Is it wrong this is so exciting?

[Poey50]

Similar advice but I just take the hose off the through hull seacock and put it in a bucket with antifreeze in it. When the bucket empties job done. I suppose having the seacock a few feet from the pump allows this.

The advice I follow is to have the inlet hose taking water from a bucket (at engine level) fed by a hosepipe - preferably where you can control the flow from the bucket end. When I want to add the antifreeze I switch off the water and add the antifreeze to the bucket just before the water runs out.

 

[pagoda]

The advice I follow is to have the inlet hose taking water from a bucket (at engine level) fed by a hosepipe - preferably where you can control the flow from the bucket end. When I want to add the antifreeze I switch off the water and add the antifreeze to the bucket just before the water runs out.

Done all these moves in the past. It sometimes helps to fill the feed hose with water from a jug first, then into the bucket as you start the engine.

 

[alahol2]

If the boat is ashore...
I have a bucket of water hanging under the exhaust outlet. From there a hose runs to the raw water inlet under the hull and is jammed into it. I can then run the engine, circulating the water for as long as necessary to ensure the thermostat is open. When all is warm I add antifreeze and usually a dollop of engine oil to the bucket and let that circulate for 5 mins. The impeller comes out for the winter
Edit to add... Whilst the engine is warm I pump out the engine oil, change the filters etc for the rest of the winterising routine.
.

 

[LittleSister]

On occasion I've needed to run the engine ashore 'single handed', and the hose bucket needed to be held in place somewhere apart from where I needed to be to start the engine. I detached the inlet hose from the seacock or inlet filter, wedged the tube with open end upwards and poured in some water to near fill the pipe. This isn't much water, but is (I felt) enough to lubricated the impeller until I got back from the start switch to plunge the hose into a bucket.

A non-bucket way I've used to keep cooling going (though it doesn't help with the antifreeze) is to have the inlet tube detached and open end up (as it was at the start, above), and squirt down it with a hose that has an on/off/flow adjuster nozzle on the end of it. (At modest speeds with no load the impeller/engine/exhaust doesn't need to have full or completely continuous coolant flow.)

 

[RichardS]

I've run my Speedseal Lifes for up to 30 seconds without any problem. It's not long enough to overheat the exhaust hose and doesn't seem to have harmed the impeller.

The problem with both my Speedseal Lifes, one more so than the other, is that the impeller does not run entirely concentric with the middle of the Speedseal cover and the slightly "off-centre" rotation wears the hole in the middle of bronze disc but also wears the raised centre spigot in the middle of the cover plate.

I spoke to the Speedseal chap who said that the wear is virtually inevitable which is why they recommend replacing the two disks every so often. I said that whilst this made sense, I would also have to replace the cover plate as well, which was effectively a complete new assembly. He agreed with my observation.

As these things are not cheap I won't be doing that until the performance of the thing is actually affected which might well be another couple of years.

I have some photos of the wear which I took to send to Speedseal but as they didn't suggest that I was mistaken I never bothered to send the photos. If anyone is interested I'll post them up on here so you can see what seems to be an inevitable process .... just ask if you're interested.

Richard

 

[MagicalArmchair]

I've run my Speedseal Lifes for up to 30 seconds without any problem. It's not long enough to overheat the exhaust hose and doesn't seem to have harmed the impeller.

The problem with both my Speedseal Lifes, one more so than the other, is that the impeller does not run entirely concentric with the middle of the Speedseal cover and the slightly "off-centre" rotation wears the hole in the middle of bronze disc but also wears the raised centre spigot in the middle of the cover plate.

I spoke to the Speedseal chap who said that the wear is virtually inevitable which is why they recommend replacing the two disks every so often. I said that whilst this made sense, I would also have to replace the cover plate as well, which was effectively a complete new assembly. He agreed with my observation.

As these things are not cheap I won't be doing that until the performance of the thing is actually affected which might well be another couple of years.

I have some photos of the wear which I took to send to Speedseal but as they didn't suggest that I was mistaken I never bothered to send the photos. If anyone is interested I'll post them up on here so you can see what seems to be an inevitable process .... just ask if you're interested.

Richard

Hello Richard! Hope you are well. I'd be interested to see the photos for sure. How long have you been running the Speedseal for?

 

[[70521]]

I struggle a bit when winterising the engine on my own, as I need to be in the cockpit to run the engine up to get the antifreeze through it. It then needs to spin up for 20 seconds to get going, before I can throttle back, dive down below and pour some antifreeze into the water strainer. I've always been worried about the impeller burning out, running the system dry for that first, high revs 20 seconds, or, more often than not, I've throttled back too early and the engines died as I've dived below to start pouring my antifreeze. Hopefully this means I can worry a little less about running the engine for those 20 seconds dry whilst it fires up!

I control the engine from the engine (where the throttle cable ends up).

 

[RichardS]

Hello Richard! Hope you are well. I'd be interested to see the photos for sure. How long have you been running the Speedseal for?

Hi Mark

I installed the SS Life at the start of the 2015 season and the photo was take at the start of the 2017 season so that's 2 years but actually probably only around 100 hours running. This was the worst of my two cover plates but the better plate was only fractionally different.

What is happening is that the hole in the middle of the brass and PTFE plates are presumably just getting bigger and bigger equally all round due to the off-centre rotation but unless you have a new one for comparison (and I don't) it's impossible to see the difference. This raised boss thing seems to wear at the outermost edge, where the bronze plate runs, rather than the inner edge where the PTFE plate runs. I assume that metal-PTFE friction always wears the PTFE whereas metal to metal friction wears both equally.

This means that the "step" is visible at the interface between the two plates. However, it is not a "step" which goes all the way around the boss. On the opposite side from the photo the boss has no step which is presumably something to do with the off-centre direction.

I gave this some thought at the time before I phoned Speedseal and deduced that it is only a tiny bit out and if you could determine the exact central axis point of the impeller, you could probably jiggle the position of the cover plate a bit before tightening the thumb-screws and get perfect alignment .... but I can't see any way of doing that in practice. Of course, when I replace the coverplate each time, I might get it a bit more central ... or a bit less central which will merely make things worse.

The technical Guy at SS (the owner/inventor, I think) was very helpful and we had a long discussion and he didn't try to gloss over the problem at all so I didn't send the photos as he said he knew exactly what I was seeing. I suggested that he could do away with the boss and just have two plain disks in a plain recess but he said that he had experimented with that but what happened was that the wear simply occurred on the outside circumference which led more quickly to impeller failing to draw water because the outside is critical for sealing whereas the inner boss is "inside" the vanes and therefore doesn't cause a loss of "suction" until much later.

He did say that changing the two disks was the best way, other than replacing the entire assembly, to prolong it's life, presumably because as the boss gets smaller and the bronze disk hole gets bigger eventually the brass disk will start to wear the outer circumference and the cheapest way to stave that off is to change the disk.

After our conversation, I did wonder whether using two PTFE disks or one thicker PTFE disk might be a better solution since the PFTE would then clearly become sacrificial and, although it would need changing more often, at least the cover plate would be preserved? Perhaps there's a reason why this wouldn't work?

Edit .... in fact, I'd not noticed before but looking at that photo now you can see where the outer circumference is also wearing into a ridge on the opposite side to the ridge in the boss, of course. Perfect alignment of the coverplate is the only solution so any suggestions as to how to achieve that would be a major step forward.

Richard

 

[MagicalArmchair]

Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!! :numbness:

It doesn't fit! I called up True Marine (the company\Gentleman than manufactures these), and they were very apologetic and said they didn't realise the 2GM was THAT old (Pre 1998) :dejection: - to send it back and they would give me a refund.

I had always seen my reliable little 2GM20 as being one of the best features of the boat, not that it was old tech, bound for the dustbin.

 

[mogmog2]

Ha, that's a fair old point. How long do I have before that happens to my exhaust? To be fair, I have completely forgotten to turn on the cooling water before, and was happily chugging off down river when the over heat alarm came on ten years ago when I bought Triola. I turned the engine off immediately and hunted around for the 'culprit'.... which was, of course, me not turning the seacock on.

Forgot to open seacock too: About 20 minutes/2 nautical miles (with my Md2B). Engine stopped onf it's own accord. Waterlock melted. Hose OK.

 

[mogmog2]

Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!! :numbness:

It doesn't fit! I called up True Marine (the company\Gentleman than manufactures these), and they were very apologetic and said they didn't realise the 2GM was THAT old (Pre 1998) :dejection: - to send it back and they would give me a refund.

I had always seen my reliable little 2GM20 as being one of the best features of the boat, not that it was old tech, bound for the dustbin.

When your cover plate has that "island" in the middle, is it normal or had it? Mine looks like that. Thanks

 

[mogmog2]

...It then needs to spin up for 20 seconds to get going, ... I've always been worried about the impeller burning out, running the system dry for that first, high revs 20 seconds

I'm not advocating running it dry, but my (was new) impeller LOOKS fine after 20 minutes accidental dry running.

However, it pumps water now and did not shred or any other catastrophe. I inspected it carefully for temporary reuse until I know the engine is OK. I'll buy a new one & compare dimensions as I would assume it is a bit smaller all round, than it was when new.

 

[MagicalArmchair]

Ha, the season I ran mine for at least 20 minutes dry, set the heat alarm off on the engine, I didn't even check it and sailed the whole season fine.... your method I daresay is the more prudent one!! If you do swap out the old impeller, keep the old one - if you ever start eating through impellers you'll be glad you had the worn spare.