Seeking advice on use of a boat lift and flushing engine

[Begester]

A friend of mine is letting me use his boat lift for the next few months while his boat is on land for the winter. I?ve never put the boat on a lift before and wanted to see if anyone had any insight. My friend has a 24 foot SeaRay Sundeck and I?ve got a 220 DA Sundancer, so the hulls are pretty similar. The lift and bunks are in good shape as well.

One question I did have is how do people flush their engines on a lift? The boat is going to be in salt water and I?ll likely not have the luxury of being able to give it a nice flush after each use. Is there anything that can be done in lieu of this? I?ll only have it there for a month or 2, but would rather keep the salt out of the freshwater exchangers if at all possible. Any insight is greatly appreciated.

 

[Chris1956]

It is probably not possible to get to the water intake for the outdrive, so you would need to put a flusher fitting on the raw water intake hose. Your post makes it sound like you have some sort of FWC system. A tee and a fresh water hose on the heat exchanger would work on that system

 

[alldodge]

I'm going to guess that the lift is setup as a pull-in and not back-in. Also since this is just temporary just run the hose to muffs on the drive. Hardest part will be getting them on the drive. Not knowing what year or what drive, or how deep the swim platform is, I'm just spit balling.

Raise the drive on the lift and reach down installing the muffs. Lower the drive and flush normally.

If you have a bravo drive and want to set this up for future uses, would need to install a flushing adapter and valves.

If you have an Alpha or VP with impeller in the drive and cannot reach it, your out of luck without a raft or something

 

[jkust]

As someone who has owned/owns multiple lifts and boats, I will just mention that depending on the lift style, there may be the need to adjust the lift to fit the boat.
They aren't generally one size fits all, again depending on the design as the hull of the boat could come into contact with part of the lift if not adjusted to fit.

 

[Begester]

I'll see if I can run a hose out to the lift. Thanks all for the insight!

 

[BRICH1260]

If the engine is a newer VP with the blue cap flush, you can flush it by hooking your hose to the blue cap flush port.