Bored tonight as I'm falling asleep and was just thinking about flushing.

Anyone ever done any salinity testing at intervals while they were flushing. Thinking about filling up a cup every 30 seconds or so and checking salinity at each interval.

I have closed cooling and by the time I fire the motors up, jump down and run to the back of the boat the water already tastes fresh so I'm curious if my 10 minutes of flushing on each motors is a waste of time.

Good point about testing it!

I dont think the amount of salt deposits (not just trapped salt water) left in an engine will be detectable. The first thirty seconds get the bulk salt water out the rest I imagine is a tiny amount diluted into a huge volume of flushing water

please post your results it will be interesting to see what you find

I would imagine it has more to do with PH than the actual salt as it gets closer to being hose water. There are a bunch of companies that sell flush. I can tell you from personal experience if you dont boat for 4 months even if you flushed "most" salt water out, it still causes problems... Matter of fact, just because its fresh water doesnt mean there arent problems. Some fresh water lakes have really high calciium, which is actually worse than salt water. I learned this once the water dissolved and left both salt and calcium deposits.

just last year for the first time in 15 years of boating i watched an old guy at the marina sample the water (cup his hands and take a sip) while flushing. I was thinking what the — is this guy doing? So because I’m a moron I tried it while flushing and was surprised that you could taste the saltiness for longer then I thought until it cleared out. About 4 minutes before it tasted like normal hose water, 0 scientific data, I’m sure water running through hoses and an iron block, cooper coolers and everything else isn’t the best for you to ingest but we can add that to the rest of the list of things I shouldn’t do.

I've been doing that for years, just spit it out. Of course I can't multiply 4x4 anymore and my left ear fell off...

you’re ahead of me, I could never multiply 4x4 I ran out of fingers and didn’t have enough toes to start with.

Flush with about a pint of Dawn Dish soap in the hose before you turn it on.


Run your hand under the exhaust water. When you can’t taste soap anymore, you are done.

I use dawn as well, sometimes with salt away. But I do flush with fresh for 12-15 min first then turn the dawn on. One thing I always try to do is shut the motors off before the large container runs out so there is always the dawn in the motor.

Don't know if it helps but my E-tops are 20 years old, look good and the boat has over 400 hours just in salt. I even ran a set of thermostats for 10 years! LOL