Went to wally world and bought the cheapo pink stuff and ran it through... no sense taking the chance for $10m.. lol

For future reference there is no reason to buy "the pink stuff"

Once you drain the water you are done..... If you are running said pink stuff into the engine via muffs you are begging for a cracked block.... Draining the water in mandatory.

really? that crap says its good to -50? i should open all drain plugs and call it a day?i I guess ill do it in the morning? When you winterize, don't you run anti freeze through it? I did it wrong last year?? good thing she still runs

No water, no freeze. The anti-freeze won't freeze, problem is when you run it in, you're still mixxing it with water, dilluting it down, and raising the freeze point of it back up. Just open the drains and empty it out, then there is nothing to freeze.

Yup open the drains and poke a peice of wire in each one to clear any rust scale (good flow of water draining)
Then pull the lower hose from the water pump n dump it....
Last it's not a bad idea to pull a hose off the power steering cooler...

Finally make sure to store the outdrive in the down position so the exhaust cavity can't hold water

Sounds like a lot but only takes 15-20 minutes once you figure it out.

EDIT: the above assumes raw water cooling.... If you have closed cooling then you only drain the manifolds/risers, raw water side of the heat exchanger, and the power steering cooler

Gotcha.. no first method is good.. no heat exchange..

smoke has it right, if you just run it on the muffs, most of it bypasses the thermostat and runs out the exhuast, best way is to drain it, then run or pour the pink stuff in it. The only reason we use the pink stuff is on salt water boats to keep the rust down

Interesting that you can just drain the block on a small Mercruiser.

All of the big boats at the boat yard with full inboards always run anti freeze through the raw water side. No different what power.. Mercruiser,Marine Power,Crusader, Cummins,Cat,Detroit,Yanmar all done with anti freeze.

If I trusted draining the block and exchangers I could save a bunch of $$$. I run 9+ gallons thru each engine. Maybe it's done because of the protective qualities in the antifreeze?