68" Merc 1000 timing/sync problems

I am new to boats motors. I have always workin my own truck motors so the mechanical ability is there, just don't have know how on boat motors. Here's the deal: bought a 68 starcraft w/ 68 100hp merc. Ran fine, till something slipped, im not up on all the parts name so i'll try my best to explain it. The plastic piece on top of the distributor, where the carb deal slides on. where it opens and closed the butterflies. Had a guy help us get it back in sync. Hasn't ran correctly since.... It would run fine on idle but as soon as it was put in gear it would die, turned up the fuel mixture and fixed that. I have gotten it to run WOT now, and can get it to idle fine in gear(a bit higher then I like to slam into gear) but when it's in gear it idles way... down, thats fine but then it will just putter out and die. Sometimes it won't start right away either, just noticed yesterday that the bulb doesn't stay hard then. The other problem is when speeding up, between low and high jet(seemingly) it stumbles around and sometimes dies. Ya have to be carefull how much you give it or it will either die or surge ahead. The last question is how much power should I expect outta this thing. It takes forever to get up to wide open which is about 30mph w/ 3 people on it. It did 37mph w/ 2 people on it before this all happened. I have read a lot on this forum and others and learned a ton, just can't seem to get quite perfected, and am puzzled at the seemingly lack of power after reading other peoples posts about the power.... I will hopefully be messing w/ it tonight agian, and probable every night I can... :'(

Thanks,

Alan

Re: 68

Re: 68

Sorry, I though of several things i forgot to post. We redid the fuel pumps, when we did that we took the top part of the carb off to look at the filter and it was clean as a whistle... We've ran sea foam through every tank so far(2). Put a new fuel bulb in as well, I might pick up some more fuel line today as well to replace the whole line. My manuel that I bought should be here today or this week sometime Its just puzzling as heck and frustrating a heck.

Alan

Re: 68

Re: 68

check out the engine faq forum, there are several post there that will help you.

Re: 68

Re: 68

Your primary and secondary throttle pickups (that open the butterfy linkage) are critical to the performance of that motor.

Before running it more, you must adjust the timing to be within specifications or else you risk burning up a piston or six. These motors don't enjoy pre-ignition.

Do a search in this forum for Clam's link and sinc thread, that explains some of the fundamentals of the timing events for the inlines. I'm not certain if it covers back to the '68 model or not.

Sounds like the rest of the items you have relaced, or will, are all good ideas. Good luck.

Re: 68

Re: 68

Yes it covers that far back. Just set max-advance to 34.5 degrees.

-Wayne

Re: 68

Re: 68

Thank you for your replies and I have found Clams information to be very helpfull!!! My dad who used to work on small engines, helped me make shure the timing was set. We did not run or crank the motor, we took all the plugs out and put a spark tester inline w/ #1 plug wire and turned the key on, turned the motor over by hand to see what time it would spark. Max was 34 or 36 I don't remember, and idle was around 3-5 just like I have read froms clams previous posts and from the copy of a manuel that we obtained. Is this a very accurate way of timing the motor? We did not make any adjustments, we just checked and the motor was set correctly!

Thanks,
Alan

Re: 68

Re: 68

I had a dumb incident where I took off the distribitor cap and installed it wrong . it did not clip down right . I never saw the right way it should go being unfamular with the technology . and had no reference and the manual did not help me. i lifted the hood on an engine that was going right . it solved my timing bs. while i made that correction i tested my ignition wires with an ohm meter 2 of them were were seperated by someone trying to pull them out of the cap , i use ngk spark plugs they like my engine too .

Re: 68

Re: 68

Okay now I have the thing running great at idle, Finally........... It is not totally correct though, I need to figure out how to set the carb adjustment so they will idle without being held open by the plastic slider piece on top of the dist. I know the butterflies don't open quite all the way right now which is not a big deal, i'm not running a race! Just trying to fish outta the boat. I figured out the tach just wasn't plugged in. With 4 ppl in the boat at wide open it would only run 3K rpm's. Would the butterflies not opening all the way do this? I'm not shure how close they are to wide open exactly at this point. I recieved my manuel on monday and wow, that book has alot in it. I'll have to study up on it and figure it out.

Thanks,

Alan

Re: 68

Re: 68

Another thing that has been makin me wonder is after the motor warms up, it takes a forever and a day to wind out to my lowly 3K rpm's. A good example of this is when I crank the black lever/idle lever, whatever ya call it. When I crank that thing wide open after its warm, it takes at least 10 seconds to wind out to the rpm's that it normall runs at w/ the lever all the way up. Seems like that would mean it's loading up w/ to much fuel? I replaced the fuel bulb, just not the fuel line as of yet. Anything else I should check? I won't work on it till saturday at the earliest if then... :'(

Alan

Re: 68

Re: 68

You NEED to Prop it to make 5500 at WOT, tha'ts a big part of your problem, it's overpropped.

-W