Winterizing My Outboard ?

[cburger]

A good friend recently gave me a good used 9hp Mercury outboard. Considering the motor has sat with no maintenance and will be sitting until spring I was thinking about pulling the plug and putting a small ammount of two stroke oil into the cylinder and give a couple of pulls on the cord to get some lube oil around the cylider and piston. Is there a better product of should this be just fine?

[Cheechako]

yes, you need to do something like that. I just use a good dose of WD 40, but CRC sells a product and I think West Marine has another specifically for that. 2 stroke may be a little thick, not sure. fogging it good with a spray will help get it all over.

[courageous cat]

Yes that would do, but when is the last time it was running if the gas is not all ready stale put sta-bil fuel treatment in tank. get some fogging oil start her up and raise idle a little and spray in to carb till it choke out ps use water muff, some call them ear muff so your impeller dosn't disintegrate. if its going to be out in the cold maybe some RV antifreeze

[Cormorant]

I like to run Sea Foam in my gas at a fairly high concentration (extra added just for this end-of-season run), then with the motor still running, disconnect the fuel hose at the motor. Let it run till it dies from lack of fuel.

+1 on the fogging oil. One can of that will last you for years. It's good in that it foams up and really coats everywhere in the cylinder. I take the spark plugs out, spray in the fogging oil, turn the motor over a few times by hand. I spray the plug tips, too before putting them back in.

Another good end-of-season project is to change your lower unit oil. Easy to do, and then you can be sure there's no water in there. Enough water can crack the lower unit.

[cburger]

A mechanic that I respect very much has said WD 40 has abrasive properties to it.

[Chief Engineer]

Abrasive?I don't think so....never heard of a spray abvrasive other than sand/bead/walnut/soda blasting

[cburger]

Just going by what my pal say's, a quality marine mechanic for many years, I will speak with him to clarify.

[Cormorant]

WD-40 is both a solvent and a lubricant -- but the lubricant part is pretty light compared to, say, motor oil or gear oil. So for heavy use applications, the solvent will strip away any existing lubricant, and replace it with something not up to the job, leading to accelerated wear. That's what I've heard. . . .

I love WD-40, but it's not a cure-all.