Did I ruin my engine??!!!

S

superior91

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Joined
Sep 24, 2008
RO Number
30835
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2
I think I did something really stupid. I decided to winterize my Sea Ray 185, with the Mercury 4.3L engine. I pulled all 5 drain plugs, and let the water drain. I put the plugs back in. In my act of stupidity I placed the muffs on the intake of the sterndrive thinking that it would just suck the antifreeze into the engine. I let the engine run for a couple minutes, before shutting it off.

After I realized this was the wrong thing to do, I hooked the garden hose back up to the muffs, and ran water through the system. The engine never got above 175degrees. I was thinking that I had to let the thermostat open.

This has been bothering me all night,thinking about what I may have screwed up! The owners manual was not really of any help in telling what hose to disconnect to suck the antifreeze in. And when I talked to the mechanic eariler in the day, he just said to pull the drain plugs, and then let the antifreeze get sucked into the system.

Thanks for letting me know what I broke.
 
You probably are fine, the only thing that could have gotten damaged in that brief time was the impeller in the drive that pulls up water from the water intakes. I don't like the suck the AF up the drive method for 2 reasons, one because AF is more dense than water it can be harder to suck it up and 2 if the thermostat is not open you can wind up with an engine block full of a weak AF mix that can freeze and THAT can ruin the engine. I drain everthing and then I disconnect the hoses at the thermo housing and fill the engine, mainfolds and raw water intake hose that way. I don't have a Mer so I can't be more specific. If you are in a freshwater region you probably don't even need AF, unless you want it for anti corrosion reasons. If you are in MN I'd use the best stuff the -100, the -60 slushes up at too high a temp for me. I've been doing it this way for years and it's easy, you're not likely to burn an impeller because it wouldn't suck up the AF, and you probably use less AF this way. If the engine ran at 175 on the water hose and that's what it ran at before it's probably fine, but the true test is when it's in the water and has to suck the cooling water in with out the water pressure of the hose to help it.
 
A couple of minutes with a dry block wont hurt anything but the impeller as long as the engine was COLD at start up AND you just let it idle. Now if this was 4 or 5 minutes or longer, this could be another story. The temp gauge will not show the actual temperature without water in the system.

Ken
 
oil and air provide a lot of the cooling anyway so you most likely didnt hurt anything in the engine.
 
Thanks for the responses. I think I'll probably take it out on the lake again this week to make sure everything runs okay still
:( !! I figured the engine probably would be okay, since it's basically the same engine that's in a automobile, and you can run an engine for a short period without coolant, but I should have been clearer in my orignial post----I was most worried about the impeller, since that's what will burn out. My boat is in a heated garage anyway, so I think I'll just skip the AF step, and just drain the water out, just in case I can't afford heat this winter!!!

Thanks again for the help and advice. I'm new to owning a boat, so I'm still making some mistakes, but learning really fast!! Hopefully not at too much expense.
 
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