i am looking for some help in stopping weeds from getting sucked up in the water pick up on my boat. i have low water pick ups water enters from the front of the snout on the lower unit to a belt driven water pump we recently severely over heated on of the motors weeds in lower unit and in water pump any help to stop this will a sea strainer help and is there a way to back flush pick ups thanks Randy and Mary

Yep, strainers will help. You sould be able to remove the inlet hose from the water pump and hook a garden hose to it ti back flush your inlet hose. If it was that starved for water, you had better look at your impellars also.

Water pressure gauges and watch them. Adding a strainer will help keep things out of the pump. If you plugged the pickup then your best check is water pressure. Just my .02.

They are never the same after being cooked well done.

Oh yea ditch the low water pickups.

I had the same problem and found that mostly everything passes through sea pump and gets caught in oil cooler. I pulled the inlet hose to oil cooler and dug out some weeds and debris and some old broken apart impeller from being replaced in early spring. Engine has ran nice and cool ever since. It's very simple to get to oil cooler on the 496 anyway. Hope this helps.