Re: '89 Force 50 cold idle issues
Welcome to iboats and Outboard Carburetion 101.
There's only one adjusting screw. Right in the middle above the throat. It's the idle mixture screw.
It's not at all unusual for you to need to tickle the choke for the first few minutes. It's a pretty crude motor.
Being familiar with cars these days doesn't help much with outboards. Few cars on the road even have carburetors anyore. But even so, there are two very different things about outboard carburetors. There is no idle speed adjusting screw (like every other kind of carbureted motor on the planet), and they Need to be adjusted rich and rough.
There is a hole(s) in the throttle plate that allows a predetermined amount of idle air/gas instead of cracking the butterfly a bit for that. That's why no idle speed screw. Some engineer did that once upon a time and for some silly reason it stuck, at least with American outboards.
All carbureted 2-strokes need to have the idle mixture set a bit rich or they bog and die on acceleration. That even applies to chainsaws and snowmobiles. But no 4-strokes. If you adjust a carbureted 2-stroke for smoothest idle, you'll have that problem along with the need for more choking to keep it going til it warms-up. On your motor, the idle mixture screw will be about one turn out. That's a ballpark figure because different local atmospheric conditions make that vary a bit. Generally you set it for smooth idle while warm and open it up another 1/4 turn or so.
