When winterizing, don't forget to....

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blouderback

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Don't forget to use a stiff wire to poke into the drain holes after removing the little blue plastic thingies.
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I finally got around to fogging the engine and draining the block last night.
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After I took out all the blue plug thingies, I watched what I THOUGHT was all the water drain out.
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Just for the heck of it,
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I poked around with a piece of #14 gauge wire in each of the 5 drains, and low and behold, one of them produce another gallon of water!
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P.S. These little ballon thingies are neato!
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[:-ashamed]
 
Not doing that one step has cost many boaters their engine blocks.

Good post Bob.
 
Depending on where you're at 1 gallon of water may not be a problem. But there is no sense in spending the time to winterize it and not take the extra minute or two to do it right. Glad you caught it.
 
The first time I drained and winterized my engines myself, I did exactly that and poked around, but didn't get much. I then decided to blow some compressed air up through the drains and lo and behold, a lot more water came out. Now I do both (poke with wire and blow with air) just to be sure. Probably overkill, but compressed air is cheaper than a new block!
 
I guess this only applies to raw water cooled engines.
 
Craig,

I'm not so sure about that. Isn't there some kind of heat exchanger that brings in raw water from the outside? I would think that needs to be drained, too.
 
quote:
Originally posted by blouderback

Craig,

I'm not so sure about that. Isn't there some kind of heat exchanger that brings in raw water from the outside? I would think that needs to be drained, too.

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Bob,

There is a raw water side to fresh water cooled engines. The antifreeze you winterize with takes care of that problem.
 
The double check here is that if your filling your block with AF down a hose (hopefully you are doing this, not just draining), then you should know how much AF fits in your block and if you do not get the needed amount in, then there is a problem somewhere. My block (1987 5.7L) takes just over 2 gallons of AF, so if I get that in the block I am pretty sure there were no pockets of water.
 
Why do you need to drain the block, cant you just use antifreeze?
 
walterv - I assume you comment refers to the method some use to fill the block with AF by sucking AF into the entire cooling system through the outdrive.

This has a couple of shortfalls:

1) You must be positive your thermostat is fully open when you introduce the AF
2) Its a mixing process so you probably will not get full strength AF into the block.
3) You use a lot more AF
4) Almost impossible to time stalling of the engine with fogging oil and sucking in the last bit of AF.
5) Takes more time
6) You need water via garden hose
7) You have to run the engine
 
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