While I had the ps cooler off changing belts this spring I found some big chunks. In that, courtesy of the previous owner .The impeller looked fine but I replaced it. The process was so arduous working by braille, I didn't look farther. My bad.

Anyone tried a gas powered leaf blower to clean out the oil cooler? I used my electric one and blew pieces everywhere, I could see light through clearly afterword though.

I just use a hose and backflush, just ran into a issue on friends boat, was killing 1 exhaust hose due to lack of water flow, found a bunch of gravel caught in the cooler screen...

In my experience that's not sufficient, I had to rod out the cooler to clear some of the debris. Now pulling the hoses on both sides of the oil cooler is part of winterizing.

I've thought about this before but decided it wasn't worth the cost to add a sea strainer. Good operating practice really reduces impeller failure.

I wish it was easy removal - have you cleaned the oil cooler on a 575sci? Damn thing is WAY back there and WAY low - very difficult to get to due to the blower and fuel injection set up. That's the first cooler in the flow and it's positioned in the worst possible location to service (thanks Merc! )

The end caps are also positioned just inside the y pipe too - so you have to remove the cooler to really get in there and clean it.

I came to the conclusion while working on mine that it couldn't be any more work in the long run than pulling the engine doing all the necessary things and reinstalling.

Hey BUP, can you clear your PMs? I have a question for you.

You can guys can email

[email protected]

Sorry not everyone knows my personal email as everyone knows how to PM up here and I keep my PM box full for a reason..

basically 99% of everyone is great up here but there is some who have drove me nuts with PM's about 6 times a day trying to get me to fix there boat anyways not to go into a long story about it. It became a hassle. Sorry it is full all the time.

Put a title on the email so I know who its from and open it.

I have plenty of impellers thru out the years melted / wedged / stuck in the oil cooler - and you can not black flush every single piece out everytime- yes sometimes you can and sometimes you get lucky..

I totally Understand access can be a problem and or the huge issue but that goes for anything on a lot of marine engines.

How is easy is it to pull starters, change impellers, change the 90 amp fuse at the starter or how about block drains on twin apps, most are very very difficult all the up to impossible anyways - Back flushing is not 100 % everytime effective for removing all stuck broken impeller pieces. Just saying. that's it.

I totally agree with Cole and have been there at least 1000 times.

Good idea but doubt a post impeller screen will work- The freshwater is going to have small "debri" that needs to pass through the system and would get caught in the screen.