Draining Water from VDrive

[CDAWaves]

I am winterizing an 05 24V with Marine Power 5.7. I am stuck on how to get water drained out of the v drive. I searched past posts and the best I could find is that the drain plug is hard to find and even harder to access with a wrench so it is recommended to pull the water hose which is a low point. It appears that the water hose from the thru hull goes directly into the top of the v drive (not a low point) and exits on the other side at the top also (see photo). So do I just need to pull the hoses off of the vdrive(see photo) on the in and out sides to drain water and that's it? It just doesn't see this would do much. and I don't see any other hoses going to the vdrive.

Also, it looks like the Velvet Drive tranny has 2 oil hoses that lead to a cooler attache to the hose that supplies water to the engine? So there is no water to drain out of the VelvetV-above.jpgvdrive starbord_0172.jpg Drive Tranny? Is this correct?

[chpthril]

CDA,

My 06 had the same setup, and here is what I did to drain the v-drive and tranny.
1) when the boat is pulled from the water, most of the water in the v-drive cooler chamber will run back out of the scoop. The remaining water is trapped in the other side raw water hose, which contains the transmission cooler.
2) There is a trans cooler drain plug, on the under side of the cooler, but its too hard to reach IMO. I just pull the raw water hose off of the inlet side of the trans cooler. This drains the water from the trans cooler, inlet of the raw water pump and v-drive.
3) If you pull up the Walter v-drive exploded view, you will see where the actual water drain plug is. I have pulled that plug after the above, and only got a little more water out. But, even is that plug is pulled, you will still have water left trapped in the trans cooler, as that hose lays low in the bilge.