Thanks to the boating gurus + manifold question

[lekmedm]

You guys are great! I was winterizing my boat yesterday, and while draining the block I remembered reading here that I should poke around all the drains to make sure there isn't any garbage plugging up anything. Well, wouldn't you know it, there certainly was plenty holding back the water! Thanks to this forum I knew enough to free up those passages!

So I was wondering... There are caps on the back ends of both exhaust manifolds that I took off to drain the water. I poked around with a small screwdriver and some gritty garbage came out. I tried sticking my little finger in there just to check out the passage, and it seemed to get kind of narrow. So I wonder how much stuff could be in there clogging everything up. Is this something that should (can) be cleaned out? There was a bunch of stuff at the engine block as well.

 

[f_inscreenname]

Re: Thanks to the boating gurus + manifold question

Gravity is every boats enemy. Every thing dropped falls in the bilge. Everything that enters the motor goes to the lowest point. To clean out right you need to take everything apart and do it that way. You can try flushing with the drains out. But the best way to keep it clean is not suck up a bunch of crap in the first place. Just remember for most folks, if the drive hit?s the mud so does the water intake unless it?s in the bottom of the boat like mine is.