De winterizing outboards

Freespool · Feb 11, 2013

Hello all,
I am buying a Parker from the East Coast and shipping it to the west coast. The twin 150 Yamahas have been winterized. Being from Southern California I do not know what this means.
The boat will come on a trailer and have to be backed off and put in the water once it is delivered. Do I have to do anything before I start up the motors and back it off the trailer? If not, can I run the boat right away?

If I do need to de-winterize (if there is such a word), is there a video or something that explains what I need to do?
Thanks very much

miky2884 · Feb 11, 2013

Are they four strokes ? or two strokes? Winterizing of a four stroke is different than a two stroke.

You have to ask the owner what he did to winterize the motors. If he checked and changed the lower unit fluids, did the filters etc... If he did not do that as part of his winterization I would say you should do that before running it.

Freespool · Feb 11, 2013

The motors are 2005 four stroke 150 Yamahas. The boat has bee winterized (I believe this included filters and oil changes). I am going to sea trila the boat and then ship it to California. Do I need to re-winterize it so nothing gets damaged during the transport through the frozen east coast? Or, can I just put it on the trailer and send it home?

My concern is that the boat will be trailered through New York etc, where the weather is really cold and frozen. I don't want to damage anything.

tomysel · Feb 11, 2013

don't think there is a need to re winterize. Winterizing is just fogging of the motor for extended storage.. oil, filter, water filters.... etc.. are just part of the maintenance not winterizing...

windknotnc · Feb 11, 2013

You should not have any problems with winterized engines. Charge the batteries, squeeze the bulb and get some gas in them and crank them up. They will smoke a little until the fogging oil is burned off but you should be ready to go if your filters and routine maintenance has been done.