Intermittent Pee Stream

If sticking a wire into the discharge hole starts the stream again then it was blocked. It's the only thing that you could possibly reach with the wire to make something happen.
Also the pee stream is not the main discharge point so if it clogs nothing catastrophic will happen. It's there as a visual aide To show you when the engine has warmed up and the thermostat has opened. It can also show the state of the impeller. If you clear it and the stream is still weak the impeller probably needs replacing. If you clear it and it runs strong, your good. That motor needs and moves a lot more water through it than that little stream to keep it cool. :wink:
One other thing to note if you accidentally stray from the channel and suck up mud with a lot of sand mixed in it can scuff up a new impeller enough to hurt its performance.
So the bottom line here is you either have a salt buildup in the port or the water you run in has fine particulates and this is going to happen. Don't get stressed and keep that wire handy.
Mike

I have twin Honda 130s on my 2002 Gulfstream with about 500 hours on them. I have the same problem. I use mono outrigger line. Problem for me is that as I am getting older, the access to the holes is getting harder for me to reach. It really is annoying. I change water pumps every other year and have new impellers installed every year but I still have the same problem. I am constantly checking them for fear of overheating. The engines run great, but I guess I should not be as worried about it as I am.

Bugs, just curious, how old is your engine? Mike, am I reading your response correctly that if I'm offshore fishing and the pee stream stops, I'm ok until I get back to the dock to clear it again?
John

My 2000 Yamaha OX66 250 stopped peeing for a while. Boat sat for two years so when I recommissioned it was peeing at first then stopped. Used weed wacker line up in the pee hole and finally got it going again. Temperature was fine even when it wasn't peeing. I did replace the water pump impeller as a maintenance item.

jcacchio said:

Bugs, just curious, how old is your engine? Mike, am I reading your response correctly that if I'm offshore fishing and the pee stream stops, I'm ok until I get back to the dock to clear it again?
John

Click to expand...

It's a reason to take notice, not a reason to panic.
It stoped, you noticed, it did its job. Now watch your gauges and listen for the overheat alarm.
Don't know the configuration of your boat and motor but I can clear mine on the water and I'm no kid either.
99.9 % of the water cooling your engine exits through the hub/lower unit.
Out on open water it wouldn't concern me as much but there is one thing you should probably do. That'd be to stop and raise the engine to see if a plastic bag or that green sea lettuce crap is laying across the intake. Wouldn't be the first time.
What would worry me is seeing it stop just after running out of the channel into mud. Suck enough mud up and you've really got problems.

Mike,
Thanks for the reply.

Thinking about it a little more the possibility of picking up something across the intake is probably better than average if your offshore fishing the thermal break and weed lines. It's amazing just how much trash there is out there.
This past week I was giving my neighbors boat a going over repairing the things that stopped working. He has a new Merc 4 stroke and his speedo stopped working. No biggie I figured the pitot tubes clogged.
Well it was but it took a minute to find it being a tiny hole on the front of the lower unit. :roll: :lol:
I can see that happening on a regular basis.