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This weekend I pulled the boat and decided to winterize my E-Tec. I pulled out the manual and hooked up the engine to the hose, since I was following the "Winterize on the trailer" section. The instructions say
"using the fast idle lever/button advance the throttle to FULL fast idle warm-up position and start the outboard" which is a really fancy way to say, hit the button to take it out of gear and shove the throttle all the way forward. The engine starts and idles normally at about 500 RPM.
At this point your supposed to wait until the System Check lights stop flashing, about 15 seconds. I have no system check lights since I have the I-Command Digital gauges, so I wait about 15 seconds and move to the next step which says move the throttle to idle position, which I do.
The instructions say the System Check lights will re-light and wait until they stop to move to the next step. I again wait for about 15 seconds before I move on.
The final step is to "using the fast idle lever/button advance the throttle to FULL fast idle warmup position" and the system check light will flash.
Well, on the I-Command digital, the display flashes with the message "Winterization Mode Starting" or something to that effect, the engine jumps to 1700 RPM and the horn starts to sound. This goes on for about a minute, seems so much longer when the horn is blaring and then the engine shuts itself off and I assume has fogged itself. When I went to shutoff the water there were puffs of steam vapor coming out from the water port.
All told it was pretty cool actually. The manual says that the outboard will emit a puff of smoke if it was winterized so when I start it up again, I will comment on how big a puff of smoke that is.
That sounds really easy.
Seems that the I-Command gauges should tell you more about winterizing if you don't have the System Check idiot lights though.
I am not sure there is really much to tell. The sequence is to start the process and I am not sure the timing matters as much and doing things in the right order. I was hoping for better graphics, maybe the Tach could suddenly have an animated picture of the powerhead showing things shooting into the cylinders to indicate fogging is taking place.
Boy that seems too easy. I wonder what it actually does as it doesn't sound like there was excessive smoke during the process from being loaded up with oil?
