Kris McCuller
Recruit
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2009
- Messages
- 3
Hello all, I'm almost out of ideas and I'm hoping someone here can point me in a new direction of diagnosing this problem. I'm a novice working on a old boat with a limited budget so keep that in mind. Horrible combination I know....
Anyway so I've got a '88 AQ131D engine with a VP275 sterndrive that I bought used a few years back. She was running fine up until this season. When I took her out of winter storage and gave her an inspection I noticed that my upper bellows (around U joint) was cracked. I decided to work on it myself after getting $500+ estimates from some local shops.
It took me awhile but I pulled the upper gear box off and slid the shaft out, replaced the bellows, and put her back together. I then I set about doing some other regular maintenance. Fresh oil and filter for the engine and stern, reinstalled freshly charged battery, checked the plugs (could probably use some new wires but $$$), changed out the antifreeze, new water fuel separator, fresh fuel, hooked the fuel lines back up, and plugged up all the raw water drains and cleaned the filter. While I was doing this I noticed my impeller was in bad shape so I replaced that too. I know a lot of this should have been done at winterization, but what can I say... I got lazy.
So after all this is done I try to start it up and it cranks just fine. After a bit I see some fuel going into the carb (ran it dry for winter) and I think I'm set. After cranking a few more times it seems like its about to start but then I hear an INCREDIBLY loud backfire and the engine dies. This is all it has done since: crank, backfire, and die. I've been working on diagnosing the problem for awhile now and I've just run out of ideas. I ran fresh fuel from an external tank, checked that the distrib was pointed to plug 1 on TDC (can't really adjust timing much without it running), rechecked spark, checked compression (one cylinder is low but acceptable range, same as last year)....
The only other thing I can think of is drive shaft alignment. I didn't mark the shaft's position when I pulled it out and I know it rotated while I was trying to reinstall the gear box. Could this be causing my issue? Any ideas on how to fix? Any of you boat geniuses have other things for me to look at?
Any advice you can contribute would be greatly appreciated.
Anyway so I've got a '88 AQ131D engine with a VP275 sterndrive that I bought used a few years back. She was running fine up until this season. When I took her out of winter storage and gave her an inspection I noticed that my upper bellows (around U joint) was cracked. I decided to work on it myself after getting $500+ estimates from some local shops.
It took me awhile but I pulled the upper gear box off and slid the shaft out, replaced the bellows, and put her back together. I then I set about doing some other regular maintenance. Fresh oil and filter for the engine and stern, reinstalled freshly charged battery, checked the plugs (could probably use some new wires but $$$), changed out the antifreeze, new water fuel separator, fresh fuel, hooked the fuel lines back up, and plugged up all the raw water drains and cleaned the filter. While I was doing this I noticed my impeller was in bad shape so I replaced that too. I know a lot of this should have been done at winterization, but what can I say... I got lazy.
So after all this is done I try to start it up and it cranks just fine. After a bit I see some fuel going into the carb (ran it dry for winter) and I think I'm set. After cranking a few more times it seems like its about to start but then I hear an INCREDIBLY loud backfire and the engine dies. This is all it has done since: crank, backfire, and die. I've been working on diagnosing the problem for awhile now and I've just run out of ideas. I ran fresh fuel from an external tank, checked that the distrib was pointed to plug 1 on TDC (can't really adjust timing much without it running), rechecked spark, checked compression (one cylinder is low but acceptable range, same as last year)....
The only other thing I can think of is drive shaft alignment. I didn't mark the shaft's position when I pulled it out and I know it rotated while I was trying to reinstall the gear box. Could this be causing my issue? Any ideas on how to fix? Any of you boat geniuses have other things for me to look at?
Any advice you can contribute would be greatly appreciated.
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