Saving Old Seagulls

Hello all,

It seems that the Seagull cooling system is vulnerable to blockage by particales large enough to foul the pump impellor or block internal waterpassages.

I think I'm having problems in this respect with the large number of leaves in the inland waterway where I use my boat; frequent blockages seem to occur which are easily resolved with back flushing using a squeezy plastic bottle fitted with a tip that fits in the water outlet.

But what I was wondering is whether anyone has tried fitting a mesh filter over the water inlets. It seems to me that this should help. Of course the mesh would become clogged from time to time, but being very accessible this could be easily remedied.

What do others think about this?

James

James
One of the great advantages of the Seagull cooling system it that mud sand & small debris washes straight through the water passages without damaging the impeller or blocking any of the small galleries because ther aren't any.
The only thing that causes water stoppages assuming the water gallery is not full of rust, is leaves & sea weed.

If you place gauze over the water inlet ports you could cause a blockage with sand & mud held there by the suction of the water pump, depending on the conditions of the water you usually run in.

I have seen New Zealanders who run in water where there is loads of floating kelp, minimise the problem with stainless steel wire as thick as coat hanger wire, fixed between the front lower unit fixing bolt & the gear box front end cap top fixing screw about 15mm in front of the water intake slots which will allow water to pass under the obstruction almost as well as it did before the problem.
Quite a few of the Kiwis who race down the Waikato do this as it is in their Autumn, but you still have to reverse or place it in neutral & remove crap manually before it cooks the engine, they also use remote tell tales that outlet in front of them so they don't have to remember to turn around.

Maybe I'll try the coathanger wire suggestion. In a trip of about 4 miles yesterday I must have had to stop the engine 10 times to clear large leaves stuck to the water inlet holes - stopping the flow of cooling water. The Thames at the moment is simply full of them.

But at least I've established that the problem is not that leaf fragments being sucked into the engine as I had thought - and so my idea for a fine screen over the inlets clearly wouldn't have helped at all.

I may not get round to doing anything as in a few weeks the leaves should have all gone anyway.