Had to winterize her

[nipper]

Sad day on Saturday. I had to go up to the lake where I keep my V20 cuddy on a lift to retrieve her and winterize her. It was a balmy 44 degrees, overcast skies and spitting rain from time to time. In any event, I was able to get her off the lift and on the trailer, all by my lonesome, without even getting the soles of my boots wet. Spent most of the day on Sunday winterizing her. Glad gas was only $2.33 at the local Sam's club, so my year end fill (about 1/2 a tank) only cost about $80. Could have been a lot worse when gas was $4.00 plus.

With my new mercruiser 4.3 V6, the manual did not say anything about filling the block with antifreeze--just drain the block through the 3 drain plugs and leave them out for the winter. Nevertheless, I took what I thought to be the safe route and drained the block for about 1/2 hour, cranked it over for a second, put the plugs back in, then filled the block with antifreeze (about 3 gallons went in). Before that I fogged and lubed. I should be good to go for the winter. I gotta move somewhere warmer. It sucks not being able to use the V for 6 months out of the year.

[macojoe]

Yep I will be doing mine soon also, but we are headed Cod fishing next week!

It was 27* here the other night, and you complaining about 44!

[nipper]

Do you get worried when it gets down to below freezing that your engine will freeze? Oh, wait a minute. You have an outboard, and you really do not have any freezing worries with those, do you?

Yup, the Seventh Wave is coming out this weekend as well. I hate it feels like I just put her in.

[spareparts]

there is a drain on each side of the block(2 total), one on the J-hose on the front of the engine, if you have a fuel injected engine, there will be another drain on the fuel cooler on the port side of the engine underneath teh motor mount. If not injected, the power steering cooler is mounted there and it has a drain, but I prefer to remove th coolant hose ratehr than screw with the drain. There is also one drain on each manifold( some just pull the hose off the manifold bottom). I personally put the plugs back in the engine rather than leave them out, they tend to be harder to put back in later. On older engines there is also one drain plug on each riser. Hope you got them all

[nipper]

I got them all. There are 3 on my engine. One each on the port side and starboard side block, and one out front on the starboard side (I guess that comes out of what you refer to as the J hose). I then pulled all 6 coolant hoses and filled those suckers up with antifreeze until it started coming out the back. Then I put in some more just to be safe. I always used to run the muffs hooked up to a 5 gallon plastic jug with a 50/50 antifreeze mix. I did not have good luck with that one year, and my block froze up (hence my new motor), so now I go by the Mercruiser, with the addition of the antifreeze.