"I have a 2002 VP 5.0 GXI(
"I have a 2002 VP 5.0 GXI(Fuel Injected) engine with an SX drive. I have winterized this myself for the past couple of years and have some questions about it. I first back flush the engine with the fitting provided and the engine not running. The past couple of years I have hooked up an Aux tank with a special mix of fuel, oil, and stabil and run the engine on that. after that I would change the oil and then on my engine there is a rubber hose tube with a cap that supposedly drains all the water out of the engine and I would remove the cap and point the hose straight down into my bilge until no water came out. I would then drain the exhaust manifolds and then take the large hose off of the thermostat housing and fill it completey with Pink RV antifreeze until It came running out of the housing then reattached the hose. Well I had an issue with the engine temp being too cold at the beginning of this season and a tech asked me when I winterized it if the water circulation pump and some other things had the antifreeze put into them, I told him what I did and that I had no problems previously. He suggested that I use the Camco winterizing tank thing and have it pump it into everything directly. So I get one and it says that you need a special adapter to use it on a VP Drive system with the raw water pump on the front of the engine. I'm scratching my head thinking why because I hook the muffs up to the drive when I start the boat out of the water and water flows throught the system. So I opted not to get the adapter and ran about 5 gals of pink antifreeze through the system. In briefly checking to see if it looks like everything got it I disconnected the big hose at the thermostat housing and it was getting dark but the water didn't look very red or pink that I saw in the housing. It wasn't a very bright pink antifreez to begin with more of a redish. I saw it coming out of the prop hub and other water exit when I was running it through and saw it foaming up on the driveway. I plan on going back to my boat in the daylight (stored at a friends house) and checking out the antifreeze in the block again before having it shrink wrapped( btw I live in Michigan). So have you guys tried this Camco thing before with an SX drive setup? Is all of this just overkill and I'm wasting my money on 5-8 gallons of antifreeze because using the engine drain tube gets all of the water out of the system? I still drained the exhaust manifold petcocks after using the Camco thing do I really have to do that as well?? How do you guys winterize your new engines and SX drives? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. The coldest that it usually gets is around 0 degrees in Feb or so and I'm using -50 below antifreeze. I do remove the battery and the boat is shrinkwrapped and stored outside in a space between 2 garages."
"I have a 2002 VP 5.0 GXI(Fuel Injected) engine with an SX drive. I have winterized this myself for the past couple of years and have some questions about it. I first back flush the engine with the fitting provided and the engine not running. The past couple of years I have hooked up an Aux tank with a special mix of fuel, oil, and stabil and run the engine on that. after that I would change the oil and then on my engine there is a rubber hose tube with a cap that supposedly drains all the water out of the engine and I would remove the cap and point the hose straight down into my bilge until no water came out. I would then drain the exhaust manifolds and then take the large hose off of the thermostat housing and fill it completey with Pink RV antifreeze until It came running out of the housing then reattached the hose. Well I had an issue with the engine temp being too cold at the beginning of this season and a tech asked me when I winterized it if the water circulation pump and some other things had the antifreeze put into them, I told him what I did and that I had no problems previously. He suggested that I use the Camco winterizing tank thing and have it pump it into everything directly. So I get one and it says that you need a special adapter to use it on a VP Drive system with the raw water pump on the front of the engine. I'm scratching my head thinking why because I hook the muffs up to the drive when I start the boat out of the water and water flows throught the system. So I opted not to get the adapter and ran about 5 gals of pink antifreeze through the system. In briefly checking to see if it looks like everything got it I disconnected the big hose at the thermostat housing and it was getting dark but the water didn't look very red or pink that I saw in the housing. It wasn't a very bright pink antifreez to begin with more of a redish. I saw it coming out of the prop hub and other water exit when I was running it through and saw it foaming up on the driveway. I plan on going back to my boat in the daylight (stored at a friends house) and checking out the antifreeze in the block again before having it shrink wrapped( btw I live in Michigan). So have you guys tried this Camco thing before with an SX drive setup? Is all of this just overkill and I'm wasting my money on 5-8 gallons of antifreeze because using the engine drain tube gets all of the water out of the system? I still drained the exhaust manifold petcocks after using the Camco thing do I really have to do that as well?? How do you guys winterize your new engines and SX drives? Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated. The coldest that it usually gets is around 0 degrees in Feb or so and I'm using -50 below antifreeze. I do remove the battery and the boat is shrinkwrapped and stored outside in a space between 2 garages."