured, antifreeze began leaking from the bottom of the boat, through the grate.

If things worked as planned, the leaking antifreeze is coming OUT OF the intake hose at the the jet pump/venturi area.  The antifreeze is flowing by gravity and a capillary effect in a retrograde (opposite direction) fashion through the cooling system.

I needed to test things.  The first thing I did was take off the hose on the top of the exhaust pipe, the exhaust bleed hose.  I saw antifreeze in here.  I did a test, putting more antifreeze in the funnel and it comes directly out of this hose.  This hose is normally a heated water outflow hose.  So the Flush Port is really just this hose.

The second test I did was to take off the hose at the top of the intercooler.  This hose normally would take water out of the intercooler and bring it to the engine exhaust manifold.  I did a test, putting more antifreeze in the funnel and it came up out of this hose.  That meant that the antifreeze flow was retograde through the engine exhaust manifold.

So after these two tests I felt comfortable that antifreeze went through the engine and the intercooler.  I assume that antifreeze would have dripped through the exhaust pipe water jacket into the muffler area also, but I have no way to test that.

In the future I will trust this technique and not spend the time taking off the hoses.  As you know the intercooler hoses are not easy to get to.  This will be quite an easy technique.

I did not blow compressed air through at any time as Pete described.  Although I think that is an interesting idea I did not do it.  I am not sure of the design of the inside of the intercooler and I wanted to keep the system full of fluids and not have any air fluid interfaces that might cause a vapor lock effect.

I have attached some pictures.

Thank you to those who posted to the original topic.

Attached Files

•  standard water flow direction.jpg   119.06K   56 downloads
•  funnel and hose.jpg   108.81K   60 downloads
•  exhaust bleed hose labeled.jpg   191.17K   59 downloads
•  top intercooler hose normal.jpg   110.73K   61 downloads
•  top intercooler hose antifreeze.jpg   126.7K   64 downloads
•  retrograde anti-freeze flow copy.jpg   121.72K   54 downloads

[gmt]

One final point I wanted to make about flushing so people will be cautious.  In my research for this procedure I learned some things.

There is some information around, including posts on this forum, that talk about flushing the engine for 5 minutes.  This is dangerous because the Drive Line Seal in these boats has no cooling if the boat is out of the water.

The dealer in south Alabama told me that they tell their customers NOT to flush the exhaust system even though they use the baots in salt water.  That's right, counter to what we all think they say not to.  Because, they have seen TOO MANY people BURN UP the drive line seal from doing the flushing procedure for too long of a time.  They said they have never seen a failure of internal parts do to salt water.  They do recommend keeping the external exposed parts in the engine compartment rinsed off and coated with lubricant to preven corrosion of the external exposed parts.

My experiment revealed that the entire system holds maybe a gallon and a half of fluid.  If you were going to flush that with a garden hose you could get that much water through the system in less than a minute.  The 2007 Speedster service manual says never run the engine out of the water for flshing procedures for more than 2 minutes because of the drive line seal.

So just as a caution note to everyone, never run the engine out of the water for greater than 2 minutes even when trying to flush the exhaust, trying to run gas stabilizer through the injectors, whatever, it's a bad idea.

It terms of gas stabilzer, I realize that you have to get it into the injectors.  So I always put my gas stabilzer in the tank the last time I think I am going to use the boat on the water.  This way I know the stabilizer is going to circulate and I don't have to worry about running the engine out of the water later.  It would be difficult to calculate (in my opinion) how long you have to run the engine at idle out of the water to clear the old gas from the fuel system, prior to the new gas, including the stabilizer, getting sucked out of the tank and making it to the injectors.

Just some final thoughts, thanks,
Gordon

[Kevin Leclair]

Gordon,

Very helpful, thanks for posting this wealth of information.

[arboldt]

OK, it's now been a year since most of these posts. I was hoping for a report early this summer on how these alternate methods worked i.e. did anyone using these methods have a problem this spring / summer from it?

At the risk of oversimplifying, there are 3 methods suggested for winterizing the intercooler and exhaust manifold:
1) Follow the SeaDoo manual and remove hoses from the intercooler and put x ounces of antifreeze in the intercooler and x ounces in the exhaust manifold. This is the method I followed last year, generating several unrepeatable phrases while I attempted to get at the hoses and clamps.
2) Use compressed air through the flush fitting to blow water out of the system.
3) Use a fitting and hose on the flush fitting to either pump or gravity-feed antifreeze back through the system. Estimates are this would take approx 1.5 gallons of antifreeze. (Question - would RV antifreeze work ok? I'm wondering as it's more environment-friendly than normal automotive antifreeze. When I put my boat in the water next year, whatever's in the system gets flushed right into the lake, and I'm sure ethylene glycol is not good for water quality.)

Now that it's time to winterize again, can we get an update on how these methods worked, if you'd recommend them, and any modifications to last year's description?

Thanks much for helping us all.

[gmt]

arboldt,

I used my method last year and it worked fine, had a good winterization.  I will use the same method this year.
Regarding the anti-freeze, I used something that was labeled low toxicity, but I did specifically see that it was for RV's.

I would think that it does not matter what you use and long as it has enough low temp rating for the region you live in.

Gordon