Was it a missing raw water drain plug that sank our boat?

[SkiTundra]

Picked our boat up from winter storage and spring start up at Marinemax Rogers this afternoon. When I was doing my third check of everything about 200' out from the boat ramp I found the bilge filling with water pretty quickly. The T plug was in and tight. The water was coming from a threaded opening in the bottom center of the V-drive transmission. I'd guess it was about 1" or 1.25" in diameter. Approx where the arrow is pointing in the photo below. Is that the raw water drain? From the cooling system?

I was able to get back to the ramp, get my trailer in and get it on the trailer before it hit bottom. That's one heavy boat when it's filled with water.

I found a loose plug under the carpet near the bilge access hatch but it's smaller than the opening where the water was pouring in.

Thanks,

[Schlanseay]

Hope you get this figured out. I’ve had nothing but great experience with Marine Max Rogers. What lake are you on?


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[SkiTundra]

Thanks. We're on Turtle in Shoreview. Like others we had a bit of a rough start when they first took over Nautique from Son but since then have been good. This time was a mess. They'd not put the cover on properly so it was caved in and the interior filled w/ water and carpets soaked. When I was doing pre-launch check I found the starboard battery laying on its side, unsecured, not connected and I assume not charged. Then the missing plugs.

It takes a special bit of incompetence to screw up that many things and raises a question about what protocols they don't have in place to insure that customer boats are safe to go in the water before they release them.

[SkiTundra]

One of the missing drain plugs:

[Schlanseay]

Agreed there is no excuse for that.


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[SilentSeven]

In some ways...here's what's worse. If you leave a plug out of a cast iron part over an extended period, water can drip out the plug hole rusting out the threads and damaging or even ruining the casing. When I pull my plugs, I let the unit drain and then replace to prevent this from happening.

I would carefully inspect that drain hole for damage. If fubar, I'd make a case they need to swap the drive.

[SkiTundra]

That's a good point about the rust. I wonder if that happened and was causing problems getting it back in resulting in delay and then forgetting to do it.

[swatguy]

Wow. That’s definitely on the dealership to make right is they were the ones I charge of winterizing and getting ready. That’s a scary location for water to start rasping into the hull from. Just heads up for anyone reading this. A quick way to solve the water risking in would’ve been to close the main raw water intake valve on the hull. Yes you’ll have to **** her down. But you’ll stay afloat.

That plug should be the plug for that v drive. If not it’s identical to that. That’s one of the most common overlooked drainage spots for v drive systems.

[Smindustries]

Dang, man, I'm sorry to hear about that.

I almost suffered similar incident. My boat is a Coastal, so the plug is an anode. I found the plug laying in the keel, with a thread from the V-drive casing stuck to it. In my case, the factory didn't thread the case deep enough. It's a NPT fastener, so it's tapered. They didn't cut the hole deep enough for the fastener to fully seat. I had to cut threads much deeper than theirs to get it to seat well.

The boat had one season and 82 hours on it.

[scottb7]

Wow, sorry to hear that story. Maybe for a different reason I agree with SilentSeven.

While there is a lot of different opinions, my personal "best practice" for winterizing was to immediatly after draining replace the plugs. In the moment I thought about leaving them out thru the winter for water to continue to drain or whatever. But I thought, nope, I going to put it all back together while I am right there and remember where each goes.

swatguy is right about mitigating in the moment, to mitigate problem in short term.

I would add that again best practice for me was to verify everything was ok when re-commisioning was to always use fake a lake or fresh water flush in driveway before dropping into the lake. And ALSO, first time in the lake to stay right next to the dock until reach normal operating temperature, checking bilge for water, and taking a good look at the strainer bowl to be sure it looks like water flowing thru.

[MN Ryan]

Yikes. I may avoid MM Rogers based on that. I had Midwest Mastercraft winterize last year just because I've been treated well by them in the past.

Good luck!

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[SilentSeven]

That's a good point about the rust. I wonder if that happened and was causing problems getting it back in resulting in delay and then forgetting to do it.

The surface rust is not a problem...it's the corrosion that eats the threads out of the housing. From the photo - but it's hard to tell - it does look like there is some damage to the cast iron threading. The easy way to test is to run your finger around the inside of the hole. If the bottom feels different than the top, you have some damage. But..if the plug has been left out before then it might not (all) be from this event.

Water, air and cast iron a not a good mix. :/ By keeping the brass plug in the port, you pretty much block all 3.

To stop all the issues with removing / reinstalling plugs, I've replaced all my manifold and block drain plugs with these ball valves. Just flip the valve, out it drains. Flip again...closed. Simple. The manifold drain would likely fit that v-drive plug.

https://skidim.com/easy-drain-engine-block.html

https://skidim.com/easy-drain-elbow-drain-pcm-ford.html

https://skidim.com/easy-drain-exhaust-manifold.html

[SkiTundra]

I dropped the boat off at Marinemax on Saturday morning. Got a call from Scott (new service mgr) on Tue morning that techs were checking everything and then they'd detail the interior and bring it back to me (a huge stress reliever given my schedule this week). Brought it back on Wed afternoon. Overall I think pretty good. A couple of questions though:

1) The plug doesn't appear to be in as far as I'd normally expect
2) There's a strong gas smell and what appear to be gas flows on the side. This could be overflow from when I filled it last week but I had a paper rag in it so I'd think it wouldn't have left this much of stains (and I'd typically have wiped it down if I'd noticed it) and that the smell would have dissipated by now (9 days later).

[SkiTundra]

A related question - what's the best/safest way to clean the gas off w/ the boat in the water? Would something like Dr Bonners work?

[hal2814]

1. Plug looks fine. Mine never goes all the way in. Watch it while running for leaks if you don’t trust it. If you’re really worried you can take a 1/2 ratchet without a socket on it and try to tighten it.

2. I have no idea. Looks like morning condensation to me.