Decided to give the boat some exercise this morning.....idled in the slip for 8-10 mins while I booted up the electronics and undid the lines. Got outside the marina by maybe 200 yards when my engine alarm goes off....scan the gauges real quick and see that the temp is pegged at 250 (having never even gotten above 1500 rpm). I throttled back down to idle, put it in reverse, and gave it a little gas, figuring I might have picked up a plastic bag or seaweed or something and I could blow it off with the propwash... no change - alarm still shrieking. Idled back to the dock, and hooked up garden hose to the fresh water flush valve. Temp came down within 30 seconds. Stopped the hose to revert back to raw water cooling, and temp stayed in normal range (175 on dash guage, 158 on MercMonitor) for a good 15 minutes. Did fresh water flush again for 5 mins, shut it down, and called it a day.
The fact that the flush brought the temp back down leads me to believe there was a blockage at the outdrive pickup.....correct??? This season the boat is in a new location...what turns out to be a very shallow and muddy canal.. So shallow that I have to raise the drive half way to keep it out of the mud at low tide. Today I had high tide (MAYBE 5 ft of water), but I was still kicking up a lot of silt as I did a 3-point turn to get out of the slip. Could I have gotten mud into the cooling system and THAT caused me to overheat? This is the first time I have ever overheated, and it's frustrating as hell. BTW, new impeller in the seawater pump this spring. Any thoughts out there??? Thanks!
The fact that the flush brought the temp back down leads me to believe there was a blockage at the outdrive pickup.....correct??? This season the boat is in a new location...what turns out to be a very shallow and muddy canal.. So shallow that I have to raise the drive half way to keep it out of the mud at low tide. Today I had high tide (MAYBE 5 ft of water), but I was still kicking up a lot of silt as I did a 3-point turn to get out of the slip. Could I have gotten mud into the cooling system and THAT caused me to overheat? This is the first time I have ever overheated, and it's frustrating as hell. BTW, new impeller in the seawater pump this spring. Any thoughts out there??? Thanks!
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