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8,867 Posts
Somewhat ashamed to write this, hope others may benefit from my mistakes.
I am not an expert on anything but over the years I have owned & worked on 10 outboards, large & small, 10 off road motorcycles, many cars & trucks, both gas & diesel powered.
Background:
My son in law commented that his 1984 Evinrude 35 HP 2 stroke was running "poorly", at times. When we gave it to him, about 3 or 4 years ago, I suggested he use a fuel additive & drain the carb if the motor was not going to be used within a week or so. He did neither. He finally took it to a shop, who he said they "checked it out". After that the motor continued to run "poorly"
He said it would troll fine but would stumble & die when given full power. He also said he had changed all the fuel hose fittings & couplers about a year ago.
Thinking the shop had cleaned the carb, which it had not, I said "Carb that can't be cleaned" which I had a prior experience with, & ordered him a new $400 carb.
New carb installed, motor sounds exactly like it is running on one cylinder, suspect bad coil. Wrong, good fat spark from both coils. Long story short, discover O ring on motor side of fuel hose connection is slightly deformed.
Replaced with spare hose, problem fixed. Duh!!
Later, took old carb apart, which was perfectly clean inside, cleaned & blew it out on a clean towel & found nothing. Was it dirty? probably not.
My mistakes:
1. Assuming the shop had checked everything out
2. Jumping to the conclusion that the original carb was dirty
3. Not firing up the engine before installing the new carb to establish a "base" engine sound
4. Not taking my own advice to start with the easy & cheapest things first, work from the outside in.
5. Did I say jumping to the conclusion that the original carb was dirty?
Thought that maybe the shop would have caught that? However, my fault.
Paul T
I am not an expert on anything but over the years I have owned & worked on 10 outboards, large & small, 10 off road motorcycles, many cars & trucks, both gas & diesel powered.
Background:
My son in law commented that his 1984 Evinrude 35 HP 2 stroke was running "poorly", at times. When we gave it to him, about 3 or 4 years ago, I suggested he use a fuel additive & drain the carb if the motor was not going to be used within a week or so. He did neither. He finally took it to a shop, who he said they "checked it out". After that the motor continued to run "poorly"
He said it would troll fine but would stumble & die when given full power. He also said he had changed all the fuel hose fittings & couplers about a year ago.
Thinking the shop had cleaned the carb, which it had not, I said "Carb that can't be cleaned" which I had a prior experience with, & ordered him a new $400 carb.
New carb installed, motor sounds exactly like it is running on one cylinder, suspect bad coil. Wrong, good fat spark from both coils. Long story short, discover O ring on motor side of fuel hose connection is slightly deformed.
Replaced with spare hose, problem fixed. Duh!!
Later, took old carb apart, which was perfectly clean inside, cleaned & blew it out on a clean towel & found nothing. Was it dirty? probably not.
My mistakes:
1. Assuming the shop had checked everything out
2. Jumping to the conclusion that the original carb was dirty
3. Not firing up the engine before installing the new carb to establish a "base" engine sound
4. Not taking my own advice to start with the easy & cheapest things first, work from the outside in.
5. Did I say jumping to the conclusion that the original carb was dirty?
Thought that maybe the shop would have caught that? However, my fault.
Paul T
