Found the cause of my overheating Force

[Kelly]

As some of have read, I had bad last Saturday. My little Force 4hp overheated and shut down. After some searching I found the tube going up from the water pump was dumping water back down the arm. The rubber grommet that held the tube into the case had rotted out letting the tube slip out. With no telltale I had no idea what was happening. I fixed the problem by brazing a small nut onto the tube and casting a new grommet out of black rtv. Next I want to make a telltale by drilling a hole through the case and run a tube out of the cover. Will this cause problems inside the arm? Not having the water to cool the exhaust could burn something, right?

 

[bassboy1]

How big of a hole did you drill? If it is small, it shouldn't be that detrimental. However, if you are diverting a good portion of water out your new indicator stream, that may be a different story.

 

[ben2go]

As long as you don't interupt the flow of water through the head and exhaust,you should be fine.A 1/16 to 1/8 inch hole should be more than enough.All you need is a dribble of water to know that water is flowing.

 

[Kelly]

The tube that runs into the armis 5/16". This tube is about three inches long, then it just dumps the hot water down inside the arm right beside the driveshaft, shiftrod, and cold water pipe. I was planning on drilling a hole through the case and moving the hot water tube over to the new hole, letting the hot water dump out into the lake. Has anybody ever done this? Maybe I'm just reinventing the wheel here.

 

[ben2go]

I don't know of anyone doing it that way.Just be sure that the water flowing though cools the exhaust.The exhaust needs to be cooled before it reaches the water pump in the bottom of the arm/collumn or the heat could damage the impeller.

 

[Kelly]

Aha, that's why this was a bad idea. I knew there was something, I just couldn't put my finger on it.