Air Intake , Throttle body ?

Basically, the air for the engine comes from the air forced into the bilge via the air scoops or intakes on the bow deck of the boat. The vent fan forces airflow via the same bow vents and exits the air to the stern vent. While underway, the air is forced in and out without help.

So, I suppose you could fabricate a direct attachment to one or part of the bow vents. Just make sure you leave the spark arrestor in place and also leave enough air flow through the bilge to clear out fumes and heat.

I think it's a great Idea. It gets pretty hot in that tiny engine compartment, not to mention you can't move as much air through the compartment as you do in your car at highway speeds. The boosts in hp in automotives are pretty good and that's based on a relatively cooler engine compartment. Good luck!

Hi 502 Python,

The nautique is now at rest for the winter as we should see snow as soon as next week. I have spoken to some of my friends in the Racing world and we have a some real good ideas. When spring comes I will be putting things together and will post here.

Have a great Winter!

Hudson

Hi WRoll,

Good question. I'm not really expecting any HP or performance gains , but the engine is getting older and I believe if the air intake is cooler engine life will be prolonged. The other benefit is at higher RPM the engine will run cooler. I am not a mechanic but this seems pretty logical to me. Why I started to investigate this avenue is because on a very hot day if I ran the Nautique at 4400 RPM for longer than 5 minutes the temperature would raise to over 200 degrees. Yes this is OK but if you drop the temperature even a little the engine stress will be reduced.

Am I wrong?

Thanks,

Hudson

I agree with 79Nautique. Cooler air in the engine compartment won't do much, if anything, to cool your engine. The air really doesn't have much time to heat up at higher speeds anyway if you think of the engine as a big air pump. It pulls a lot more air than you would think. A friend put some ram air boxes around his spark arrestors on some big HP engines and vented them under his rear bench seat. With 4 5" rigid hoses feeding air directly to 2 550 HP engines, he said it sounded like a vacuum and had to build another box around them so nothing would get sucked into the carbs.

First I'd check your seawater pump for a worn impeller or a restriction at the trans cooler. I just bought a 78 CC and the guy said that it had been running hot before he bought it. I pulled the intake hose off the trans cooler and it was full of what looked like chopped up seaweed. A worn impeller will show up as higher temps too, until it completely fails.