My saga with a 92-94 Force 40 continues to be a headache. I successfully got the engine to run beautifully in a test tank (trash can on a big sawhorse), fixed the wiring disaster, replaced coils, plugs, wires, starter motor, new battery. used a laser tach to set the idle speed and tune the actual tachometer. Everything was working, mounted the motor on my boat, dead center, a machinist would be envious. Flywheel turns by hand. I took her out on the lake yesterday, where my brother and I were going to fine tune the boat on the water, loaded. I arrived before him, launched the boat, and she started right up, played with her a little bit, tach would work then wouldn't work. But got it stable at about 1000rpms, in neutral. I backed off the idle screw and got it around 750rps. put it in reverse and she went backwards, put her in forward and she went forward. I went up the lake, i went down the lake, i went forward i went backward, i drove in circles. I shut it off I turned it on. . . Several times. it all worked. Then suddenly when I shifted from forward or reverse gears back to neutral the Force went from 750-1000 rps way up to 2500-3000 rps and would eventually drop down and sometimes it wouldn't. So i would just turn the key off to kill it. When i was going to pick on my brother, suddely the key would not turn off the engine and the kill switch failed to shut it off as well. Now the engine is back in the tank but mounted on the boat. Now i am at a total stump, The engine turns but won't fire, there is smoke coming from the vent holes, so i am assuming i do have spark-ish. Where should i start with these symptoms? Im going to test the OHMS on all the ignition components now, but i have a feeling my homemade boat just wasn't meant to get an outboard.
