Boating Discussion Thread, Best way to cool V-drive and velvet drive? in Boats; I know usually v-drives and velvet drives are raw water cooled, and although I do plan on running fresh water ...
I know usually v-drives and velvet drives are raw water cooled, and although I do plan on running fresh water through my system after every run, I was wondering if there is any real benfit to tying them both into the FWC system? Would they stay cool enough in a FWC system?
All the BW drives I have seen are cooled by running the tranny fluid through an oil cooler in the raw water circuit before it goes to the heat exchanger. In that type of setup there is no real advantage to running coolant through the oil cooler. Certainly the cooler would last longer but they are designed to run seawater, last a pretty long time and are pretty cheap to replace (as far as boat parts go). You would loose a lot of cooling capacity running coolant through them with little upside. With a v-drive I have never seen one plumbed into the coolant and you face the same problem - loss of cooling capacity. The more things you add to the fresh water side the bigger heat exchanger you will need. I would say that most of the corrosion takes place while the boat sits since for the huge majority of boats they sit a lot more than they are used. I would plumb a fresh water hookup into the raw water intake and flush the raw water system after the boat is used. That would be the easiest thing to do and give you the most bang for your bucks.
Remember that these components use typical petroleum products. In automotive and the racing WE used to do, it was paramount to at least get enough temp to remove condensation. How hot do you have to get to remove the corrosion causing condensation?
DG
__________________
I'm the "FUN" in Dysfunctional...
Linear Mode
