Bilge trouble please HELP!!

[scott resick]

So my bilge has always worked flawlessly , manual and auto. A few weeks ago I threw the belt and overheated. After I replaced the belt and inspected the impeller (was still good) I noticed I was taking on more water than usual at the dock. I replaced the rubber exhaust parts as they were beginning to crack and leak a bit. In the mean time my auto bilge quit working. I now have to go at least every other day and manually pump the hull out. It fills in about 2 days. The circuit breaker near the kill switch seems to work randomly. The pump will come on for a few seconds them kick off. I’ll push the circuit breaker button a dozen times and it may come back on. Or I’ll have turn my toggle switch to the off position and back, or turn the whole boat on then back to auto bilge, just to repeat this process over and over. Last night I went down and the manual bilge button on the dash pod would not activate?? Thus bilge is being a REAL pain!!!! Drain plug is in tight, all packing are good. I thing the muffler could be cracked and allowing the hull to fill? How can I figure this out? Can I eliminate the muffler? How does the bilge circuit breaker work for the auto bilge setting?

[bturner]

Scott, you seem to have a lot going on here. Let's start with the bilge pump to see if we can get this so you won't at least sink while trouble shooting the leak.

If you're resetting a breaker more than once in a great while then you have an over current situation that you need to address..... now. Being able to rest the breaker is not the goal here, never having the breaker trip should be. Based on the age of the boat the most likely problem is a bilge pump that the impeller is blocked or the motor in the pump is toast. If you have 2 pumps and one is shot the other is probably very close to the same condition. As such it's time to replace both pumps or live with the results of not properly maintaining the boat, which in this case will either result in the boat sinking or possibility doing damage to the wiring. Breakers while re-settable are not designed to be reset for a extended periods as such there is a finite number of resets that you will get before the breaker will fail. Do yourself a favor and get the pumps swapped out before you have to replace the breaker as well.

As to the leak.... Inboards will leak and very few are "dry bilge" boats. The places that tend to leak the most are the packing nut and rudder box. If you're getting water while sitting at the dock without the boat running you may have a fitting or through hull leaking. One way to find a leak like this is to put the boat on the trailer and fill the bilge with water from a garden hose. Next look at the bottom of the of the boat for leaks. The thought process here is if water will leak in, it will leak out as well.

If you're getting water while under way start looking for water stains on hoses, clamps, the exhaust risers, water pumps and along the gunnels (I had a boat that was leaking at the hull joint at the rub rail. The good news is that you have an inboard so looking at all the hoses and fittings should be a lot easier than on a vDrive.