Heres my “pitot kit”. 1. 1/16″ drill bit, plus a “finger chuck”. This looks like about 1/2 of a ball-point pen with a chuck on the end that will fit the bit. I keep the bit in the thing in a small plastic bag in my tool box on board. 2. about 6″ of 1/16″ model airplane control surface cable. Hobby stores have these. They are tightly twisted cables that will fit the hole nicely. I use a 6″ piece with about 1/2″ bent at a right angle to make a short “handle”. I untwist about 1/4″ of the long end so that it is somewhat “fuzzy”. 3. A decent-sized syringe. To clean, I first take the drill and carefully use it to pull out as much trash as possible. Dont push very hard, you want the sharp bit to grab the material and chew it out. Once the drill is bottomed out, remove it and insert the long end of the cable. Twist clockwise which will tend to unravel the end and cause it to spread out. It will pick out the last few pieces of stuff. Finally, I have a double-barb splice between the lower unit and the speedo cable coming from the boat. Usually this is about 12: above the lower unit. Use a hair-dryer and heat the tubing then separate. Use the syringe to inject water into the tubing going down to the lower unit. You should be able to eject a clean stream of water that comes out through the pitot washing the last few pieces of trash out. Re-heat the tubing, reconnect, and you are done. Repeat every time it happens, until you get aggravated enough to switch to GPS speed measurement. One note. On a couple of cases, at speeds around 90, I have impacted some rotton wood so hard that it will actually “turn the bend” a bit. That model airplane cable comes in two 36″ lengths. Use a long piece exactly as I described earlier, except stick it in the plastic tube and work it down to the “bend” inside the lower unit. Use water to get all the trash out so that it doesnt end up going “north” toward the speedometer.2008 Pantera Classic2014 Mercury Pro XS 200
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