Mercury 250 XS with a torque master lower unit. It has 4 small holes at the front of the nose of the foot. Floating logs around where I fish is unfortunatly an all too common thing. Some you can see and avoid. Others are just below the surface and are just waiting on you to come screaming by and try to chop it in half.
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. It was on blast off so light wasnt the best. Luckily when I hit it I wasnt going that fast. Imediately my water pressure would not go over 3-4 psi. I know its bad but I kept a watch on my temp the rest of the day and didnt push the engine. Fished the rest of the tourney and come on home.
The next day the surgery with little drill bits began. I pulled the lower unit off and checked my water pump. It was fine so I put it back. I dug and pryed all I could and got the wood out of those 4 little holes. Lower back on. Thought it was ok. Next weekend started a week long trip to Logan Martin. Well it wasnt. Lol. So I didnt venture too far out from our house. My temp would never get over 130ish unless I pushed it. 40-50 mph it was fine. Anything over that and it would start climbing. (Now I know how Tranz feels always at 40-50 mph
)
Got the foot off again yesterday and took it all apart again. This time however I took the shifter housing off. There it was. Just in front of the shifter there is a verticle housing for the water inlet. It also has a bolt or pin or something right in the middle. Packed all around it was wood. Best tool I could come up with for shoving it all back down was an old hacksaw blade. It did great. I didnt have a screwdriver long enough to reach it. The drill bits came back out and I started getting all that wood out of those holes in the nose. What a pain in the arse.
Dumped the boat back in the river today and it did perfect. Full 15- sometimes 20 psi at full throttle.
Ok heres some pictures. Because everybody likes pictures!