How much water is too much water in the bilge

[FirstStar]

Update!

The hose clamp to the heat exchanger was loose. Easy fix although I looked all over the engine for the leak and I didn't see it. Feel better about parking it in a slip overnight and not coming down in the morning to it being at the bottom of the lake

[kas232ca]

Good find! Now you can relax a bit.

[Norris_Boating]

Nice job!

[sailor55330]

Update!

The hose clamp to the heat exchanger was loose. Easy fix although I looked all over the engine for the leak and I didn't see it. Feel better about parking it in a slip overnight and not coming down in the morning to it being at the bottom of the lake

Good news is they don't ususally go all the way to the bottom....the just float with the gunwales right at water level due ot the built in flotatation (seen it twice)....Just kidding. There is no worse feeling that seeing your boat "sunk". I nearly experienced it with a 27ft cruising sailboat....packing gland on the prop shaft let go in the marina one night. The prop shaft through hull has stuffing or "packing" that you literally push into the opening with a screwdriver or other flat blade tool. They should be replaced like all other maintenance items, but sometimes they do let go, which causes a leak which is about 1/2-1/4 the volume of a refrigerator water dispenser. That's whay you see multiple bilge pumps rated at over 1000gph all the time.
The other challenge is if you "pack" the shaft to tight,the water stops and it overheats the shaft. The glands are designed to "drip" about once every 6-10 seconds while underway to cool the shaft. I was lucky as I was on my way down. Walked up to the dock and the boat was about 18" low in the water. Pop the cabin door and there's over a foot of water in the boat. Bilge pump was keeping up with 98% of the water but not staying ahead.
Pumped it out and all good, but still scary. All for 4" of packing which cost $0.97 at the time, literally.

[Luv2HuntAR]

Update!

The hose clamp to the heat exchanger was loose. Easy fix although I looked all over the engine for the leak and I didn't see it. Feel better about parking it in a slip overnight and not coming down in the morning to it being at the bottom of the lake

Of course it was. That makes perfect sense. I’m glad it was an easy fix. I still don’t know why your bilge didn’t automatically kick in given the amount of water sitting in there.

[AsLan7]

Update!

The hose clamp to the heat exchanger was loose. Easy fix although I looked all over the engine for the leak and I didn't see it. Feel better about parking it in a slip overnight and not coming down in the morning to it being at the bottom of the lake

Of course it was. That makes perfect sense. I’m glad it was an easy fix. I still don’t know why your bilge didn’t automatically kick in given the amount of water sitting in there.

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That makes sense to me too. We had a hose clamp tightened incorrectly on the hose connected to the water impeller nipple which caused a leaky connection. This was the intake hose to our water impeller housing on our Merc 496 MAG HO. The stainless clamp was tightened on the section of the hose that was not on the nipple. Probably happened after a prior impeller servicing. Quite a bit of water (2-3 gallons) in the bilge while running the boat at higher RPM’s. Fortunately no overheat alarms.

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