Hello all, I have owned my 120 looper on a 17 foot boat for about a year now. I use it almost every weekend, often twice in a weekend.
When i bought it, it started first turn of the key every time, and ran really well. I had lower unit drama's which i've posted about here, that i have solved.
The boat is trailered to and from fishing destinations, and stored through the week with the nose up, and the engine trimmed down, but transported with the engine raised.
the first time starting the boat after trailering it to the launch place, is getting harder and harder to start. The starter and battery are good, spins it quite easily. The start ritual is the same. prime the bulb, turn the key with it pushed in to activate the choke. normally it would kick to life straight away. Recently it's been taking longer and longer for it to catch and start. sometimes requiring the neutral idle throttle (whatever it's called to raise the revs in neutral) to be opened fully to get it to start. and when it starts, the idle often drops off to nothing. even with that throttle open fully. once i get it so it'll idle with the throttle open partially, i leave it idle maybe a minute or two, until the revs raise up, then i can put the neutral throttle down and drive it normally. it is relatively smokey when starting, so may be rich/flooding.
Once i go through that starting dance first time it's off the trailer, It runs beautifully, plenty of power, idles well, good throttle response, and will start up first touch of the key, even if it sits not running on a fishing spot for 8 hours in cold temps... To me either it's an issue caused by the trailering (say the engine being tilted up), or leaving it sit for a week.
It seems to take more each time to get it started, this weekend, my brother took the boat, and he's less experienced with it than me, but it took him 25 minutes to get it to start.
once i pull the boat out of the water and drive home, it will start right up on the muffs to flush it out...
The boat got new plugs/leads as part of the tuneup, and this hasn't improved the situation.
Boat is usually run on non ethanol regular unleaded (although it's also been run on 95 a couple of times the service station hasn't had regular). I have tried (usually due to availability) several different tcw3 oils premixed at 50:1 (previous owner disconnected the VRO), the two lower evinrude oils, a shell oil, valvoline and castrol tcw3's, and all act the same. Nothing really changed in fuels/startup sequence that we use that i can think of to trigger this
IF you need any more information, I will give you all i know. I'd just like to get this sorted by Australian summer, as i don't want to hold people up at the pontoon.
the engine seems fine due to the fact compression is even across all 4 (high 120's) and that it runs.
I'm thinking fuel issue? but don't know where to start.
When i bought it, it started first turn of the key every time, and ran really well. I had lower unit drama's which i've posted about here, that i have solved.
The boat is trailered to and from fishing destinations, and stored through the week with the nose up, and the engine trimmed down, but transported with the engine raised.
the first time starting the boat after trailering it to the launch place, is getting harder and harder to start. The starter and battery are good, spins it quite easily. The start ritual is the same. prime the bulb, turn the key with it pushed in to activate the choke. normally it would kick to life straight away. Recently it's been taking longer and longer for it to catch and start. sometimes requiring the neutral idle throttle (whatever it's called to raise the revs in neutral) to be opened fully to get it to start. and when it starts, the idle often drops off to nothing. even with that throttle open fully. once i get it so it'll idle with the throttle open partially, i leave it idle maybe a minute or two, until the revs raise up, then i can put the neutral throttle down and drive it normally. it is relatively smokey when starting, so may be rich/flooding.
Once i go through that starting dance first time it's off the trailer, It runs beautifully, plenty of power, idles well, good throttle response, and will start up first touch of the key, even if it sits not running on a fishing spot for 8 hours in cold temps... To me either it's an issue caused by the trailering (say the engine being tilted up), or leaving it sit for a week.
It seems to take more each time to get it started, this weekend, my brother took the boat, and he's less experienced with it than me, but it took him 25 minutes to get it to start.
once i pull the boat out of the water and drive home, it will start right up on the muffs to flush it out...
The boat got new plugs/leads as part of the tuneup, and this hasn't improved the situation.
Boat is usually run on non ethanol regular unleaded (although it's also been run on 95 a couple of times the service station hasn't had regular). I have tried (usually due to availability) several different tcw3 oils premixed at 50:1 (previous owner disconnected the VRO), the two lower evinrude oils, a shell oil, valvoline and castrol tcw3's, and all act the same. Nothing really changed in fuels/startup sequence that we use that i can think of to trigger this
IF you need any more information, I will give you all i know. I'd just like to get this sorted by Australian summer, as i don't want to hold people up at the pontoon.
the engine seems fine due to the fact compression is even across all 4 (high 120's) and that it runs.
I'm thinking fuel issue? but don't know where to start.