Gaskets on thru hull water pickups

[Tony]

I pulled my pickups (the old coffin shaped style) tonight becase the old cork gaskets under them were disinegrating. The only reason I see for the cork gaskets is to seal the un used top port in the pickup and force all the water through the bottom port. The same thing could be accomplished with simply using a good sealer.

Is there any other logical reason for using the cork gaskets?

[MOBILEMERCMAN]

The older stuff used cork like the TRS transom assemblies. Newer stuff uses a foam rubber type gasket. Didn't the unused port have a plug in it? The thing with sealer is it must be for under water use or it may fail. The 5200 is one good under water sealer, but you will have trouble if you ever need to remove it. It should be easy to find cork gasket sheets at a parts store if you go the original route.

[Chris]

McMaster-Carr sells the rubber-impregnated cork gasket material. In fact, I'll look and if I have the roll I used to have, I'll toss some in with those gun parts.

[Buoy]

Tony, is it possible to post a pic of your water pick-ups?
I had a TRS on my Baja, and it had the water pick-up on the transom, kinda looked like a 1" wide straight Hockey stick blade that angled below the hull line with holes in it for intake.

My Pantera was originally a TRS boat, and the water p/u is directly below the motor, and just basically looks like a scupper. I was thinking of changing it.
The water p/u on the Bravo outdrive on it now is being used as a drive shower p/u - which I thought was a pretty good idea.

[Tony]

Thanks for the advice. I have several rolls of different gasket stock on the shelf, along with several tubes of 4200 and similar other above/below sealers. So its just a matter of using whichever material is going to last longer.



Buoy, you can see them in the pic, to the right and left of the drain plug, I think while Im messing with the pickups, Im going to plumb a jumper pipe between the two pickups inside the bilge with a ball valve inbetween just in case one of the two pickups should ever happen to plug up while under way.

[Chris]

If yours don't have the grates cut out of the inlets, they're clog-proof.

[Tony]

Thats what I always thought, one day idleing into Grosse Ile I was proved wrong though, one plugged up with floating vegetation, I had to jump in to unplug it.

[Geronimo36]

Thats what I always thought, one day idleing into Grosse Ile I was proved wrong though, one plugged up with floating vegetation, I had to jump in to unplug it.

Had the same thing happen with a bunch of eel grass in my old Scarab... Wife and I were on a weekend vacation in LBI, about a 3 hour ride to our location... Was idling under a bridge in the ICW when I noticed the temps starting going up looked back to see that I idled thru a patch of floating eel grass.... Tried shifing in reverse to clear it but then temps started appraoching 200 so I had to shut em down... We started drifting and I quickly jumped in the water to clear everything away and after I jumped in I realized I had my f'ing cell phone in my pocket... No cell phone for the whole vacation but the boat was ok so I guess that's not such a bad thing.. lol