water flow

[stumpie2]

i dont know what type of drive you have but i have a volvo 280 that i did the same thing to. just blocked off the water passage through the transom assembly and ran hose straight from my impeller on the crank pulley (volvo penta) to a 2 1/4 thru hull clam shell w/ seacock... works great... if you think about it, that is the exact way albemarle and carolina classic riggs their jackshaft setups... not sure about your priming problem... if you have a good impeller that is belt drivin then it will supply water anytime the engine is running... now if the previous owner did this to an Alpha 1 setup then you have a problem.... the best thing that i can think of is to get the whole impeller assembly from a bravo setup and do it that way.. go to landandsea.com and get you a "universal" impeller assembly and do the conversion that way..... i cant think of anything that would make the engine "lose prime" besides a leaking hose allowing air into the system or bad strainer seal, bad hose clamps. first off start by finding whether or not you have the impeller on the engine... if so you shouldnt have a problem.... no regrets about mine

[ignasty]

I loosen the cap on the heat exchange where the raw water is not the coolant.And when I loosen it it finally starts to take the water from the seacock. Getting tired of trying to figure it out.so i'm gonna go with a 357 mag 325 horse and a bravo 1 drive, now she'll get up and go.what do you think of that? sound good or what

[1bayouboy]

That's a good package.......but the FWC will last a long time.... I think you definitely have a loop that locks it up. I think there's a pretty easy fix for it though.....you have a hose from the heatexchanger going to each of the exhaust elbows. If you put a Tee in one of them and put a valve on it you can open the valve to bleed the air and the raw water will flow in up to the water line level which I think should be enough to prime the pump. I would make sure the valve is ablove the water line....and it doesn't need to be a very big valve since its only going to bleed air.