Stray Hose on Universal 5432

[mrojec]

My wife and I are helping get a friend's 1984 (or 5) E35-3 ready for launch after 3 years on a cradle by Lake Champlain. We're both fairly new at this stuff, but we did manage to get the engine started yesterday! I'm planning on changing the oil today through the dipstick tube. I noticed a plugged hose on the port side of the engine that connects to a fitting near where the starter is mounted. Does anyone know what this could be? I was hoping it was an oil drain tube. I didn't find anything in the manual or parts list that looks like it.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Mark

 

[Christian Williams]

That does look like an oil drain hose attached beneath the engine (I don't have one, so others may be more certain). If you uncap it, oil should come out.

When changing the oil, make sure to warm it up first, which may take 20 minutes of idling.

After three years of inattention I'd also be thinking about changing the coolant.

 

[Kenneth K]

Hard to tell from your pictures which hose you are talking about.

An oil drain hose, if installed, comes off of the oil pan at the bottom of the engine. Usually no valve involved, just a screwed-in plug at the free end of the hose.

If it's up higher near the starter, it may be a coolant drain hose. These usually have a petcock valve installed between the block and the hose.

 

[Kenneth K]

I think I get it now....

Looks like a tee fitting has been added onto the oil pressure port on the block.



The screw-in fitting at one end of the tee (with a blue wire attached) should be your oil pressure sender.

The other side of the tee feeds your stray hose--likely put there to power an add-on oil pressure gauge or low pressure alarm. This hose is too elevated to use as an oil drain. It would leave most of the oil sitting down in the pan. Oil pump-out through the dipstick tube usually works fine.

If not intending to use this hose, I would cap it off at that large brass coupling. A leak in this hose will run your engine dry of oil. But this setup can be useful--I did something similar to add an oil pressure gauge to my engine panel. Details here: https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/ubs/adding-an-oil-pressure-manifold-and-gauge.763/

 

[mrojec]

Thank you very much for the information and advice! I will definitely cap that tee off. The hose that’s attached looks pretty jury rigged.

 

[mrojec]

Concerning the "stray hose" on the engine, we found the instruction sheet for it on the boat yesterday. An image of it is attached below. It turns out that it's an attachment to drain the oil from the engine....while it's running! Interesting concept but we're still going to plug it and go with the dipstick method to remove the oil.