Interesting post. I flush for 5 full minutes as soon as the boat is pulled, saltaway at the end of most flushes. I just did my anodes and was shocked by how much salt there was. But looks like that is fairly normal and the anodes were doing their job. Suzuki's design on these is really nice and it is such a quick and easy task to check/change them. Too bad warm water is not really a possibility for me for flushing or cleaning the boat.

 

I flush with plain water until I'm convinced the thermostat has opened and is being flushed. I can watch the engine water temp with my vessel view mobile app (for Mercs). Water temp usually starts around 60F from the garden hose and heats up to 110F. When it stop rising thermostat open (roughly).

 

I have been doing a similar routine with my Honda. Both motors, my kicker and main are rinsed while still warm/hot.

 

OK, I just posted a two days ago with question about thermostats and operating temperatures. There seems to be only two or three temperatures ranges that thermostats come in, 60 C, 62C, 70C. But I could have missed some.

How does this relate to anodes and salt? The answer may be that the higher temprature can cause more salt deposits when the engine runs in salt water with the 70 C thermostat. So the 70 thermostats should only be run in fresh water and the 60 degree thermostats in salt water. Could the higher temperatures be contributing to the salt build up on the anodes as shown in the video? If you are having this problem should you check your thermostat and change it if necessary? Does anyone have more information on this?

 

OK, I just posted a two days ago with question about thermostats and operating temperatures. There seems to be only two or three temperatures ranges that thermostats come in, 60 C, 62C, 70C. But I could have missed some.

How does this relate to anodes and salt? The answer may be that the higher temperature can cause more salt deposits when the engine runs in salt water with the 70 C thermostat. So the 70 thermostats should only be run in fresh water and the 60 degree thermostats in salt water. Could the higher temperatures be contributing to the salt build up on the anodes as shown in the video? If you are having this problem should you check your thermostat and change it if necessary? Does anyone have more information on this?

I just changed thermostats in my Honda, the dealer only had the one operating set and I'm not sure what temp they open at. After installing I ran the engine for 25 minutes with a garden hose and muffs, the water never got warm! Next day went fishing and all went well, this tells me that Salt away never get thru an open thermostat if only run for a short time at the washout area.

 

In my own experience, that isn't salt on that internal anode.
It is the anode doing what it is supposed to do.
Sacrificing itself and breaking down.
I clean mine off every season and replace when it gets worn down more than 50%.
(I taste tested the white stuff and it wasn't salty)

 

Thundertaker, that is interesting. I don't know either way, but if it isn't salt deposits, then what is it? Is it just particles of the anode breaking down and coming off? And if it isn't salt then where is all the salt deposits going/ending up? Do the salt deposits eventually get flushed out when running in fresh water or do we actually need to flush with some type of flushing liquid? I mostly rely on running in fresh water and once in a while use salt off.

 

An opposing view...

 

I have a 2020 Suzuki DF200A and a 9.9 EFI that I flush religiously as soon as I get off the water for 10 to 15 minutes. I also setup a Salt Away (tub) at home for the motors in between saltwater and trips to the lake. I’m amazed at how much gritty salt pieces I find at the bottom of the tanks after a Salt Away flush. I can’t imagine how much salt and corrosion would develop if I weren’t doing what I’m doing and I still feel like I could/should be doing a better job. I’m tempted to just buy the $150 maintenance kit below annually for peace of mind going forward. My shop rate is $150 per/hr so the parts are a fraction of the maintenance costs for running the motor.

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As in the comment on "making oil" should be worded as in "diluting or thinning of oil". As far as I know almost every outboard motor does this to some extent and it's worse when at an idle or lower temperature of the motor. If you 50 hours or more after a oil change and pull the oil dipstick and smell the oil it will have a gasoline smell to it. At 100 hours when you should be around the time to be changing your oil there is most definitely going to be that gasoline smell and that is one of the main reasons to be changing the oil. My old Honda 150 with 100 hours the oil would look like new oil but it would smell like someone had added a cup of gasoline to the oil crankcase is in diluting the oil. It definitely wasn't making oil.

 

So from the above comments would a higher temperature range on the thermostat help reduce the amount of unburned gas that gets into the crank case of a trolling motor? I suspect it might and I will probably test it out by putting a 70 C thermostat in my trolling motor instead of the standard 60 C. That won't for a couple of months because I'm laid up with a damaged rotator cuff on my right shoulder.

 

Going with a higher thermostat isn't going to help burn gas that is done by using a higher rpm making more spark on the piston to burn fuel. Not really sure why your trying to go with a higher thermostat on a trolling motor. If it came with a factory 60 I would stay with that. Unless your running your motor in freezing conditions all the time there's not really any good reason to change it. Spend your money on more fishing gear.

 

Just fyi, the white buildup on the anode is not salt, it’s zinc oxide. Doing it’s job, sacrificing itself to save the aluminum in your motor.

 

Lot of youtubes of dudes in a garage pretending to be experts. I noticed the anti-salt guy had a small skiff with a main and kicker in the driveway claiming to be an outboard mechanic. No repair shop? A warm water flush may be better than a cold one, but not convinced that Salt Away does nothing to remove salt buildup. Not convinced it does, either.

 

Yeah, take You-Tuber's with a grain of salt (pun intended).
Flushing the salt water out with fresh or warm or w/salt-away is what I will always do. If I have Salt-away, I use it. If not, water will have to do.

The majority of the salt-away in my mixing gadget goes ON the boat and canvas top more so than the motor.
And it does work VERY well to remove that salt, so I also assume it works INSIDE the motor as well.

Salt-away dissolves salt and makes it easier to flush away.

 

Been wondering about this as well. For those of us fishing Columbia estuary I wonder how much of a fresh water flush we get daily during B 10 season? Salinity content at the end of a big outgoing tide at say Hammond? Ilwaco?

 

As far as higher temperature range thermostats go I owned some of the early small Honda 4 cycle engines and they were prone to having the lower spark plug foul, especially when doing a lot of trolling. I use to rotate the plugs each day if I was on a multi day trip but a mechanic suggested I install a higher range thermostat and hotter spark plugs and that worked. On another thread I started someone responded that at a higher temperature the metals in the engine expanded more and helped seal the piston rings better preventing unburned gas getting into the crank case. No "scientific" supported info on that one but it sounds reasonable.
Another thing that can help reduce the unburned gas is hotter tipped spark plugs and some new small engines the addition of fuel injection which meters the amount of fuel in the cylinder better.

Outboard engines operate at temperatures way below vehicle engines, around 140 to 160 F compared to 230+ F on car engines. In the 1980s when the temperatures of car engines was raised to reduce air pollution the formulation of gasoline also changed to accommodate this and as a result the cooler running marine engines (especially 2 cycle) developed problems with carbon build up on the pistons and rings that quickly damaged the cylinder walls and compression. I know because I had two power heads replaces (by the manufacture) on a 150 hp outboard engine before the they figured out the problem and changed the formula of the 2 cycle oil to TCW-3 which had a carbon cleaner in it and also recommended treating the engine with carbon cleaner every 50 hours. I still use carbon cleaner (Seafoam) in my various 2 cycle engines.

 

The chemistry at play is a little more complicated than the guy in the video thinks.

The deposits that form inside the cooling passages of an outboard motor are not primarily salt. It's mostly calcium carbonate, limescale, and other minerals present in the seawater. The water drains/evaporates when you shut your engine off, but the residue builds over time. And it builds up most in places that don't drain easily.

Water doesn't really "pump" through an outboard motor in the sense of water being under high pressure... your impeller just pushes water up into the cooling jacket under very low pressure, and fills it up. The overflow comes out the pee hole. When the engine reaches operating temperature the thermostats open and allow some of the hot water inside the jacket to escape and flow out, so that more cool water can come in. When you run the engine on a hot water hose, you really are not accomplishing anything that the engine can't do on its own (assuming you let it run long enough to reach operating temperature). I could see it being useful if you were just using the flush port and not running the motor, but otherwise the internal temps inside the engine cooling jacket are a lot hotter than tap water.

If you can immediately run your motor with fresh water, that is absolutely the best practice. But it doesn't totally solve the problem of deposits building up over time. Seawater is a base, the mineral deposits are base, so if you want to break them down you need something on the opposite end of the ph scale. The premise behind products like Saltaway or the various knock-offs, and vinegar baths, is to take a mild acid and run it through the cooling passages of the motor. This can to some extent dissolve deposits (the guys who run their motors in a barrel of vinegar solution and are amazed at the minerals that collect at the bottom of the barrel are experiencing this).

IMO, Saltaway and similar products (and even plain old vinegar) are very useful for washing the salt/mineral crust off the boat hull and windows at the end of the day. They don't hurt to run through the motors via muffs, but the concentration is so low (most of it spills out on the ground once the cooling jacket of the motor is full), and the time they are present in the motor is so low, they are not going to remove or reverse mineral build up. If you have an old motor with cooling issues, running it in a barrel of vinegar solution is probably the best bet.

 

Last season my wife bought some fancy salt remover product being sold online. By mid summer, I had to run 200 pound mono up the pee hole every trip to get water to come out.

Switched back to salt terminator and the problem never occurred again. Made me think that it must be doing something.

If you read the instructions for using salt away, your actually supposed to flush with fresh water and then apply the salt away at the end, stopping once salt away comes out, which leaves salt away in your system. Most people, myself included, tend to just flush it all through.

Flip side- my kicker can’t be flushed while moored. Five years of all salt use, flushed only once at the end of the season when I pull the boat and the thermostat has looked good the two times I’ve replaced it. Not saying flushing isn’t a good thing but we all tend to overthink things a bit.

 

I had a zipper heavily salted enough that it wouldn't zip. Tried straight strength Salt Away - no effect. Tried other stuff too. I think white vinegar and a tooth brush finally freed it enough to break loose. I have some Salt Away left and will eventually use it up on the motors but doubt that I'll buy more. My motors get a 10~15 minute fresh water flush when I get home and the water in the motor is still warm. I'll use the SA after mooring for a week or so, but not day trips.

 

On motors with flush ports, I could see running them on plain freshwater on the muffs, getting the engine up to operating temps, then giving them a dose of Salt-Away type product through the flush port. In theory, it would coat the interior of the cooling jacket and pool up in those hard-to-drain areas just like seawater, and sit there doing its thing while you trailer home.

Personally, I would not do it in a marina moorage. Enough nasty stuff in the water in Ilwaco already without adding more.

My boat is being moored this year, and my plan is just to use plain old freshwater at the end of every trip, and maybe give her a dose of Saltaway (or something similar) if I pull out for maintenance or cheaper fuel.

 

"I’m tempted to just buy the $150 maintenance kit below annually for peace of mind going forward."

K Dog, You might use all the parts in that box. But most of that stuff is inspected every 100 hours and replaced only if needed. I buy the zincs, and fuel filter every year from Browns Point for the DF300B suzuki I run. Suzuki made the zinc changeout super easy. The water pump gets changed every 200 hours. I changed the plugs at 500 hours but the used plugs looked exactly like the replacements. Oil, oil filters, gearcase and oil change gaskets I buy from the dealer as the price is the same.

Now looking at valve lash checks. I'm going to buy the service manual and see if this something I want to do. The shop gets $$$ for this check.

 

I'll use SaltAway if the boat is going to sit for more than a few days. Which is most of the time. If you have to deal with corrosion from not flushing you'll be more diligent amount doing it.

 

This guy seems to be confusing salt with galvanic corrosion. If you want to do a salt removing test. Spray your boat motors down with water and let them dry. Then spray them down with salt away. After the salt away spray all the salt is gone from the surfaces. And that’s the point. Salt remover breaks down the salt so it loses its grip on the surfaces and washes away easily.

It would be foolish to take this guys opinion to heart that salt remover does nothing.