Just a lover of boating, writing about what he loves. Stop by for interesting articles on everything from buying a boat, boating adventures and engine maintenance.
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One of my favorite views when cruising on The Bear's Den II. Just have to make sure I don't look this way for too long!
Maintenance on you boat is important. We all know that. Sometimes, we don’t know all of the items that we need to take care of though. Even a non-boater can tell you that you need to change the oil, but do they know about impellers or outdrives? Here are some important maintenance items that are commonly ignored on boats, what they do and why you should pay attention to them. Impellers What they do: They are responsible for drawing water into the engine’s cooling system to keep the engine operating within proper temperature range. Depending on your boat’s propulsion system, they can be located in the outdrive, on the front of the engine or in a separate housing. Maintenance: They should be replaced every two years. If you use your boat extensively, you may need to replace them every year. Don’t forget that if your boat has a generator, it will have an impeller also. What happens if you ignore them: Engine overheating due to lack of water flow. Fins
If you have ever experienced hydrolock on your boat engine, you may already know that it can turn a great day on the water into a really bad day in a hurry. What is hydrolock? To put it simply, it is when water gets into your engine cylinders. While this can also happen to car and truck engines, it is more likely to happen with marine engines because of the environment that boats operate in and it is more likely to happen on boats that have exhaust systems that release exhaust under the water’s surface. First, let’s talk about how the typical 4 stroke gasoline engine works. There are four steps (hence the term four stroke) that a cylinder goes through for each combustion cycle: 1. First the intake valve opens and the piston moves down which sucks air and fuel into the cylinder. 2. The intake valve closes and the cylinder moves up which compresses the air-fuel mixture. 3. The spark plug fires, igniting the fuel-air mixture, thus pushing the
Several months ago, I noticed the shower drain in my boat was not removing water as it should. Rather than water running down the drain, it just collected in the pan at the bottom of the shower. Recently, I decided to tackle the job and figure out what was going on. I knew I was going to spend the entire July 4 th weekend on the boat and I wanted to be able to take a shower without worrying about the water building up. If you are not familiar with the workings of a basic shower sump system on a boat, it is actually pretty simple. The drain at the bottom of the shower empties into a box down in the bilge. Since the box is most likely below water level, there is a pump in the box that pumps the water up, out and overboard. Often the pump has a float switch attached to it to cycle the pump on when the water gets to a certain level and off when the box it empty. A Basic Sump Pump Setup In my case, I had already checked the line from the shower drain to the b
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