Tips for Protecting Your Boat Motor During the Winter Months

If you’re a boat owner, you know that there’s a seemingly endless checklist of maintenance items that you need to keep up on—but the maintenance doesn’t stop once the boating season comes to a close! You need to prepare your engine for colder weather, or you risk expensive problems like a cracked engine block.

This post will cover everything you need to know about protecting boat motor in winter:

• Drain all water from the outboard motor: Start by draining out all of the water from your outboard motor. Do this by placing your boat on the trailer and keeping it on level ground. Trim your motor all the way down, and let gravity take care of draining the water. Repeat this step several times until it runs dry.
• Add a fuel stabilizer: Your next step for protecting your boat motor in winter is adding a fuel stabilizer. Read the label, and follow instructions on how much stabilizer to mix with your fuel, and add the mixture to your tank. Start up the engine, and let it run for about 15 minutes.
• Use fogging oil: Next remove the engine cover, and spray fogging oil in the carburetor inlets and spark plug holes. Start the engine again, and slowly spray the fogging oil into each of the inlets. This step lubricates the cylinders and ensures your engine will be ready to start up next spring.
• Change the lower-unit gear oil: We also recommend changing your oil before storing your boat for the winter. Move the motor into the upright position to drain out all of the old oil. Once it runs dry, use a gear lube pump to refill the oil. Again, doing this now will ensure your engine fires up when you’re ready to hit the water again.
• Cover the motor: Be sure to purchase an outboard motor cover if your boat will be out in the elements this winter. These covers cost as little as $50, but we recommend buying a heated cover to keep your motor nice and warm all season long.

Let us maintain your boat

Instead of worrying about all of this winter boat motor maintenance, just let our team at Trinity Alps Marina take care of it. Here are a few of the reasons to choose us instead of DIY-ing it:

• Hassle-free: The steps above don’t take long, but you can save yourself a ton of hassle and trips to the boat supply store by letting us handle it all.
• Guaranteed results: Along with saving you time and effort, you can trust that we’ll do the job right the first time.
• Repair services available: We’ll perform a full inspection of your boat while we’re winterizing it. If anything is wrong with your boat, we can make repairs right away so that the issues don’t worsen as your boat sits in storage.

For all of your winter boat motor maintenance needs, be sure to trust Trinity Alps Marina. Contact us today to schedule your winter preparation services.

Categorised in: Boat Storage

This post was written by Writer