TDL;
Cleaned out tank and put in fresh fuel, got running on muffs, ran ok with throttle but would die if slowed down and was slow to restart (seems possibly heat and electronic related), replaced powerpack and ignition coil (wires were in horrible shape), started up and ran well, shut down and restarted well. Moved from muffs to a small tank and wouldn't start. Spark looked somewhat spotty and then lost it entirely on upper left. Now have no spark anywhere. On the CDI troubleshooting step six I get 6 volts DVA from the blue wire to the coil instead of 200v. The ignition coil tests to spec. While trouble shooting I did find that the new coil had separated from the connector due to a poor crimp. I fixed that and have good continuity. (What happens if the coil doesn't' have anywhere to send the juice? I did a fair amount of testing and cranking before finding the bad wire.)
I have worked on a fair amount of stuff, but this is the first outboard. I got a spark gap tester and DVA module. I do not have a timing light yet. FYI, compression looks good.
I don't know what else to try at this point. Thanks for any help.
Jason
A little more of the story if you want it;
I just obtained my first boat and it has the original 1972 Johnson 85hp outboard. We got it running on muffs before I took it over, but he told me that on the water it tended to not want to idle. I took it out the first day and turned up the idle a little to keep it running. It would run ok with throttle, but after it did it would die and take a long time to restart. I did this several times before deciding to give up for the day. I took a closer look at it and the wiring from the powerpack was extremely corroded. I took a stab at fixing it, which to be short failed. I replaced the powerpack and coil with a CDI kit. It fired right up and ran decent on muffs. I shut it down and restarted it, since that seemed to be a problem before and it fired right up again. I moved it to a drum of water to try and test at a little more than idle and it wouldn't start. The previous owner said that it always ran well on muffs, but worse on the water when I told him where I was. So I took it out of the drum just to try, but I still have no spark.
Cleaned out tank and put in fresh fuel, got running on muffs, ran ok with throttle but would die if slowed down and was slow to restart (seems possibly heat and electronic related), replaced powerpack and ignition coil (wires were in horrible shape), started up and ran well, shut down and restarted well. Moved from muffs to a small tank and wouldn't start. Spark looked somewhat spotty and then lost it entirely on upper left. Now have no spark anywhere. On the CDI troubleshooting step six I get 6 volts DVA from the blue wire to the coil instead of 200v. The ignition coil tests to spec. While trouble shooting I did find that the new coil had separated from the connector due to a poor crimp. I fixed that and have good continuity. (What happens if the coil doesn't' have anywhere to send the juice? I did a fair amount of testing and cranking before finding the bad wire.)
I have worked on a fair amount of stuff, but this is the first outboard. I got a spark gap tester and DVA module. I do not have a timing light yet. FYI, compression looks good.
I don't know what else to try at this point. Thanks for any help.
Jason
A little more of the story if you want it;
I just obtained my first boat and it has the original 1972 Johnson 85hp outboard. We got it running on muffs before I took it over, but he told me that on the water it tended to not want to idle. I took it out the first day and turned up the idle a little to keep it running. It would run ok with throttle, but after it did it would die and take a long time to restart. I did this several times before deciding to give up for the day. I took a closer look at it and the wiring from the powerpack was extremely corroded. I took a stab at fixing it, which to be short failed. I replaced the powerpack and coil with a CDI kit. It fired right up and ran decent on muffs. I shut it down and restarted it, since that seemed to be a problem before and it fired right up again. I moved it to a drum of water to try and test at a little more than idle and it wouldn't start. The previous owner said that it always ran well on muffs, but worse on the water when I told him where I was. So I took it out of the drum just to try, but I still have no spark.
