bertram31.com

I've take over maintaining my late buddy Alex Moore's 31, the Sandy Point. So I'm a newbie to 31s.

When I went to start em up this spring, opened the raw water seacocks and started the motors but shut them down quickly when I saw they were not cooling.

Belts and pumps all look ok, plenty of antifreeze in the tanks and was working fine when we winterized. Boat has stock 454s.

Is there something else I need to do to get the cooling system running. Easy ways to check things out?

Thanks...Jim

Maybe you closed them? Maybe the hose was unhooked from the water pumps?

impellers on raw water pumps, how long did it take before it started to over heat, heat echangers, was the boat sitting long out of the water

possible...I'm assuming open is handle in line with hose and closed is 90 deg.

Owner's wife had a buddy winterize it which involved sucking some kinda enviro friendly anitfreeze into the raw intake then closing the seacocks. Which means the raw intake hose came off and is no longer full of water. So I think I've answered my question. If there is air in the raw intake hose, it is not going to suck like it should. So I gotta prime the raw pump somehow.

Is the raw pump normally below the waterline? Maybe heeling the boat over so the raw water pump goes lower will fill the raw hose and solve the issue.

my guess is the impellers need to be change out, if any parts are missing off the impeller your going to have to find them

I would think it would prime itself if the seacock is open and the impeller is not totally shot.

id be surprised if it needed to be primed.

if the impeller is old and has vanse missing or the cam is worn it will not pick up the raw water,you will not have a good seal, last winter my port engine would not take the anti freeze, pulled the punp and sure enough impeller vance cracked and one vane missing, put new impeller in and it sucked the anti freeze so the enginge was winterized, just put in 2 new complete pumps this spring and found my missing vane in the heat exchanger. pumping like a raped ape now.

Pull both pumps. If the engines are Mercs then I know the pump on the Port engine is easy to get at, the starboard you will need to hang down over the heat exchnager to get it off. Pulling them off makes it easier in my opinion ot change the impellers. Probabaly a good idea to do that no matter what.

It is a DYI job without too many issues. If any of the vanes are missing, follow the out hose down to the and remove it from the transmission cooler. I bet you will find the missing vanes in there. that is where mine were when I had the gassers. Good luck.

Thanks...will pull the pumps and look for impeller parts. Anybody got a part no for the impeller...these are older non efi 454s on a 1971 boat.

Jim: Mikey, Chris Pague and I are all local to the area if you need any support. Mikey is in Irvington, I am in White Stone and Chris is in Wicomico church. My cell is (804) 761-0892.

I'm assuming the boat is in the water. How long did you let them run?

when boat was laid up good chance intake of water was run dry ,impeller likely cooked only takes 5 to ten seconds to cook them