Quck drain for heater and shower

[SGY]

I'm getting ready to put the 206 in the water. The only thing holding me back is the pain in the neck of draining the engine, shower and heater during these cold months.

Tell me what you guys think of this idea: Place some petcocks or valves on the subject hoses with an attachment for suction. Go and buy one of those little electric pumps at the hardware store for around $50.00. With that you can pump the water out using the 12 volt plugs on the boat by hooking the pump up to various petcocks you have in the shower and heater hoses. You turn the valves and pump it out. A guy could get even more creative and wire the pump into the boat and use one of the accessory switches or ballast switches and turn it on right from the dash. Turn a couple of valves, press a button, and away you go. Pump the water into the bilge and out through the pump. Heck, maybe you can hook it into your bilge pump system. What do you guys think? I'm sure there is someone smarter than me on this board that can make this idea work.

[skinautique]

Sounds like a big hassle and waste of money to me. I can have the standard system drained in under 10 minutes. Just need a flat head screw driver, 9/16, 7/16, 7/8 (knock sensor) adjustable wrench and some air from your mouth.

[Frost]

lol, wow SN your faster than me, a V-Drive will take me about 30mins and any Direct Drive is a good 15. I can blow out the heater but I use an air hose on the shower...

[SGY]

Quick drain

I hear ya SN but $50-60 in supplies and a couple hours playing around with your boat sounds like fun to me. After a day of skiing, the last thing I want to do is put my mouth around a nasty tasting hose or smash my knuckles prying a hose off a barbef fitting. At my age the quicker and easier I can get the boat in the water and out of the water and buttoned up, the better. It also ads to the fun factor if you like tinkering with things.

And, 10 minutes times three times a week times times four weeks a month for four cold weather months (March, April, September and October) equals alot of time that could be spent on the water--not to mention the time needed to button things back up again. The problem is exacerbated with cold and cranky kids/wife/skiing buddy that aren't as anal as myself.

Any comment on whether such a project is even possible and what roadblocks there would be.

[skinautique]

Frost - Done it a few times before! You aren't too far behind me! I hate draining Vdrives though!
SGY - Never done it but I have seen people put the petcocks in for the block plug - you still have to pull the knock sensor, there is no getting around that - I have seen people use a hose set up to connect the two manifolds and then they can pull one fitting for the two.
My question to you is how cold is it going to get? Your engine will stay warm for a long time so you might be able to only drain the heater and shower. It takes quite a few hours of freezing temp to crack a block.
No other solution for the heater other than blowing it out. I have never had a nasty taste from it so it was never an issue to me. Pull both hoses and blow through the top and it comes out of the bottom.

[MarkP]

Found this site a while back maybe something they got will help!!
http://www.pumpworld.net/flojet.htm#LF-12V

[SGY]

Quck drain for heater and shower

Well, turns out SN was right. Too big a hassle to rig something fancy. Instead, all I did was to put two ball valves on the heater lines--one on each line. Each valve has a drain. If I want to drain the heater, I open the drains, and let the water run out. This gets any water in the hose upsteam. When all water has run out, I close the ball valves and put a air hose with a rubber fitting on the drain from the thermostat and blow out the remaining water.

Works pretty slick and saves me busting my knuckles getting the hose off the barb fittings. For the shower, I just run the cold and hot out by turning on the pump.

So much for contacting the US Patent offices.

[skinautique]

when you drain the shower, be careful. Pull the fitting off of the block so that you can visually see the water coming out of the block itself. You don't want any trapped water in there caused by debris.

[tryan]

i still like to drive the boat around the block with the drains open. you always get at least another 8 oz of water in the bilge.

[skinautique]

the engines with the 1.23:1 trans drain really well. It is the engines that sit on the angle that you have to worry about.