Cooling issue - water flow, need some guidance
 

Pulled my Baja 232, 502 MAG MPI, out of winter storage and experiencing some cooling inconsistencies.
Its a long idle out the channel to the lake, 10mins. Water temp took a while to come up, but did to normal operating temps. Got up on plane and ripped around, running great. Thought a may have caught a couple temperature drops on the gauge. Idled down after a good hard run, and as I was just dropping off plane I saw the temp gauge drop to 100 from 170ish and bounce back up.. weird. chalked this up to cold lake temps..

Also, had lots of soot on transom.. chalking this up to fogging oil etc, but thought I'd mention it.

Temp thing didn't sit right with me so started checking. Had minimal water flow out pipes at idle, at 2000 rpm water (and steam) came out. Pulled hose off thermostat housing and flow was poor at idle and so-so revving it up.
Pulled impeller, no missing fins, one of the little bridges over the holes was broken, and fins showed wear on that spot - so I'll replace housing and impeller and recheck.

Lowered boat into lake and checked flow from drive hose, flowed decent. checked power steering cooler for blockage, none.

So..I hope this is all just the impeller / housing, but anything else that could cause flow issue from the drive to the pump. Anything in the drive that could have frozen /cracked in the winter (I did fill everything with antifreeze - but again, maybe it didn't get pushed all the way into drive

Thoughts?

Funny as it seems, all three coolers (if you have cool fuel cooler) can have an accumulation of pump impeller, seaweed, and other debris in them. My power steering cooler as almost clogged, and my oil cooler (last inline just before thermostat) had a good bit of crud in it too. Surprising how it gets thru the others. Also some have had problems with corrosion blocking flow at the fitting going thru the transom plate.

I would have thought the impeller also. Possible ground? Otherwise bad stat or temp sensor? Your running circulating pump I assume. Almost seems like your t-stat is acting up

if the raw water sea pump is bad and you have partial clogging in any of the coolers the water flow can be bad enough to cause steam pockets in the block.that is never a good thing.

Flow seemed to be poor before the thermostat housing, indicating a flow issue from drive to thermostat housing. I'll have a new impeller and housing in place by the weekend and hope it solves it, and go from there

Changed the impeller and housing, and have great flow now. Either it was really bad or all the hose removals and flushing dislodged something that I never did see.

New prob.. seprlentine belt is squeaking at idle. Not a squeal but a hampster on a running wheel kind of squeak. If I rev it up it will go away and return at idle. It was raining and I got soaked, the belt was soaked and fell into the bilge a bunch of times (slightly oily).
Also.. from above the water pump pulley seems to wobble. No play in it, just wobbles while all other pulleys are not.

I can't see how the water pump could have been mounted other then lining the bolts up.. seemed simple enough so don't think it's an mounting alignment. Maybe it was always that way. Maybe not.

:mad:Idler pulley bearing may be going bad?

Rapid cooling is also indicative of a thermostat hanging open. Check status of thermostat for operation and see if a piece of debris got hung up in it holding it open.