Cooling water strainer

[tribologist]

I been putting this off but after talking with the guys managing the fleet of canal hire boats up in Macedon in Wester Erie Canal I got motivated and finally installed a raw water strainer. I use a Vetus FTR140/19 It hangs nice right over the thru hull. I tried to remove the elbow before and it was on there hard so I gave up. This time I bought a new scoop thru hull just in case and I took a 1-1/8 wrench and stuck a breaker bar in the hole and put a 1/2NPT coupler on the elbow and came out victorious!.

Its a neat install, not as high as Vetus state (5" over water line to bottom of strainer) but I think it will be fine. I also put in new Trident water hoses so not that part is taken care of.

[motthediesel]

Nice, neat installation! — would be very nervous to run without some kind of strainer, and that should do well for you.
Our boat came with a big, old fashioned Perko bronze unit, and it’s a dandy. Expensive, but think of it as a one-time insurance payment.

[tribologist]

I had a Groco since when i installed the AC unut but its is large and much harder to install so i been pushing it off but when i saw them using the Vetus strainers i went straight to Defender and picked one up. Very easy install.

[DesertAlbin736]

That's what I have in La Dolce Vita as well. Works great. Solved problems with priming the pump when launching after boat being out of the water tat I had with the strainer that came with the boat. The location puts it right at or just above the waterline so there's a positive flow into the strainer. This also makes it very easy to set up a water supply to run the engine on land. What I did was take a 5 gallon bucket (I have a swimming pool & have buckets that pool chlorine tabs come in), install a hose outlet at the bottom with a shutoff valve. Attach a section of water pump hose with a hose barb with garden hose threaded fitting at one end, a piece of PVC pipe on the other that will fit into the outlet side of the strainer (with the top cap removed). I set the bucket on the bench seat I keep it filled with a garden hose. The shut off valve at the base of the bucket allows the water to be turned off and on as needed. The pump draws about 5 gallons per minute, so I add water as needed to run the engine a few minutes every month or so when the boat is laid up & not being used. Also in case of freezes RV antifreeze can be run through the raw water system to winterize using this setup.

In this picture you cans see the diaphragm bilge pump at upper right and the backup Whale manual bilge pump at lower left. Just to the left of the manual bilge pump you can see a Chlorox bottle funnel the PO used to prime the raw water pump when it had the previous old bronze strainer.

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The old strainer was mounted in the same location as the new Vetus. The main difference the inlet & outlet were at the top vs the Vetus where inlet and outlet are at the bottom. That made a world of difference. You can't really see it in any of the photos I have, but the location of the raw water pump requires the inlet hose to go up & over the engine mounts & back down under the front of the engine on the the starboard side which makes it prone to air lock or losing prime unless there's a positive flow. We try to mitigate that by closing the through hull valve after the engine is shut off & just before we put the boat back on the trailer.