I had a Merc mechanic friend help me winterize my motors. He winterized the motor a different way than I am used to doing.

This was the process:
Start the motor on the hose till warm and thermostat opened up. He had a large bucket of 4 gal of -100 degree antifreeze with a hose attached. Removed fresh water hose and hooked up bucket w/ AF. Started motor, when bucket was 1/2 empty, he fogged motor until AF bucket was empty. Then shut off motor.

Is this motor properly protected for cold temps? Not questioning the fogging, but the AF method and quantity of AF. The block was full of fresh water, then we ran AF through. Is 4 gal enough to flush out a block that was full of water???

That is the same thing I have done for the last 4 years, and I live in Wisconsin. I have never drained anything. I also have never "fogged" the engines. If you had a car that you didn't drive in the winter would you drain the block or fog the engine? I have heard all the ways others have winterized their boats, I have winterized the last 3 boats the same way that your mechanic did yours and never had any problems. I guess until I prove myself that the way I do it is wrong I will continue my 10 minute and $40.00 worth of antifreeze winterization.

I do mine the same way!

I do mine pretty much the same way except that I don't run thermostats. I drain the block and then start it up with a 5 gallon container full of anti-freeze. After about 3.5 gallons are in it, it starts coming out of the exhaust and I fog the chit out of it and shut her down. I use the -50 cherry juice so I would think that if you are using the -100, it's OK that it's diluted...You should be fine.

I have a low water pickup on my Bravo I... Just by looking at the water attachment that slips over the nose cone to hook to a hose, I'd say that if I put a hose in a bucket of antifreeze, it'd either never create suction in order to suck it into the motor or if I gravity fed, I'd have it all over the place.

I've never tried it though... have any of you done this with a low water pickup?

Thanks

You need to be very careful doing this with any kind of drive pickup. It tends to aerate the fluid going in and you sometimes will not get a good amount of antifreeze circulated in the block. Even if it shows up in the exhaust it may not have displaced the water in the block properly. It is always a good idea to have direct flush fittings on the boat anyway and this is where they really help. If you are feeding the pump directly you have a nice solid flow of antifreeze and 4 gallons is plenty. If it is going in with a bunch of air you may have some pockets of fresh left in there. One way to help that is to drain the block, then run the antifreeze in like Craig does.

If I wanted to put in a Tee in, to attach a hose for flushing, where do these normally get installed, on the input side of the pump? I'd imagine you'd have to do that to prevent it from burning up the impeller for the lack of water! What kind of valve would you put there? Is there something at the hardware store I can pick up?

Once you put this valve in, do you just attach a hose to a bucket of antifreeze and let it suck it into the motor?

Seems like keeping antifreeze or the red stuff would be better than being empty... less corrosion??

I do a very similar process on mine but we try to drain the water out of the block first so the propylene is not diluted too much. We also use some type of scope??? to check the protection (strength) of the solution coming out of the exhaust. No guessing you know for sure how many degrees below zero your good for.

Since I cant get at my plugs much less my water drains, I have thick wall hose connected to each drain that ends up at the transom top. I just attach my oil change pump to each hose in turn and suck the engines dry. Then run in the antifreeze as above. I was also worried about pockets of unprotected water in the block.

We winterize two or three dozen boats a year using the same process. Except that we run five gallons instead of four. The only problem that we have had is a heater froze one year. Now, if there is a heater in the system we will drain it manually by blowing air thru it after we have winterized everything else.

Steve H