2003 Tohatsu 90 TLDI - water pickup

[sgrem]

I have a 2003 Tohatsu 90 TLDI on a super shallow tunnel skiff. I need to run my motor a little higher. I have a transom mounted low water pickup that has a pickup tube in the tunnel to pick up water that feeds a hose that would go to cool the motor. Therefore can be run very high.

Question is .... Can I tap my low water pickup into the flush port on the side of motor so at the point which the water screens are out of the water that the low water will continue to feed the motor from there?

Or how can i easily feed the low water pickup to my motor?

I only need to run it that high for brief runs. The screens are fine most of the time.

Thanks in advance for advice and ideas.

 

[pvanv]

Re: 2003 Tohatsu 90 TLDI - water pickup

You can feed a water pickup to the flushing plug. That connects to the outlet side of the water pump housing cavity. Just be sure that it provides LOTS of volume, as running a TLDI 90 at speed requires a LOT of cooling water. If the impeller runs dry due to water starvation, it will bite the dust, possibly even before you suffer an overheat at the power head. Then it's pretty much all over, because at that point, the damaged pump cannot supply adequate cooling water... so, if that did occur, you would have a difficult time getting back home. You might be better off feeding the low water pickup to the inlet water strainers... thereby assuring that the low water pickup feeds through the pump on its way to the power head. If you do that, be sure that the hose to the strainer is not going to collapse, should the water pump start to develop a suction on the low water pickup hose (if the pump wants more water than the pickup is forcing to it).

 

[sgrem]

Re: 2003 Tohatsu 90 TLDI - water pickup

Good thoughts many thanks.

Im hoping the flushing port will be good because i cant run that high at full throttle or even near full throttle anyway because my prop starts to blows out and i lose grip.....the flushing port will be the cleanest install. That way can leave the inlet strainers to do 95% of the heavy lifting and when I do jack high it will all be primed as it is. Its the Bob's transom pickup which is supposed to be the highest volume transom pickup out there.

How would you go about hooking into the inlet strainers?? That sounds like a good bet too.