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You remove all the drain plugs and probe them with a long wood screw or piece of coat hanger wire to make sure it drains..
Disconnect the raw water intake hose at the thermo housing and point it down in the bilge to make sure it drains. If there is a power steering cooler in line with this hose, doing this will often drain the cooler too, but it depends on the angle of the cooler, so it's a good idea to remove the plug in the cooler to make sure it drained. Disconnect the big hose at the water pump end to drain...

Then when everything is drained, reconnect the big hose at the wp end and disconnect it at the thermo end. Then pour some -100 in the hose till it comes out the block drains. Put some marine grease on the threads of the plugs and replace em. Then continue filling till AF appears at the thermo neck. Then reconnect the hose to the thermo neck. Do the same with the manifolds, disconnect the water hoses at the thermo housing, put a funnel in the hose, pour some AF in till it comes out the drain. You can see the AF push the water out. Then grease the plugs, replace and fill em till it spills out the exhaust. Reconnect those hoses. Then take the raw water intake hose and fill it with AF till it runs out the drive water intakes. OMC says in the manual to crank the engine for a second to make sure AF gets into the impeller housing. That's it for the engine. My standard Cobra has 3 plugs in the pivot housing that have to removed (2 are drains, one a vent) to drain a small amount of water. I don't know if your model has these but you can check the diagrams on dougrussel.com to check for sure.

You remove all the drain plugs and probe them with a long wood screw or piece of coat hanger wire to make sure it drains..
If there is a power steering cooler in line with this hose, doing this will often drain the cooler too, but it depends on the angle of the cooler, so it's a good idea to remove the plug in the cooler to make sure it drained.

+ 1
I'd guess you probably do have drain plugs (petcocks) on the block (1 on each side), Also the manifolds (normally) have a drain on them too. On my 5.7 there is 2 small (capped) hoses on the back of the exhaust manifolds that make draining them (totally) somewhat easier.

I had my boat very Bow high (good idea) when I drained it. I forgot to drain the power steering cooler so I wound up buying a new one this year (word to the wise....take the time to drain the ps cooler).

Ok so this is what happened....

I had a winterizing kit that I borrowed from Partnership, here on IFourwinns - he uses it on his FW Vista with the 5.7l and has since he bought the boat in 2001. My plan was to try that first to see if I was comfortable with it. Turns out....

Ya DIDN'T listen to me!!

I ran the engine on the garden hose & muffs until it was good & hot (15 minutes).

Mine takes longer than that to warm up...the only way to tell for sure is not the temp gauge, but to feel the top of the thermo housing, if it's cool the thermo ain't open, if it's hot it is, letting hot water out of the block....
This is reason #1 why I don't recommend this method....but you drained the block so that's handled....

I then turned off the engine. I opened the block drains & drained the manifolds. I pulled the big fat hose off the t-stat housing, and pointed it downwards, draining what was left in the water pump into the bilge.

This part was OK....but that big hose drains better, if you pull off the BOTTOM of it,,,,

I then proceeded to close all the block drain plugs and plug the manifolds back up. I hooked up the winterizing kit and fired her up!! Bad news: for some reason it wouldnt suck in the antifreeze. So I shut her down.

the for some reason part is.....an impeller is designed to pull in water. Antifreeze has a greater specific gravity than water, in fact that's how antifreeze hydrometers work....and unless your impeller was in perfect condition, and the muffs fit perfect, the gravity feed method of AF use may not work.
This is reason #2 why I don't like this method...esp bad on Volvos and Bravos because the raw water pump is all the way up on the engine and they can't pull a more dense fluid up all that way...

I then took the manifold hoses off the t-stat housing and backfilled with antifreeze until I heard it come out of the outdrive, outside of the boat.
That's OK

I took the big fat hose off again, and backfilled that with antifreeze.
Did you see AF come out at the neck of the thermo housing...that way you know the engine is full

I pulled the power steering cooler line off and drained that (very little came out - is that normal?!).
Sometimes depending on the angle of the engine, that hose may partly drain out drive water intakes...but I like to fill it with AF till it comes out the intakes after draining to be sure...


I do not feel confident at all that I did this properly. Should I not have closed the petcocks and manifold drains before I added anti-freeze? OR did I get all of the water out when I drained them initially?