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Running engine on the hard

debonAir

Member III
This Spring I am hoping to replace the timing cover gasket and crank seal on my 5424 which is leaking oil someplace in the front. To make sure its fixed I'd like to run the engine for about 30 minutes (on the hard). The usual winterizing technique of sucking water/antifreeze out of a bucket means topping off the bucket constantly for that long and I want to be able to look for leaks under/around the engine instead.

Is there some kind of device/adapter I can stick in the thru-hull from the outside that will provide water at the right rate/pressure? I know it's not proper to provide tap-water pressure to the raw intake side. The only thought I had was to to clamp a toilet-tank fill valve inside a homer-bucket and adapt its fill hose to a garden hose, and connect another loose hose from bucket to the raw intake hose pulled off the thru-hull with a barb fitting.

Any ideas appreciated.

Also, another project is replacing the head. It seems Sean Engle here had posted how to do this on his 35-3 but I can't seem to find that article? It was in the "owner's projects" area which I can't seem to find now. Help here appreciated as well. Thanks!
 

Afrakes

Sustaining Member
Water hose

Can you run a water hose to the boat and keep topping off the bucket like that? I just set the rate of flow out of the water hose to match the engine usage and that technique works just fine. Keep it simple.
 
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tenders

Innocent Bystander
Bucket in sink - garden hose in bucket - engine intake extension in bucket - set water to run slightly faster than engine uses it. Attach the two hoses securely into the bucket.

Once the bucket fills, as long as the sink drain thruhull is dripping, it’s because the bucket is overflowing and you know the engine has access to water.

However...make sure the intake pump establishes and maintains its prime. Those pumps are designed to push water, not lift or pull it, and if the bucket is too high the engine can overheat.
 

debonAir

Member III
oh,, hmm. that's way to simple :) I was thinking (or rather not thinking perhaps) of not wanting to "waste" water over the bucket, but really most of its getting blown out the exhaust anyway in this case so a dozen more gallons is nothing to worry about. Now I just need to remember to open the sink thru and find a small enough bucket to fit the sink. Wondering if the cockpit floor might work as well as the sink as its not that much higher, and has drains, and fits my big bucket, and I can run the intake hose though the laz, prefilled with water so not hard to prime. Thanks for the idea!.

Does anyone put a "T" and a valve in the raw water intake to avoid taking the hose off the thru hull? Its not really hard to do, but I worry that wear and tear on the hose going on/off might cause cracking or something and cause a leak below the waterline.
 
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GrandpaSteve

Sustaining Member
oh,, hmm. that's way to simple :) I was thinking (or rather not thinking perhaps) of not wanting to "waste" water over the bucket, but really most of its getting blown out the exhaust anyway in this case so a dozen more gallons is nothing to worry about. Now I just need to remember to open the sink thru and find a small enough bucket to fit the sink. Wondering if the cockpit floor might work as well as the sink as its not that much higher, and has drains, and fits my big bucket, and I can run the intake hose though the laz, prefilled with water so not hard to prime. Thanks for the idea!.

Does anyone put a "T" and a valve in the raw water intake to avoid taking the hose off the thru hull? Its not really hard to do, but I worry that wear and tear on the hose going on/off might cause cracking or something and cause a leak below the waterline.

Yes, they do. I usually take the hose off the pump intake though, and use a different length of hose to reach the bucket.
 

Afrakes

Sustaining Member
Tee

oh,, hmm. that's way to simple :) I was thinking (or rather not thinking perhaps) of not wanting to "waste" water over the bucket, but really most of its getting blown out the exhaust anyway in this case so a dozen more gallons is nothing to worry about. Now I just need to remember to open the sink thru and find a small enough bucket to fit the sink. Wondering if the cockpit floor might work as well as the sink as its not that much higher, and has drains, and fits my big bucket, and I can run the intake hose though the laz, prefilled with water so not hard to prime. Thanks for the idea!.

Does anyone put a "T" and a valve in the raw water intake to avoid taking the hose off the thru hull? Its not really hard to do, but I worry that wear and tear on the hose going on/off might cause cracking or something and cause a leak below the waterline.

I have a tee with a shutoff valve attached between the raw water pump and the intake sea cock. I use this not only to run the engine on the hard but also for winterizing. I have a short video of the setup in operation. You PM me your private email address and I'll send it to you.
 

nquigley

Sustaining Member
Does anyone put a "T" and a valve in the raw water intake to avoid taking the hose off the thru hull? Its not really hard to do, but I worry that wear and tear on the hose going on/off might cause cracking or something and cause a leak below the waterline.
I have a T-valve between the seacock and the raw water strainer. When I winterize with RV antifreeze, I put a bucket in the cockpit against the companionway bulkhead, and have a long enough hose to reach from the bottom of bucket to the T (It coils up enough for stowing so that it can remain attached to the T permanently). I fill the bucket with a little more antifreeze than I know I'll need, open the T and start the engine - then I turn it off when pink water comes out with the exhaust. With the bucket above the water pump, it makes it easy for the pump to pull water to it. Since you have big cockpit drains, you would not worry about overflowing your bucket with garden hose water if the bucket is in the cockpit, compared to overflowing the sink.

++1 on clamping the hose(s) to the bucket - they will definitely leap out if you let them.
 
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Glyn Judson

Moderator
Moderator
Flushing from a bucket.

I have an onboard fresh water management system that taps into our tankage that I use for flushing the heat exchanger to keep it from sitting in salt water in the slip or on a mooring elsewhere while the engine is at rest. The point of mentioning this is that after installing my system, it was important for me to know how much water was being pumped through the engine while at idle as I do to flush it out of salt water. And it turns out that my Yanmar 3GMF consumes three gallons of water in 20 seconds at idle. If your pump is anywhere near there, you might use that as a basis of reference. I might be tempted to keep the bubbling from the supply garden hose to a minimum in order to avoid the chance of developing an air lock in the system as the water pup hose draws water from the bucket. Been there, done that under other circumstances. Regards, Glyn Judson, E31 hull #55, Marina del Rey CA
 

debonAir

Member III
Thanks for all the ideas!! I think for now I'm going to go with pulling the hose off the raw water pump and putting the temporary suction hose there. Its easier access for on/off and easier to see if I damage the hose and check for leaks after. My raw water pump seems to be just about at the water-line. I'm afraid that putting a T fitting in the intake hose would add more possible failure points near the water line and that worries me more than pulling the regular hose once a year.
 

Kenneth K

1985 32-3, Puget Sound
Blogs Author
All good ideas. I especially like the one about the bucket in the galley sink, hose running continuously and the overflow running out through the sink drain.

You might also try installing a Globe brand run-dry impeller before you do this, in case you get an air lock as some have mentioned. Globe says it will run at least 15 min dry without coming apart. I believe them (don't ask me how I know....).

These engines don't build much heat at idle with no load. It is likely the thermostat won't even open for a long time, so the heat exchanger won't even be doing anything unless you do an extended run. The biggest immediate threat is just burning up the impeller by running it dry.
 

Alan Gomes

Sustaining Partner
All good ideas. I especially like the one about the bucket in the galley sink, hose running continuously and the overflow running out through the sink drain.

You might also try installing a Globe brand run-dry impeller before you do this, in case you get an air lock as some have mentioned. Globe says it will run at least 15 min dry without coming apart. I believe them (don't ask me how I know....).

These engines don't build much heat at idle with no load. It is likely the thermostat won't even open for a long time, so the heat exchanger won't even be doing anything unless you do an extended run. The biggest immediate threat is just burning up the impeller by running it dry.
While I've never used one myself, the Globe impellers have a reputation for having the hubs become detached and spinning without actually turning the impeller vanes.
 

tenders

Innocent Bystander
Thanks for all the ideas!! I think for now I'm going to go with pulling the hose off the raw water pump and putting the temporary suction hose there. Its easier access for on/off and easier to see if I damage the hose and check for leaks after. My raw water pump seems to be just about at the water-line. I'm afraid that putting a T fitting in the intake hose would add more possible failure points near the water line and that worries me more than pulling the regular hose once a year.

I have a bronze tee coming off my throughhull for this general purpose. So the flow goes: hull, seacock, tee path 1 to engine, tee path 2 to square bronze plug most of the time. When winterizing, I screw a barbed nylon fitting in place of the plug, close the throughhull, and run a hose from the temporary fitting to a modified antifreeze cap that also has a barbed nylon fitting screwed into it. With that cap on a new jug of antifreeze, I run the engine, and slurp the antifreeze out of the inverted jug after spiking a ventilation hole into the bottom of the jug. Another set of hands sprays fogging oil into the carb while this is going down - it takes about 30 seconds.

If you don’t close the throughhull, the antifreeze goes straight out of the boat, unfettered by the tortuous path through the engine. You can probably imagine how I determined this.
 

debonAir

Member III
To close the loop here, I finally implemented ideas here. In the end, I decided I had already spent so much effort getting water OUT of the bilge I didn't want to put more in so I went with the bucket in the cockpit idea.

One more idea I heard at the marine store was running the hose into the top of the raw water strainer. It is basically just a little bucket, and already connected to the raw water pump. I looked at mine, and took the top off the clean the strainer, but decided it was too small a buffer to play the hose vs raw water pump rate game with a small bucket.

Having just replaced the whole front of the engine there was enough going on I didn't want to just hold on to and monitor hoses while also checking for oil or coolant leaks so I decided a good way to clamp hoses to a buck were hose fittings.

I got a squarish-shaped bucket, two 1/2" threaded to 3/4 hose-thread adapters and some conduit washers and nuts at home depot and a 5/8 hose and valve from tractor supply. I dremeled out some 1/2 inch holes in the side of the bucket and used conduit washers and conduit nuts to stick the hardware in the side of the bucket. Cut the male end of the cheap hose off and also cut a small 2-foot section of hose and used two female hose repair dohickies to make a female-female hose and put it all together.

The water supply garden hose screws to the valve which screws to the bucket, and the remaining cheap hose female end screws to the bucket, and the other raw end I hose-clamped to the intake of the raw water pump.

I filled the bucket, left the supply valve opened to get a little overflow, then started the motor. It all seemed to work OK, but even turning off the garden hose valve didn't change the bucket level so I got worried. I put my finger over the output hose fitting on the inside of the bucket and there was a decent suction. It turned out that the raw water pump takes WAY LESS water than you'd think. The exhaust sprayed water just like it does at sea, and the whole kit worked for an hour with just a small trickle of water overflowing the bucket into the cockpit.

And now I have a handy run the engine on land whenever, and winterize the easy way bucket.

Thanks for all the suggestions

bucket2.jpg
 
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