Outboard "peeing"

[crazycarl]

well, the wife's back has finely healed enough to let us take miss adventures out for the 1st time this year.

i placed the '10 tohatsu 4hp 4 stroke in a garbage can of water and started it up.

it ran a little rough, but what i really noticed is, the "pee" hole wasn't always discharging water.  when i rotated the throttle either up or down, water would shoot out, but then every so often, it would change to a projected mist until i twisted the throttle again. 

i tried my old trick of blowing air into the hole to free up any stickiness, but it still happened.

is this the beginning of the end for the impeller?

carl

[Salty19]

Could be as simply as a spider's nest in the hole or lake gunk buildup. Happened to me last year.

Take some weed wacker line and feed it up the hole--see if that cleans out any gunk.  If not, yep, inspect that impeller.

[marc]

In the past I had a problem with mineral buildup within the cooling system. To solve that problem I'd run the engine in a bucket of vinegar. I could see a definite improvement to the discharge stream.

[Salty19]

That's a GREAT idea marc!

[skip1930]

Do four strokes run a thermostat?
Could be holding the water back to better carry away engine heat before discharging and collecting a fresh charge of cooling water.

skip.

[crazycarl]

i took the plate off the intake and blew air through the system and all is well.


carl

[HideAway]

West Marine has a salt removal product that attaches to a garden hose to flush the engine.  I ve had good success with it but cannot at this moment remember the name.  It can be used anywhere to remove salt build up.  On on 8 hp Evinrude the pee nozzle was reduced by a fitting - I removed the fitting, ok I lost the darn thing, and stuck the hose through the hole - no more clogging problems.

For years we had HideAway in a wet slip and always tipped the motor back out of the water after each use. To be fair I didn't flush it every time because it was difficult to do so.  After it developed heating problems not fixed by impeller replacement I removed an inspection plate and found the innards completely blocked by salt & some sand.  An hour or so later I had it cleaned out - the channel that allows the peeing was full of debris which resulted in the symptoms you mention.

Tipping the motor back caused the salt water to accumulate and be cooked by the hot engine.    I thought I wrote a blog about it with photos but lost it --its probably with my mind somewhere .   Matt     

[atrometer]

Salt Away