Started my annual / pre-winterization process over the weekend. I usually defer until after the boating season, but invariably I wait too long and end up doing it when its 5C and raining sometime in mid/late November. This time, I thought lets spread it out over a few weekends. Its a G1 Etec so there isn't exactly much winterizing - more annual maintenance.
First up was the water pump. Not a terrible job, but I hadn't done it before on this motor. The engine is a 2019 and was purchased with 145hrs and now it has 200hrs. Previous owner had the water pump done at 3 years, I'm doing the same - so done on age not hours. Anyway, the shop that did it last time torqued everything up totally dry - no grease on any of the bolts - so wire brushed off a bit of oxidization from the bolts and applied a thin coat of triple guard grease. Previous owner stored it in salt water, so I'm glad I got into it now while everything came apart ok. Also, the previous shop didn't align the lower unit perfectly and squished one of the mounting bolt guide sleeves so I had to chisel that out (will have to install a new one next time). For some reason the impeller wouldn't release off the shaft key, so needed a bit of work with two pry bars and eventually let go with a pop.
It was one of those things that took longer than it should, next time could probably do the whole thing in an hour. Although the old impeller looked basically perfect, the stream from the telltale was much stronger - so a somewhat satisfying job.
Next up is the lower unit gear oil, VST filter and spark plugs.