I’ve never had a motor overheat while running it in a barrel but I do keep an eye on the water temperature using an infrared thermometer. What I’ve found is small motors can run close to an hour in an oil drum while motors up to 18 horse can get the water temperature quite hot in as little as 10 – 15 minutes. The motors themselves are not overheating yet, but they think they are in the tropics so I shut them down and let them cool when the water temp gets near 90 F.
For the Big Twins and RD motors, I use a plastic barrel which has been cut in half. Since they spray water all over the place, I leave the hose running to keep the water level up and cool. The same plastic barrel gets used for running stern drives as a V-6 or V-8 can generate a lot of heat in a short time.
Check out my YouTube channel which has a lot of motors running cool while ‘In The Drum’.
https://www.youtube.com/user/mumbles552 … er&sort=dd
These Tempo flushing units can also be used to run a motor while it’s sitting on a stand.
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