Grrrrr....more problems......frustrating......

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stinkynathan

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Check this for a back story: https://www.tinboats.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7410

Prepare for a long diatribe....sorry, I'm a bit frustrated....

I got the carb rebuild kit installed a few weeks back. It ran well in the bucket. We went out fishing Saturday and the motor ran awesome. We even caught a couple fish. It seemed to take a few too many pulls, but I always got it running. So this morning, my last day of Easter break, I figure I'll get up at 6:15 and hit the water. Overcast and 5mph winds....perfect....

Drove the 45 miles to the ramp. It started hard and idled a bit rough, kind of like it was "carb farting" (if you're familiar with the carbed Harley term). I figured it was just being cold blooded since it was about 35F outside. I left it half choked and went to park my truck. Got back and it was still idling away nicely. Pulled away from the ramp, drove about 100 yards, and it died. Pulled it to start....the rope broke (I couldn't make this up). I trolled back to the dock.

I've got the rope changing thing down to a 7 minute science, so that wasn't so bad....but I still can't get the **** thing to run. I noticed the gas line and bulb had some cracks, so I replaced both this morning hoping that the fuel pump was just sucking air. After two hours of chasing down a new fuel line and bulb and adding a HUGE blood blister to my hand, I got back to the water with a new fuel line and bulb, and the motor STILL wouldn't run properly. I knew it wouldn't help, but I swapped in new plugs and I still had the problem.

I suppose I could take a sentence or two to explain the problem. It starts eventually if I pull on it long enough with full choke and the throttle set to about 3/4. On the pull that gets the motor started, it will race since it's at 3/4 throttle, but after that even 3/4 throttle doesn't get it much past a normal 1/2 throttle level. It's a juggling act of working the throttle and the choke to keep her running. Drop the throttle to idle and it will eventually idle slow enough to die. Push the choke in much more than a 1/4 from full and it will choke off and die.

So anyway....my original gas-line-cracks-allowing-air-into-gas theory was shot down, so now I'm going with the rebuild-the-fuel-pump theory. That's the only thing I didn't replace when I did the carb and plugs. Was originally hoping to avoid it since the carb kit was $24 and the fuel pump kit was $40 :shock: Of course, if I would have just rebuilt it back then I wouldn't have spent all morning chasing down parts and trying to get the thing running.

Ideas?

There's my rant/story/diatribe/problem....sorry about the length....I can only vent to my fiancee so much since she's not an engine guru like you guys are.
 
Have you completely cleaned that carb and know that there isn't any gunk stuck in the tiny passages, valves and jet? It doesn't take much.

If your fuel line and bulb were cracked, you may have sucked gunk into the carb. Is the tank clean? Fresh fuel?

It could be the pump but normally pump problems show up as if the motor has run out of gas after you take off, not on starting. The carb should be full of fuel regardless of the pump once you prime the bulb.

Sounds like you have trash in your carb to me.
 
Mine did that one time. Ran fine on Friday afternoon with the muffs. Saturday morning at the ramp it would not run. It turned out the gas I bought Saturday morning before I got to the ramp was not up to snuff. Drained the tank, put in fresh gas and it ran fine. Have you filled the tank since it ran fine in the bucket? Just because you just purchased the gas does not mean it is good.
 
KMixson said:
Mine did that one time. Ran fine on Friday afternoon with the muffs. Saturday morning at the ramp it would not run. It turned out the gas I bought Saturday morning before I got to the ramp was not up to snuff. Drained the tank, put in fresh gas and it ran fine. Have you filled the tank since it ran fine in the bucket? Just because you just purchased the gas does not mean it is good.

I'm running the same gas as I ran in the bucket. I put in a fuel stabilizer and a little bit of Sea-foam. It worked great on Saturday, but not today. I can't imagine that it could have gone bad since 4pm on Saturday :)

Quackrstackr said:
Have you completely cleaned that carb and know that there isn't any gunk stuck in the tiny passages, valves and jet? It doesn't take much.

If your fuel line and bulb were cracked, you may have sucked gunk into the carb. Is the tank clean? Fresh fuel?

It could be the pump but normally pump problems show up as if the motor has run out of gas after you take off, not on starting. The carb should be full of fuel regardless of the pump once you prime the bulb.

Sounds like you have trash in your carb to me.
This I will check out after I take a nap. I'm going to be pissed if it starts up awesome now that I'm home. I might even be mad enough to make the drive back and fish until dark tonight :)

....but then I suppose it wouldn't start once I got there....
 
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.............so it works, I guess. I pulled the carb and cleaned everything out. I didn't find any chunks in there...but I'm thinking I'll replace the gas tank this weekend just to be safe. Seems to be running a lot more smooth now.

I should be hitting the water again Friday evening.
 
sounds like my luck , my motor has always ran good, start right up since I first got it and did all the work to it I did then. I go fishing sat. she starts and dies, this is normal and it always starts up and runs great after that. well , not this time . wouldn't start . treid it several times. I went fishing with the trolling motor anyhow. got home , checked for spark . spark was good . put the plugs back in and she fired right up . dang blasted $#@%@%@ thing....lol
 
Macgyver said:
sounds like my luck , my motor has always ran good, start right up since I first got it and did all the work to it I did then. I go fishing sat. she starts and dies, this is normal and it always starts up and runs great after that. well , not this time . wouldn't start . treid it several times. I went fishing with the trolling motor anyhow. got home , checked for spark . spark was good . put the plugs back in and she fired right up . dang blasted $#@%@%@ thing....lol

See....I should have done that. I had a 3/4 mile cruise up river to where the fish were biting....or I could have also just hopped across the road to the electric-only lake. The motor had become a bit of a personal battle for me, though, and by the time I gave up on it I was too frustrated to think about fishing.
 
One question I forgot about earlier:

What's considered the proper shutdown procedure for two strokes. I remember my dad used to disconnect the gas line when we got back to the ramp and let it idle the gas out of the carb until it died. He said he didn't want the oil and gas separating in the carb. Not sure if that's even really a concern, but that's what he did.

I do realize that starving it of fuel also starves it of lubrication.....so what's the correct way to do it?
 
People with electric starts,inboards,chainsaws,weedeaters..etc don't do that.Maybe if your storing it for awhile but other things should be done then.
I just shut er down.
 
You might run it out of gas if you are going to store it for a long time but I wouldn't recommend it every time that you pull it out of the lake.

You said that you didn't find any chunks... I wasn't really taking about chunks. There are passages in your carb that stuff the size of a grain of sand will clog up. Most of those you aren't going to clean out by a simple visual inspection.

The carb needs to be completely disassembled, soaked in a good cleaning solution and everything blown out with an air nozzle.
 
there's pros and cons to every argument . some say running it out of gas all the time prematurely dries out the gasket material and causes leaks. I say your better off running stabil ALL the time and you don't have to worry bout it .
 
i have been running mine out of gas ,at the end of fishing season since 1986 and not had a porblem with dried up gaskets or problems starting it up again next season. also dump any remaining gas out of tank, and leave cap loose so the rest will evaporte.
 
Running a motor with multiple carbs out of gas all of the time means that you are leaning out whichever cylinders are fed by the carb runs out of fuel first.

No fuel, no lubrication.
 

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