Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

[sickwilly]

I am pretty darn sure I need a carb rebuild. The options I am seeing are:

1- bring it in now for one

2- deal with my running issues, lay up for the winter and then have the shop do it at the beginning of next season

3- take the carb off after winterizing and rebuild it myself over the winter.

I know nothing about carbs, but pulling the outdrive, replacing the impeller, polishing it, and then learning how to re-install it was a great experience for me. It allowed me to tinker on the boat during winter lay up. I now feel like I understand much more of what you all talk about with outdrives.

Thus, I was thinking I might make my winter project this year learning as much as I can about carbs.

The potential cons I can think of are:

1- I will have no way of knowing how any adjustments affect performance

2- Any potential problems that could occur because of not storing the boat with the carb in place, sealing off the intake.

I am interested in any thoughts on this!

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bifflefan]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

With the carb off, a couple strips of duct tape will do the trick to keep stuff out of the engine. No harm there.
As for the rebuild, I think from reading your post you can handle it. Rebuilding them is not rocket science, The hard work was done by the manufacture. Just follow the instructions and you will do fine. For your fist one id make notes as you go so as not to forget where any little cotter pin or check ball goes. They are fun to work on and gratifying. Ive done 100's of 4 stroke carbs, and im going to tackle my first 2 stroke carb this week, so best of luck to both of us.
Also, why wait? start it on a monday and by the weekend youll be ready to go.

 

[WizeOne]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

I know people who routinely remove the carb for winter, drain it of fuel and place it in a vacummized plastic bag. Then just tape off the entry into the intake manifold.

 

[HT32BSX115]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

If you don't want to rebuild it, send it to http://www.marinecarburetor.com/index.html and have them rebuild it.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[rbh]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

there is still lots of boating season left, if you can live with the way your boats running, then leave it till winter. But if your having big issues with the reliability pull it, get a rebuild kit and do it. It should not take that long if you have all the parts and a good manual.
You have all of us to help.
rob

 

[gadget73]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

Yes, but be sure you tape over the manifold to keep it sealed, and to keep dust, dirt, and whatever else from ending up down inside the motor.

The screws on the front are for idle mixture, and to some small extent the just above idle speed operation. They don't do diddly for cruise or WOT performance. There are different generic settings to start with depending on what sort of carb it is, but basically you set it to what the manual says to start with, then tweak for the best idle speed and smoothness. It ought to be covered in the shop manual what exactly they want you to do.

And yeah, a carb rebuild is not that big of a deal. Some small parts, but if you go slow, work in a well lit area, and put everything in a nice sized tray to ensure nothing gets lost, you should be good. Have a nice expoded diagram nearby to reference what part goes where and you should be good.

What kind of carb is this anyway, the Weber 4bbl? If so, those are a piece of cake. Also, depending on what exactly is wrong, you might be able to cheat and just dump the carb upside down to clean enough garbage out to make it go. I've done that a few times to mine when I had water in the fuel and other dirt issues. I know you're really not supposed to do that, but I was on the water and it was a choice of flipping it over in a tinfoil pan and hope or run for hours on one engine with no power steering. I flipped it and continued on my vacation at cruise speed.

 

[sickwilly]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

I believe its a 2 barrel mercarb (2004 4.3 Merc -- OM662964). I will be buying a carb rebuild kit and a manual for the engine, because my engine manual is not one of the ones you can get to in the adult only section -- at least it wasn't there in the past.

You guys now have me thinking of tackling this the next time I have a couple weeks in a row that I do not plan on boating, versus the off season.

 

[thannah84]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

They are simple....Shouldn't take more than 2 days to do it...Take one day (Afternoon probably) and disassemble. Take some pics while you are doing it to make sure that you get everything back the way it suppose to. Soak all metal parts in a carb or parts cleaner overnight (They sell them at autozone in a gallon can) Pull the parts out, inspect for varnish (May have to Agitate it to come out), rinse parts in water, and blow them all out nice and clean with compressed air and reassemble...Like I said, 2 day affair but shouldn't take more and a few hours....Go down to the merc dealer and order a genuine merc carb kit...Just remember to remove all rubber and plastic parts before you soak it in the carb cleaner...

 

[ken_23434]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

I rebuilt my Mercarb 2 barrel last week. I took it apart one evening (with 4 year old "helping") and put it back together the next day. Without the "help" from my son and other family commitments, I am sure I could have been done in one day. I have done about 5 carbs before, so I am a little experienced.

Get a can of the carb cleaner that you can soak the parts in. The one I have looks like a 1 gallon paint can. It has a strainer basket that is good for the smaller parts. It's nasty stuff, so have some rubber gloves to protect you hands some (it will eat away at them too, though)

The Mercarb only has 2 ball bearings in it. The rebuild kit I bought (Mercruiser one) had the new bearings supplied. Still keep an eye on where the parts came from and keep them organized in some way. I just had different areas on my table where I grouped the parts as I took it apart.

The "Adults only sticky" at the top of the forum has a download link to get the genuine Mercruiser Service manuals (free). No better resource than those for telling you how to do the rebuild.

The float adjustment was accomplished with a plastic ruler that came with my rebuild kit.

I was supposed to weigh the float to make sure it wasn't fuel logged, but I blew off that check. I did not have a scale sensitive enough to measure something that small except for one for my gun reloading, but I was too lazy to figure out the conversion from grains to grams... I think I was lucky, cause the motor runs good.

Compressed air is a must to ensure the passages are all cleaned out. Plus, it will blow dry the parts so you can put it back together quicker than waiting for them to air dry.

Remember, there are 2 ball bearings. If you miss the 2nd one, you will have a plug in the accelerator pump circuit, the motor will bog down, and you will be rebuilding it again soon. Personal experience.

Read the manual a couple times and get familar with the diagram. The whole process really is just "cook book it".

 

[ken_23434]

Re: Can I lay up over winter with the carb off the boat?

Oh, the carb cleaner will take off all the paint from the carb. I honestly spent most of my time making sure all the old paint was off the outside of the pieces so I could get a good finish when I repainted it.

Once you get the carb back together, tape off the gasket surface on the bottom and tape the opening on top and where the fuel line attaches and then spray it with some engine enamel. It's much easier to do a good job when the carb is off than when it's installed.

You will want to put that carb on and "verify" your work, but paint it, let it dry over night and check out your work the next day.