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Please Help. Water Pump Question

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flyfishingken

New member
Hello all, I have a brand new Tohatsu/Mercury 20 hp. I took it out of the box. Put some good fuel and oil in it and fired it up. I hooked up the hose to earmuffs and turned on the water first. After about 30 seconds I realized the motor wasn’t pumping water. There was air coming out of the hole but no water. I panicked and let it run for about another thirty seconds and then killed it. No alarms luckily the motor ran well. I turned the water on a lower pressure and tried it. The motor still didn’t pump so I shut if off immediately. Then I tried a higher pressure and the motor pumped water decently.

Im very concerned I literally already damaged the impeller. I know some outboards take a sec for the water to pump so that’s why I left it on for about 1 minute.

The motor never ran without water. How much damage did I already do to this brand new engine? I have to run it this weekend on a fishing trip so not much I can do there.

Thanks in advance.
 
Put hand in telltale stream,should be able to keep it there indefinitely, Place a finger on cylinder a 7second count without scorching of finger, this will tell you she's running at proper temp. Or get an infrared heat gun,
 
johnnygjr said:
Put hand in telltale stream,should be able to keep it there indefinitely, Place a finger on cylinder a 7second count without scorching of finger, this will tell you she's running at proper temp. Or get an infrared heat gun,
Click to expand...

Ok thanks. I actually did put my hand in the stream and it was fine. Also I have to think the heat alarm would go off it got to hot.
 
So I noticed a little bit of exhaust or smoke coming from a port in the lower unit as well. I think it might have been exhaust but I’m not sure.

I just don’t have time to pull the lower off and look at the impeller before the trip here.
 
I put myself in a similar issue this spring when de-winterizing the boat. I fired up my motor and saw no water coming out the tell-tale, then shut it off immediately once the overheat alarm went off.

My solution? Turn the hose on higher. As soon as I turned the hose on so more water could come out, the motor was able to suck it in and cool the engine. Derp!

If turning the hose on higher allows water to start coming out of your tell-tale, that could be literally all it was and no damage done.
 
[email protected] said:
I put myself in a similar issue this spring when de-winterizing the boat. I fired up my motor and saw no water coming out the tell-tale, then shut it off immediately once the overheat alarm went off.

My solution? Turn the hose on higher. As soon as I turned the hose on so more water could come out, the motor was able to suck it in and cool the engine. Derp!

If turning the hose on higher allows water to start coming out of your tell-tale, that could be literally all it was and no damage done.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did! I turned the water on full and the water came out the tell-tale. From now on i'm going to run it in a bucket.
 
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