Leaking issue

[jarhead175]

2016 175txw
Boat will be bone dry some trips and have water in the hull others. Yesterday evening went fishing for a few hours after work and did some bilge diving with a flash light. Looked over the pumps and plumbing nothing visible. Any ideas what to look for?

[jcodylew]

do you have ice/water in the cooler? it drains into the bilge. also I have notice that some (very little) water seems to seep through the drain on the livewell… just a couple ideas. as long as you're not draining gallons of water out all the time u should be good.

[jarhead175]

I've been using the passenger side rear box for a ice chest but the couple of times water has drained out it has been a large amount. As in pull the plug and watch it drain thinking how in the world did I not notice that.

[joe3buck3]

Do you use your livewell a lot? Meaning do you completely fill it with water? My fishing buddy has your boat and loaned it to his son-in-law last week to take the grandson to a High School tournament. He had 15 gallons of water in the bilge upon return. They left the livewell pump running and it could not overflow out the drain quickly enough.
I have had water in my PT190 bilge several times but it seeped in through an old drain plug that was not sealing properly. It did not happen every time out but replacing the drain plug and making sure it was secure solved my issue.

[jarhead175]

Filled it and didn't touch it again water temp in the 70's they keep well enough to get to the blade.

[ct0218]

My livewell timer runs for 1 minute every 7 minutes, and sometimes it will overflow into the bilge if I move to another place with the outboard right after the pump ran. The boat bow pitches up, water flows out the back of the livewell until I level off. The overflow drain is just too small. I was going to change the size when I re-carpeted the boat but it looked like a real PIA to get to so I didn't. Now I just turn the bilge switch on automatic as I head out for the day so that the electronic water sensor can activate the pump.

[BuzzBait53]

Throttling in reverse or coming off plain quickly, water will come in through drain holes and bilge holes in transom. Tracker should have built flapper valves into their plumbing.

[jarhead175]

Throttling in reverse or coming off plain quickly, water will come in through drain holes and bilge holes in transom. Tracker should have built flapper valves into their plumbing.

Are you talking about the two drain holes on the passenger side? Bilge drain and pump out correct? I noticed the water line on the back of the boat from that trip was over those. We spent most the day on that side of the boat cat fishing. But than I thought if water went into them it would just be in the hose it shouldn't leak out into the hull.

[Bill Reynolds]

Any water going back into the bilge discharge hose will flow back to the pump and into the bilge. This is a recognized problem with the Trackers.
I have experienced two leak episodes, one in my RT188 and the other in my buddies Tracker 190 and learned some best practices in the course of diagnosing those problems.
We need to determine if the water is leaking in through a crack in the the hull or entering through plumbing and leaking into the bilge.
The quickest to eliminate is the plumbing:
Install rubber plugs in all the inlet and discharge ports on the boat and make several fishing trips. Be careful about backing up or coming off plane too quickly to keep large amounts of water off the splash well. If the bilge is dry after several trips, we know one or more of the plumbing lines is leaking and we need to remove The plugs one at a time until we find the one that is leaking.
If you have water with all the hoses plugged, indicating a leak in the hull, and want some help, I will post a procedure we used to find these cracks.

[jarhead175]

8 hours on the water today and bone dry. I'm really thinking while we were catfishing off the passenger side we were dunking discharge holes. Would have never thought about them.

[BDPIL]

I know sometimes when I have this issue it is more of me not getting my plug tight enough. There are times I check when I am in a hurry and I dont get the plug tight then for get to tighten it when I get home, then next time out it is loose and when I check after that time on the water the plug is loose.

[Skeeter Boy 181]

I know sometimes when I have this issue it is more of me not getting my plug tight enough. There are times I check when I am in a hurry and I dont get the plug tight then for get to tighten it when I get home, then next time out it is loose and when I check after that time on the water the plug is loose.

I think this is exactly what my boat is doing also, just filled it with water inside and plug had a steady drip. Need to make sure it’s tight from here on out