By Lew Dobbins, Northern California Lake Tahoe Chapter
Like your car, we need to change the oil and filter regularly. Most of our older boats do not have oil filters but one can be retrofitted if you desire. Re- gardless of filter, your oil should be changed seasonally. Every engine has a little bit of blow-by. This is a by-product of the explosion taking place in the combustion chamber of each cylinder and having some of the pressure (and chemical) travel past the piston rings and into the crankcase. The chemical reaction of the explosion will convert a small amount of sulfur (most is gone now from our fuels) into sulfuric acid. This will travel past the piston rings and mix with the oil. Allowing the acidic oil to sit for prolonged periods may start to have an effect on internal parts, most notably the engine bearings. By changing the oil in the fall, the engine has fresh clean oil for the layup period.
To protect the inside of the cylinders, valves, rings and manifolds, we “pickle” these parts by fogging the engine. When the engine has reached operating temperature and the fuel stabilizer has run through the fuel system, we can now apply an oil through the carburetor while running. The desired solution is a 50-50 mixture of Marvel Mystery Oil and solvent. NAPA and other auto parts lines sell fogging solution that can be used di- rectly without mixing. I still use Marvel as I can feed it at a greater rate than what comes out of the rattle spray can. On a large engine, the spray can might not supply enough oil to coat properly. The following steps are recommended for preparing your vintage, or not so vintage, inboard boat for winter’s slumber. Rust does not sleep and it can attack the engines and other parts in our boats. An hour or two’s worth of work will prepare your boat for 9 months (or more) of storage.
- Set the boat up to run on the trailer with a reliable water supply feeding the engine. Ensure that the engine NEVER runs without water being applied to the suction water pump. If using a “Fake-a-Lake”, ensure that it is sealing fairly well to the boat water pick up. Do not use too much water pressure until the engine is running. You can damage the water pump. I generally prime my hoses between the boat and a bucket and put the garden hose in the bucket. This allows the boat to draw water instead of being force fed. This can also be an indication of the suction pump condition. I also modify all of my boat intake plumbing by adding a valve and garden hose quick disconnect to make it easy to connect a water source for running on a trailer. Faster and easier than using a Fake-a-Lake.
- Purchase and pour Sta-Bil Green “Marine” fuel stabilizer into the fuel tank per instructions on the bottle. This is green in color and not pink/red like the normal Sta- Bil product. This is available at most auto parts stores. Running the engine with the stabilizer protects the entire fuel system.
- Start the engine in Neutral on the trailer. If you have a Paragon or similar non-hydraulic transmission/reverse gear, place a wood block between the prop and bottom of the boat for safety to prevent the prop from turning. This will protect the shaft cutlass bearing from running dry and destroying itself. This is also a safety issue. Let the engine idle or run at fast idle and come up to normal operating temperature of 160 degrees.
- Remove the flame arrestor (or arrestors).
Prepare a 50% – 50% mixture of Marvel Mystery Oil and solvent. There are fogging solutions available in spray cans as well that are designed for “pickling” engines for winterization. My problem with them is that they do not deliver the solution fast enough in a large enough volume to really coat and kill the engine.- With the engine running, operate the throttle by hand while pouring (or spraying) the solution into the carb. As you pour the solution into the carb, the engine will start to stumble and run rough as you are flooding the spark plugs. Operate the throttle manually to keep it running without running at too high of an RPM. (Exhaust elbow packing on Chris Craft 6 cylinder engines (and others) often leak a little. You may wish to place a rag in the bilge under the packing to capture any of the pickling solu- tion that may drip).
- When the exhaust is really smoking, let the engine die due to the oil flooding. This will have created a satisfactory fogging of all internal parts in the top end. If it does not run rough or smoke much (real shop fumigator!), then you did not use enough of the pickling solution. DO NOT USE TOO MUCH SOLUTION FOR FEAR OF CAUSING A HYDROLIC CONDITION IN THE ENGINE AND CAUSING DAMAGE. It is easy to see what is enough.
- Shut the ignition off after it has died and you are gasping for a breath of fresh air.
- Shut off your water supply and disconnect.
- Reinstall removed flame arrestors and reconnect throttle linkage (if needed).
- Drain engine oil and replace while oil is warm and will flow. This takes a portable oil suction pump and tube inserted into the oil dipstick tube. A pump is available at most auto parts stores. Replace oil filter if supplied. Use only manufacturer’s recommended oil.
- Replace fuel filter/water separator if so equipped. Adding one is highly recommended.
- Drain water from cooling system: General Method #1: Find and remove the drain plugs and/or open drain cocks from:
1. Exhaust manifold bottom/low positions (usually near rear).
2. Exhaust manifold risers at rear of manifolds.
3. Bottom of suction water pump. If no plug, will require removing the lowest hose.
4. Bottom of circulation water pump. If no plug, fill require removing the hoses.
5. Plug on each side of engine block below heads. Usually near the center of each side on a V-8 engine. On an inline motor, usually only one plug will be found on the block.
6. If equipped with oil coolers (often one for engine oil and one for transmission oil), they will usually be down low beside or underneath the engine. They may have an 1/8” pipe plug or valve to drain them on one end. Many do not have plugs and require a hose to be disconnected to allow the water to drain. Some installations may have them in a position that they will drain by gravity. The latter should never be trusted unless known for sure. - Place all removed plugs, hoses & clamps in a container and place on engine or in a logical place that anyone can find for spring time activation. Some people with multiple boats will tie a tag to the steering wheel with a note of what was done during winterization and the date.
Protect water in cooling system: General Method #2:
- While using the water bucket method for running the engine as described in # 1d above, prepare to have some- one pour bio friendly antifreeze into the bucket upon command.
- Just before you are ready to pickle the engine and shut it off, add a gallon of antifreeze to the water bucket feed- ing the engine with its cooling water.
- When you see the exhaust showing antifreeze, it will have gone through the entire cooling system. Proceed with the pickling. Timing it to not expel all of the anti- freeze and replace with fresh water before the pickling is done is the trick here.
- After all is cool and exhaust has drained of all water, find an appropriate sized beer can and a shop rag. Gently slide the rag & can into the exhaust pipe(s) to prevent mice, in- sects or other critters from making your exhaust and engine their new winter home!
- Disconnect the battery. Remove battery or batteries from boat for storage and trickle charging if desired.
- Allow boat to breathe and dry out before covering for win- ter. Some wood boats with conventional hulls when being stored in dry climates may benefit from having a large bucket of fresh water placed in the bilge (not poured in).
- Some marine transmissions may want to leak a small amount from their rear flange seal when sitting. If you see any trails, place a rag or can under the flange to catch oil.
Activation of your boat in the spring is usually fast and easy. As your oil and fuel filter have already been changed, all that is needed is to close or replace the cooling system drain cocks, plugs and/or hoses, reconnect and/or charge your battery if not already done and prepare to start. If you blocked the exhaust pipe, remove the plug. Using the same method for providing wa- ter to the cooling system as when winterized, you are ready to start your engine. Remember all of that smoke from when you winterized that engine? Well, you still have a lot of that same oil in the cylinders and intake manifold. And it is going to smoke when you start up and probably for a little while. If you used the Marvel Mystery Oil method to pickle your engine, you will still smell the wint-o-green smell in the smoke for a while. If you used more oil than solvent, you may have fouled your spark plugs which will cause hard or rough starting. If this is the case, remov- ing and cleaning the plugs will help. Starting your engine with a little bit of starting fluid (ether) will help the engine to start sooner. Never use too much as it is hard on the engine being more explosive than gasoline. It will also wash the oil down off of the cylinder walls. Once the engine is running, let it run at a fast idle, maybe 1,000 to 1,200 RPM.
The first things to check are your gauges. Do you have oil pressure and are you charging? Next, verify that your cooling system has filled and that
you are seeing a normal amount of water exiting the exhaust pipes. Do not be surprised if this early water has some oil mixed in with it. This is the pickling oil mixing with the water in the exhaust manifold. Ensure that your hull drain plug is installed and that you have serviced your trailer bearings and checked the tire pressure of the trailer tires and the spare. And finally, put boat in water, play hard, eat ice cream, repeat!
This story original ran in the summer 2014 issue of Northern California Lake Tahoe chapter’s newsletter.
Thank you for your very well written and informative article. You went into a lot of excellent detail and I applaud you for that. I would like to add one small element. We have literally done thousands of these engines over many years and the issue of the block drain plug frequently comes up. Quite often the plug has been left out out of the engine and it has caused the threads to deteriorate so a replacement plug wound properly thread into it. One repair for that is to use a quarter inch NPT brass adapter and use a high grade epoxy that is metal filled to install the engine and then use a brass pipe plug on the other end which doesn’t have to be tightened to a great degree. This way you now have brass against brass and it’s actually a little easier to reach. The other issue about this drain plug is it if you bake and blast these blocks during the process of cleaning, you realize how small a passageway it is to that drain plug. Early on I thought it was a straight shot into the water jacket, but it is not. it’s angled up and the hole is about 3/16 of an inch. I don’t feel this is adequate for properly draining the block. So in short what I recommend is always using antifreeze in the block and manifold. You can have sludge that is accumulated at the lower portion of the block which will not allow the water to drain out, but it can expand and cause cracks. Antifreeze is missable with the sludge.
Again, thank you for your article and I hope this little bit is helpful. Please pardon typos as I’m dictating this.
Excellent write up. I’ve used method #1 for the past 46 years without fail. What typre of solvent do you use with the Mystery oil? (its a mystery, no one knows what’s in it).