175 Verado - Overheating?

[LakeTahoe]

2007 Verado 175 - anyone with Smartcraft ever have an overheat alarm go off?

Had it happen twice... we shut it down, started it again, and it ran fine the rest of the day? Ran perfect other than that?!

LT

[PerchJerker]

I have an Opti with Smartcraft gauges. It has shut down on me 2 or 3 times for the overheat alarm ---- every time was in summer on Lake Minnetonka and the lower unit picked up enough floating weed debris to partially block the water intake. One time I had to kick the boat into reverse to clear off the weed debris, the other times it fell off by itself when the boat shut down. Like you said, runs perfectly as soon as the weeds are gone

[Da Beak]

LT,

This may or may not be the case in your situation but with a Verado there are a couple of things you need to make sure you do.

This is off of the Verdao Owners HSOforum:

1 If you store your engines in the tilted up position, give

them a couple minutes to settle down when you tilt them down to start. We have 2 instances where people who stored them up were immediately starting when tilting down and oil got past the breather and into the supercharger and it went bye-bye. The SC’s have an oil passage drain that works well if you wait a minute or two before starting. It’s probably also a good thing not to have the motors at the maximum fill point or overfilled

as this exacerbates the situation. If you get blue smoke, shut them off immediately and wait a few minutes.

At any time: WHITE SMOKE = NORMAL ,BLUE SMOKE = BAD

2 When switching the motors on, click one notch and wait until the sensor beep is over before cranking. That insures your start up check is done. Not stopping at this step and going straight to the start will sometimes confuse the engine. It might quit on you 5 -10 min later and issue a “check engine” fault.

Hope this helps.

Bob

[LakeTahoe]

Thanks for the responses... (Da Break) I actually read that on the Verado site as well, and have followed those procedures. I ended up bringing to the dealer anyways and they're telling me absolutely that nothing is wrong, that everything is in perfect working condition. That's good, I guess, but what's the point of alarms if nothing is wrong? (just a rhetorical question).

[PerchJerker]

My Opti did the overheat alarm last night, first time this year. We had been bass fishing (yuck) in the shallow slop (yuck). Drove out of there and only went a little ways before it started overheating. Reverse didn't clear the weeds, so with the boat drifting and the motor off I tilted it out of the water to clear the weeds. After that no more problem. If you monitor your temp on your Smartcraft you will see it drop like a rock as soon as you get the weeds off.

[Da Beak]

LT,

One other thing I thought of. I have a 225 V-Rod, and I got a service recall notice from Merc last fall to bring it in for a flash upgrade to one of the modules on the motor. I'm not sure which one, but I believe it was to cure unwarranted alarms and shut down.

Bob

[LakeTahoe]

Yep, I told the dealer that too... they said the reflash was done already... they cleared all the codes and test drove, everything looks good, and Mercury took care of the labor for me! I've always heard their customer service was good!

Thanks for all the suggestions.

LT