Rhythm and Blues

Evening fellas,
since getting my boat back to Maine I zincd up the intakes, blocks, headers, drives, tie bar, tabs, etc, and ran it for the 1st time in the salt h20 last week. I didnt have any Saltaway on hand so I just went to the lake by me put in and flushed for enough time it took me to leisurely drink a couple beers, 20 minutes or so. I ran it up to temp, t-stats opened, all good.
So, now I'm thinkin if I dont want to go to the lake and flush with Saltaway insted how is everybody doing this on larger cube engines w strainers? My garden hose doesnt put out enough volume to be able to put a few revs on to warm the engines enough to open the 140 degree thermostats; rendering the saltaway slightly useless...

seafordguy

I dicked with it for half a summer and finally threw the stats in the trash. I sleep better now.

Rhythm and Blues

My motors had restrictors in them when I got it, old owners were running in warmer waters. I talked to the engine builder and explained where I was and what he thought I should do to get some temp in the engines and he suggested running 140 degree drilled stats. Maybe I should just experiment with a slightly smaller orifice in another restrictor.. I dunno... Thanks.

Kefurr

The salt-away mixer has three positions (off, rinse, mix) run it on rinse (fresh water) until its warmed up and stats are open then turn the mixer to "mix" to flush with the salt-away.

Rhythm and Blues

Thanks, I'm familiar with its operation, the question revolved more around thermostats..

Wildman_grafix

Miy setup is a bit different as I have a dock so I have the saltaway mixers hard plumbed in. My strainers are tied togather so each motor can pull off them.

What I normally do is hook two 3/4" hoses up, (the big red/orange type) and turn on. Start just one engine but don't run thought the saltwaway. They restrict flow. Let the motor run 15mins at idle the stats are open at that point. I then switch to the saltaway on both hoses while the motor is running and let it flush.

Repeat for other motor. I allso flush drives. While all this is going on I am unloading boat and washing it and maybe drinking a beer or three!

Rhythm and Blues

Nice, sounds like a tried and true system. I'm in the middle of a cooling enigma anyway; last night I did a bunch of reading (that can be dangerous) I may pull the stats in an attempt to run a smaller restrictor..

Kefurr

got it!
Mine is single engine stored in dri-rack. I run a thermostat and boat is fresh water flushed every time it's pulled out of the water, I flush with salt-away 1-2 times a month. When I changed exhaust manifolds last winter (3-4 years in salt) to put stainless marine on the stock ones looked as clean as a fresh water boat

Rhythm and Blues

Thats good to know. I read a lot of conjecture about saltaway; I'd like to think its a good product and some people just have bad luck w motors..

seafordguy

Good luck with it - I tried 3 different restrictors, 160 and 140 stats drilled in various configurations and never was happy or comfortable that I was getting a sufficient flush.

Pretty sure my stats were fluttering due to the cold/hot water mix, and I was running the boat at 2500 revs on the lift to get heat in it (thank god my neighbors on the transom end of the boat like me). I really did finally feel like getting a thorough flush made me happier than trying to get more water temp in the motor - especially when I have decent oil temps on longer runs.....