Re: Volvo 200 outdrive water intake issue...
My mamma always said: "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!". For that part of the repair, I think I spent about $40 in parts, so mamma was way off!
That ounce of prevention was worth several pounds of cure. It's always best to catch things before they catch you!
I was noticing that after I had run the boat for about an hour, I had a problem getting her to idle. It appeared that I had a fuel problem. When I first got the boat, the engine compartment looked like this:
You can see the electric fuel pump is simply buried under the distributor where the mechanical pump used to live and one of the wires' insulation has cracked. In case of any leakage, it would be spraying fuel right into the distributor! Oh my, that does not look safe! My first refinement was to mount the fuel pump on the back of the engine on one of the bell housing bolts and secure the fuel line to the side, away from that fan belt. The old fuel line was stiff and cracking and NOT Coastie approved. I replaced the portion between the fuel/water separator using 5/16" approved line and added a clear inline filter just before the carb.
As I said, I was still noticing a fuel problem. The fuel pump was a long way from the fuel tanks and it was clicking in a manner that made me feel it was not getting fuel. I added a bypass switch (momentary, normally off) that I could send fuel to the carburetor without the engine running. But really, I had no idea if the filter was clogged or not: it was trial and error with a lot of priming. Finally, the tank selector switch was under a small hatch and was not secured at all. It flopped all over the place. I didn't like it.
My solution was to mount the pump and the switch on a small plastic board and mount that securely in the hatch. There's no guessing if you are pulling from the fore or aft tank now and the connection between the pump and switch is absolutely
SOLID. I replaced the remaining decrepit old lines (which were 1/4") and fittings so that everything in the fuel system was standard. I also added a fuel pressure gauge on the output side of the fuel/water separator so I could better monitor the flow through the filter with less guessing. I want to test the aft tank, it's a removable one with a clip on fitting (like for an outboard). Any one know how to pressure test this? I don't want to put in a leaky fuel tank, but I don't want to spend $150 replacing it either! Here is how it looks now:
Tank switch and pump assembly.
Fuel/water separator with gauge.
Engine compartment overview
You can see from the last picture, that you can easily access most everything in the engine compartment. I really cleaned it up and got rid of a lot of extraneous crap. My last issue with the engine is the rough water pump and how to tighten the belt. It's not a very rigid system, and I get a howling out of the v-belt when I exceed 4,000 rpm on the water and 3,000 rpm when I have water supplied by the hose.
