superwooter
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2009
- Messages
- 167
SUCCESSFUL FIRST EARLY SEASON CRANK
I noticed one day last week that it'd been about 2 months since my last post, so i thought i'd 're-activate' myself. I suppose that since i haven't used my boat in a while i just haven't thought much about iboats either.
Saturday was a fluke warm day with a high of 68 here in Hattiesburg, MS which seemed a bit more like the typical late February weather rather than the super-fluke snow storm we had a week earlier! The warm sunny weather inspired me to pull out my boat and hook up the thunderbolt 700 to the muffs in the driveway to let the 32 year old Merc stretch its legs... or cylinders... or whatever.
Our winters are usually quite short in the south so i hadn't bothered with adding any fuel stabilizer for the inactive months. To be on the safe side, i dumped out the fuel that remained in my tanks from the last time i went boating and i changed the fuel filter. After refueling, adding the 1:50 oil and some Sta-Bil fuel stabilizer, and charging the cranking battery, i was ready to give it a shot. With a little throttle and choke, it fired up on the first turn of the key. For whatever reason, this engine tends to take about 5 minutes of warm-up time at around 2,000 RPM before it will remain running at an idle. I'm not totally sure if this is typical of this age of motor because this is my first power boat. Before the boat came into my possession last October, it had sat up for around 4 years without ever seeing water. I did one carb cleaning shortly after picking up the boat and i'm sure it could stand another. The idle seems a bit rough but not horrible. Once i had the motor at a steady idle, i tried reving the throttle quickly and immediately back to idle again; something this motor has had trouble with in the recent past. This time, whether attributed to the new fuel filter or the Sta-Bil, it had no problems of this type at all! I shut the engine off after 15 minutes or so of running, let it sit for about 5 minutes and tried to crank it again. It fired up within a half second of turning the key and idled beautifully; something else this engine has had trouble with.
Needless to say, I was well pleased with this weekend's driveway test. The impeller functioned well, there was very little smoke and RPM at idle remained just below 1000. If I understand correctly, this engine should idle around 850 RPM which is something it can't quite pull off yet. Later this Spring, I'll purchase a carb rebuild kit and do another carb cleaning to try to bring down the idle speed.
SuperWooter
