Safely Running Your Ski Boat on the Trailer
By Ron Tanis
There are (3) typical ways to run your inboard ski boat while on the trailer.
1) Tool called Fake a lake aka toilet plunger, this tool presses against the hull bottom around the water intake fitting and is fed by a garden hose.
Easy to set up, but can overfeed AND underfeed water to the pump, cannot tell if pump is actually pumping water or is the city pressure from the hose doing all the work? When underfed the pump will starve for water which can cause impeller damage. When overfed which is rare you can stress the impeller blades backwards causing damage. This tool works well at a specific engine RPM which is always a mystery. Limited to idle RPM only.
2) Flush water fitting, these are rare but some boats do have them, more common around salt water and typically a salt water option when the boat was built.
Connect your hose to the fitting & start & run but be careful never to exceed idle speeds as the hose volume will not keep up with demand.
3) The trusty 5 gallon bucket.
Almost as easy to set up as the toilet plunger, but much safer and trustworthy. Connect a 3-4' piece of suction rated 1 1/4" hose (pool hose) and find a convenient place to break into the water intake system, seawater strainer, trans cooler etc. Drop the other end of the hose into the bucket alongside the engine. Fill with water, start engine & watch the water level drop (hose off) this will give you an indication of the impeller condition. A good pump/impeller will suck 5 gallons down in about 10-20 seconds. Then shut the engine off, fill with your garden hose and restart the engine while keeping the hose on supplementing the bucket with water. This method cannot over stress the impeller blades from overfeeding, or under feeding if the bucket has water in it. You can also rev the engine up using the bucket, just make sure the bucket has water in it, you will be amazed how much water these small pumps move!
