96 Force/Sputters

Our 96 Force just came back from the dealer and they could not find the problem. They ran the diagnostics and everything came back normal. This is the issue. After the boat runs for 30 to as long as 90 minutes the engine acts as though it is starving for gas or choking out. It begins to lose power and you have to back off to idle. It runs fine at idle and accelerating in neutral. If you let the boat sit for a little while, it will run fine again for 30 minutes or so and it will start all over again. This has been going on most of the summer. Some items that have been recently replaced, not necessarily as a result of this problem are, the bendix, spark plugs, battery and fuel filter. Any suggestions would be great.

Re: 96 Force/Sputters

What color is the stator. Red or black?

Re: 96 Force/Sputters

I believe it is black.

Re: 96 Force/Sputters

Mercury had a bunch of problems with the black stators right around that time. Give this post a couple of days and hopefully a force guy can help you out. My guess is you need a new stator. The red ones replaced the black ones. The biggest problem with the black ones is when the motor got hot the high speed windings wanted to short out and cause the problem you are experiencing. Like I said give it a day or two and see what the force guys say. Weekends are slow on Iboats so you will probably get better answers on Monday.

Re: 96 Force/Sputters

My 96 Force 120 did the exact same thing 6 or 7 summers ago. You could ski for an hour or two, then it would die (but still idle) till it sat there a few minutes. Then it would work fine again for an hour or so and repeat. I tried about everything. I finally completely drained the tank, went in through the inlet plate with rags on sticks and an air-operated vacuum (NOT ELECTRIC!!!) and cleaned it out till it was completely dry. It worked perfectly after that until I sold it to get a bigger boat this summer. I think it must have got some water in the tank. It never showed up in the see-through fuel filter (didn't have a water separating filter on it) or carb bowls though.