Hey All ..
Sorry for the novel here .. but maybe my story will help someone.
My dad bought a 21' Wellcraft CC with a Suzuki DT200 on it about 8 or 9 years ago when he lived here in Atlanta. We used it a lot on Lanier, and it was a solid, good rig. Really enjoyed it.
He moved to Bluffton South Carolina about 6 years ago, and we thought it would be fun to have the boat there, so off it went to SC. For a couple years it was fun. But for various reasons, the boat got less and less use, and eventually the motor started acting up .. and my dad didn't have the time, the knowledge, or the money to have repairs made, so it sat for about 2 or three years.
People kept telling him (various family members, maybe even a mechanic or two), that he was having water in the fuel problems. The symptom was that you could prime the bulb and get the motor to turn over and run for about 3 - 12 seconds, and then it would die. Prime, start, run for 8 seconds, die. Over and over. I couldn't really trouble shoot the thing because it was 300 miles away. So answering questions like "is the primber bulb hard or collapsed?" were impossible for me to answer. They did a good bit of stuff to the boat to solve the problem like put new plugs, new filters, new water separator, drain the tank, add ethanol / water fuel conditioners, etc, but could never solve the problem.
Over this past spring break I brought a trailer down, picked up the rig and dragged it back up to Atlanta. Time to get serious about figuring out what's up.
First thing I do is get an external tank, new primer bulb, fresh gas and a can of seafoam to do the carb cleaning bit. I hook everything up, attach the muffs, and turn it over. Same story .. crank, run for a few seconds, die. I take a couple cracks at this, but after about 15 minutes, I'm thinking there's something else wrong .. not gummed up carbs. Somehow, along the way, I figure out that if I will quickly start priming while it's running, the engine will continue running at least twice as long than when I don't prime. Hrmm .. now I'm thinking fuel pump or something.
But I'm losing daylight and I need to get the rig back to the storage yard before it's dark. As I tilt the motor up, gas starts coming out of the cowling. What?!??! Where heck did all that gas come from (and thank God it didn't explode)?!?
Of course I take off the cowling and look around. There's about 1" of gas pooled in the bottom half of the case / cowling. I sure did a lot of priming, so I figure that must have had something to do with it. With the cover off, I gently squeeze the primber bulb and look around for gas .. after a couple minutes of searching, sure enough, I see a ruptured fuel line .. very well hidden up under the bottom of the motor.
What was happening is that enough fuel was 'squirting' across the gap that it would keep the engine sputtering for a couple seconds, before it would just get starved for gas. By squeezing the primer bulb, it would 'shoot' enough gas through the air across to the engine side of the break in the gas line that it would keep the engine running a little longer.
First. I am seriously lucky there wasn't any kind of spark or static or anything under the cowling or it would absolutely have exploded. Lesson - don't work on an engine without taking the cowling off. Squeezing that primer bulb that much .. I should have been sure I knew where all that gas I was pumping was going.
Second .. I know the right thing to do would be to order a new fuel pump and replace all the fuel lines, but 1 .. I about tapped out for money on this project and 2 .. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fuel pump. My question is what are folks using to replace the fuel lines .. not the line from the tank to the bulb, or from the bulb to the motor .. but the lines inside the cowling? I haven't pull the faulty line yet, but from what it looks like, it's a standard lookng gas line .. like you might see on a weed eater or other gas engine. What are the recommendations for gas line replacement?
Thanks All,
Chris
Sorry for the novel here .. but maybe my story will help someone.
My dad bought a 21' Wellcraft CC with a Suzuki DT200 on it about 8 or 9 years ago when he lived here in Atlanta. We used it a lot on Lanier, and it was a solid, good rig. Really enjoyed it.
He moved to Bluffton South Carolina about 6 years ago, and we thought it would be fun to have the boat there, so off it went to SC. For a couple years it was fun. But for various reasons, the boat got less and less use, and eventually the motor started acting up .. and my dad didn't have the time, the knowledge, or the money to have repairs made, so it sat for about 2 or three years.
People kept telling him (various family members, maybe even a mechanic or two), that he was having water in the fuel problems. The symptom was that you could prime the bulb and get the motor to turn over and run for about 3 - 12 seconds, and then it would die. Prime, start, run for 8 seconds, die. Over and over. I couldn't really trouble shoot the thing because it was 300 miles away. So answering questions like "is the primber bulb hard or collapsed?" were impossible for me to answer. They did a good bit of stuff to the boat to solve the problem like put new plugs, new filters, new water separator, drain the tank, add ethanol / water fuel conditioners, etc, but could never solve the problem.
Over this past spring break I brought a trailer down, picked up the rig and dragged it back up to Atlanta. Time to get serious about figuring out what's up.
First thing I do is get an external tank, new primer bulb, fresh gas and a can of seafoam to do the carb cleaning bit. I hook everything up, attach the muffs, and turn it over. Same story .. crank, run for a few seconds, die. I take a couple cracks at this, but after about 15 minutes, I'm thinking there's something else wrong .. not gummed up carbs. Somehow, along the way, I figure out that if I will quickly start priming while it's running, the engine will continue running at least twice as long than when I don't prime. Hrmm .. now I'm thinking fuel pump or something.
But I'm losing daylight and I need to get the rig back to the storage yard before it's dark. As I tilt the motor up, gas starts coming out of the cowling. What?!??! Where heck did all that gas come from (and thank God it didn't explode)?!?
Of course I take off the cowling and look around. There's about 1" of gas pooled in the bottom half of the case / cowling. I sure did a lot of priming, so I figure that must have had something to do with it. With the cover off, I gently squeeze the primber bulb and look around for gas .. after a couple minutes of searching, sure enough, I see a ruptured fuel line .. very well hidden up under the bottom of the motor.
What was happening is that enough fuel was 'squirting' across the gap that it would keep the engine sputtering for a couple seconds, before it would just get starved for gas. By squeezing the primer bulb, it would 'shoot' enough gas through the air across to the engine side of the break in the gas line that it would keep the engine running a little longer.
First. I am seriously lucky there wasn't any kind of spark or static or anything under the cowling or it would absolutely have exploded. Lesson - don't work on an engine without taking the cowling off. Squeezing that primer bulb that much .. I should have been sure I knew where all that gas I was pumping was going.
Second .. I know the right thing to do would be to order a new fuel pump and replace all the fuel lines, but 1 .. I about tapped out for money on this project and 2 .. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fuel pump. My question is what are folks using to replace the fuel lines .. not the line from the tank to the bulb, or from the bulb to the motor .. but the lines inside the cowling? I haven't pull the faulty line yet, but from what it looks like, it's a standard lookng gas line .. like you might see on a weed eater or other gas engine. What are the recommendations for gas line replacement?
Thanks All,
Chris
