1998 50 hp 2 cylinder johnson wont idle

mcannon

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Jun 25, 2013
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Okay I hate people who have there first post on forums by posting a thread asking questions that may seem ridiculous.

Well hear I am i bought the boat about a month ago. It has a 1998 50 hp 2 cylinder johson. As the title states it will not idle. But it runs great at wide open.

First thing i did was to see if it was running on both cylinders at idle. So i pull the plugs, and sure enough the motor is only running on one cylinder at everything under 1500 ish rpms( no tach). Somewhat checked for spark by pulling the plugs, but i got shocked cause the coils are so short and said the hell with that after i got shocked.

Next thing i did was i replaced the spark plugs and that did nothing. Then I reset the jets on the carb. Still same thing if not worse hahaha.

At idle it seems to be running rich (lots of 2 stroke smoke), and is puking out gas in the water from the cylinder that ain't running i'd suppose. So that makes me think that the idle speed screw or something might be adjusted too far out? Not sure. I know it aint bad gas or over mixed. I mixed it to 50 to 1 with amsoil 2 stroke motor oil in non ethanol gas.

Another thing that has me thinking is that last week when i left her revved at idle while i went to fiddle with something on the front of the boat, the motor opened up on its own and would not come down off of wide open. So i turn the key to off and pull it out. After that didn't work i thought about pulling a gas line but decided to just drop it in gear and stall it. That killed it. But that tells me either the carb is getting stuck or its sucking in air from somewhere other than the carb...

Really am kinda stumped with this thing, thanks for reading the post!
 
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