raw water intake scoops

[dognduck]

My boat has the raw water intake scoops. A friend of mine has a B31 with 440 Chryslers and his intake through hulls are not the scoop design, but simply a through hull hole (bronze) like it was for a though hull for a raw water toilet flush. no scoop.

Any reason why the scoop design is needed?

My boat has gas engines in it. 1-1/4" raw water intakes.

[Tony Meola]

Wow 440 Chryslers. A friend of ours had those in his 31. That is an old engine.

If your friend still has the internal strainers and not having the scoop works for him that is fine. But here in NJ I would be cursing the hell out of them, in fact with the scoop I would still be cursing. The open intake would be sucking in tons of eel grass and clogging my internal strainers. I suspect that at some point someone removed the scoop.

The scoop should have some narrow openings on it and it forms two functions, it helps force water when running at speed up into the intake and helps restrict items from getting sucked up into the intake, but it is not great at performing that job. Here in NJ the eel grass still finds its way up into the internal strainers.

I would keep the scoops, I would not break what works.