Anyone winterize one of the new PCM DI motors yet?

[jhughes]

I've winterized my boats for the past 15 years and could drain a 351 with my eyes closed. Are we just happily trusting the draining system/hoses on the new PCM DI motors? Undo the drains, put them in the handy drain holder, have a beer and we're good? What makes me a bit nervous in particular are the two large heat exchangers flanking the oil pan buried deep in the bilge (probably a trans and engine oil cooler respectively). Are those drained by the handy drain plugs? I'm extremely mechanically competent but this motor makes me nervous!

[waterbeat]

It seemed the safe thing to do pull the hoses off the exchangers and some water did come out.

[jjackkrash]

@jhughes did you get a new boat? I am off and on here and must have missed that.

[Jody_Seal]

pulling the plugs out of the drain lines and exhaust elbos will drain the engine. making sure the water is out of the heater lines and muffler is also necessary. the sea strainer will need to be emptied. make sure the fuel has been treated even with ethanol free fuel. Also refer to your PCM owners manual.

[B_S]

Those hoses and easy to remove plugs are awesome and make me feel a little guilty, so I ran 5 gallons of rv antifreeze through just to make me feel like I was really doing something after draining...

[jhughes]

So the front two drain hoses- one is the circ pump and one is what looks like the front end of that raw water chain including the two heat exchangers but no water came out of either of those front engine plugs when I removed those two plugs. Zero water out of the rearmost elbow plugs as well on the manifolds.

 

Got a lot of water out of the lower manifold plugs and block plugs so 4 out of 8 plugs actually drained relevant amounts of water. I'll take a deeper dive.

[oldjeep]

Make sure you poke around in the drain hole with a small screwdriver if you are getting no water. One of the boats I winterized this year was so full of shale like rock fragments that neither side block drain released any water until I poked them.

[jhughes]

So, there is a 1.5" hose that connects the two heat exchangers to each other in series on the aft end of them. A nontrivial amount of water came out of those heat exchangers when I removed that hose regardless of the fact that the blue drain plugs were all removed. Physics holds. Without a doubt next year I will pull the plugs, let it drain, replace them and then suck in a few gals of A/F, then drain again as getting to most of the hoses on this motor is a colossal knuckle-busting PITA including doghouse removal which is really a chore. They really shoehorned the new DI engines in there.

 

One might argue that water laying in the heat exchangers may be OK freezing but an oil/water mix in either the trans or engine could be a disaster if one of these things cracked.