Frequently Asked Question
What do I have to do to properly winterize my bass boat?

Answer
Everyone dreads that time of year, When old man winter starts to set in, the temperature drops and you can almost hear the lakes getting hard. In my tenure as a marine technician, I have seen quite a few of the negative effects of failure to winterize your outboard. cracked gear cases, gear failures, gummed up Carburetors, cracked and broken livewell/bilge pumps all the way to worthless power heads due to rust build up in the cylinders to name a few. All of this could have been prevented by some simple maintenance in the fall, or before putting your boat into storage.

In all actuality winterization is fairly simple for outboard boats. Following these 4 basic steps (5 for EFI or DFI engines) you will prevent most failures in your motor and boat, so when you take it out of storage next spring, it will be ready to go catch that BIG UN'.

Step 1
Stabilize your fuel. This can be done with either Stabil or a fuel treatment from the outboard motor manufacturer, available at your local marina. Follow the products recommendations to treat your fuel, The best way to store your boat is with the fuel tanks full that way when the temperature changes you wont have to worry about condensation building up in your fuel tank. As we all know water does not burn as well as gas does. Once you add the stabilizer to your fuel you will want to run your boat for at least 15-20 min to make sure the stabilized fuel gets into your carburetors or fuel injection vapor separator. This way there will be no metal that old gasoline will be able to varnish or gum up.

Step 2
Fog your motor. This can be done simply by running the motor on a garden hose at idle, spray either Fogging oil or Mercury storage seal directly into the carburetors. If the engine does not have carburetors, such as DFI and EFI motors, Simply remove the spark plugs and spray a 6-8 second burst of the fogging oil into the plug holes. Be sure to coat the cylinder walls well. After this is completed, crank the engine over for a second or 2 to make sure the oil is completely covering the cylinder walls.

Step 3
Remove the drain plug and vent plug on the lower unit and allow the gear lube to drain completely out. This is one of the most important steps in winterizing. If there is any water in the gear case the water will freeze in cold weather and crack either gears or the gear case housing itself. If the housing does not crack the gears inside may rust, causing the gearcase to fail when you start it up in the spring. If you see either water or milky gear lube, this would be the time to take your boat in for service and have the lower unit resealed. Always refill your lower unit from the bottom to prevent airbubbles. Just fill the lower unit until the lube flows out of the vent plug, replace the vent plug and finally replace the fill plug.

Step 4
In my personal opinion, one of the most important things to do but is often neglected by many do it yourselfers. Is to pump RV antifreeze into your livewell pumps and bilge pumps. This will save you time and trouble in the spring.

Those are the 4 basic steps to winterizing a 2 stroke outboard boat, I/O's and 4 stroke outboards basically use the same 4 steps, the only addition is that you should change both your oil and filter when winterizing. I hope this will help a few people in this dreadful time of year. If you have any questions please feel free to email me at Bassermo@aol.com. Happy Boating and Big Lunkers to all.

submitted by Chris T. Leiting

Last Updated
10/14/2000