Transom Shower with Excalibur 330 - Help with install?

[Kuhl101]

Been watching this site for a while, learned a lot so far, hoping someone out there has done this before and could save me some trial and error. I have a '04 206 w/ the Excal 330. I live in the UP of Michigan so many of my days on the water are cold and the season is already short. Hoping to extend with a shower to warm up wetsuits and toes. Trying to locate the proper place to tie in the HW and CW leads. I have attached some photos to try to guess where these go. Boat has a factory heater which I believe uses the red hose in the top two photos coming off the front left side of the motor for the HW supply as it comes out of the top of the block. Guessing I can remove the "plug" in the brass fitting my daughter was kind enough to point to, and get hot water there for the shower. The bottom photo comes off the fresh water pump into a "mixing" area that appears to then send water to the manifolds and down lower on the motor. I'm guessing I'd "T" into this for the CW supply.

Lastly, using a pump from the kit can I just tie the wires into the keyless ignition dash panel and use the factory "shower" switch? I'm assuming there should be power to the panel already and I'd just have to connect the wires to the proper location to use the switch to control the pump for the shower that way….at least I'm hoping.

Thanks in advance for any input and if anyone has photos of an install they did or best place to source parts it would be much appreciated.

[t.franscioni]

I have a Ford GT40 I just restored and it had a shower on it that I am modifying a bit but learned a lot about how it is set up by doing my motor project. I can share some pics here. I don't know about the Chevy Excaliber but my guess is that if your red hose there services your heater then yes you could tap into it for shower hot water. In addition look on both sides of your block as there may be drain plugs intendend for winterizing your block by draining the water from. These plugs can also be used as a source of hot water (which is the case in the GT40 shower and heater setup). There may be one on each side of block but again the Excalibur maybe different. As for your cold water you would just install a tee in your 1" raw water hose between your raw water pump and your thermostat intake (this is how GT40 is set up but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work in the Excalibur). Below is a picture of the hot water source (pic is for heater hot water but it's the same thing for shower, brass nipple with male pipe thread) from the block and the cold water source (plastic tee) in the 1" raw water hose in which you would thread a plastic barb with male pipe thread fitting into your tee.

[t.franscioni]

In addition you'll want to install a check valve in your cold water line just before it plugs into the shower mixing valve. This prevent any hot water siphoning back into the raw water hose. I redid all my hot cold and mixed hoses and purchased the check valve and the threaded fittings to connect them to the shower mixing valve from Heater Craft who makes the shower systems for marine industry. They have website you can order parts from. Below is pic of the check valve in the blue cold water hose along with the threaded connections installed in the new hot, cold and mixed shower hoses I made. For a clean look I covered the crimp on connectors with color coded shrink wrap.

[t.franscioni]

Lastly for your power you'll want to come off your fuse box not the key pad directly. The key pad connects to the fuse box and on the fuse box you may have a breaker labeled "shower" or it may just be blank if the boat wasn't built from factory with a shower. In that case you may need to open the fuse box up and install a breaker in one of the unused breaker spots but I have no experience with that as mine already had a shower breaker and the power and ground just attached to the side of the fuse box and ran back to the engine where the shower pump was mounted to the drive train frame.

[t.franscioni]

If possible I would tap your source the cold water from inbetween your raw water pump and engine it looks like the CW hose your pointing at in your pic is inbetween the thermostat and the engine circulation pump which may be fine but wouldn't want to pull water away from engine circ pump. Raw water pump can supply much more water than the engine actually needs which is why I would tap into the line between the raw pump and engine. Someone with an Excalibur and shower installed should be able to show you exactly where nautique soured the CW supply.

[Kuhl101]

Thanks for the info. I'll look into the block drain for hot water. I did read somewhere that some people were having a rust issue with that location. Good tip on the electrical connection. I found a post on correct craft fan showing the install using cold water from the location I tried to point out. I'll see if I can locate that pic it may show it a little more clearly.

[Kuhl101]

This is the link to the post I referred to above. Also included the photos from the post. Looks like this uses the block drain you talked about for the hot connection and the cold is coming from the hose I looked at. http://www.correctcraftfan.com/forum....asp?TID=16141

[t.franscioni]

Ok those pics show that it is setup the exact same way as the GT40 I have. That cold water source is inbetween the raw water pump and the thermostat intake and the hot source comes off the block drain port. I hook it up just like it shows in your pics there.

[t.franscioni]

Rust issue with the hot water location on block or actually looks like your last pic is sourcing from the heads maybe but either way the rust issue is because people usually don't want to have to pull that hot water hose off after every season or every boating session and drain the block so all that raw water just sits in the block and eventually begins to rust. Has nothing to do with the fact that you installed a shower. I was going to install another tee in my hot water source so I can drain that side of the block after every boat trip without having to pull the hot water hose off at the block.

[Quinner]

Hah, those are my pics, lol. That is a factory install on my 206, would do it the same way. The pump is mounted on an angle bracket adjacent to the motor mount and the mixing valve is in the trunk on the port side.

TF, when winterizing I just run the shower pump to drain the HW hose, just make sure to change up the mixing valves to ensure you pull all the water out.

[t.franscioni]

Good idea. I'll abandon that additional tee in hot water line. Thanks.

[Kuhl101]

Thanks for the info. Hoping to get around to this soon, too many projects with too little time. I should have done this last fall or earlier this spring. Now I'd rather just ski.