l008com
Senior Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2007
- Messages
- 751
I've got a 1989 Mercury 90hp outboard, 3 cylinder. It's been on the family boat since the mid 90s. The way I use the boat changed significantly around 2009 or so. When I went from using it to drive high speed around a small calm lake, to driving it at much slower speeds in and around larger rivers and Boston harbor.
The boat starts up and idles pretty well, though it's usually very smokey. Smokier than most old boats. But it clears up once it idles for a while.
The boat goes at headway speed just fine on calm waters. And of course this motor always runs great when you're planed out. It wants to scream. . .
But in-between is where the trouble is. Almost everywhere I boat now is no-wake zone but much of it is industrial and/or just huge area where small boats like mine won't literally go headway speed. Ironically the speeds we do go make the biggest wakes, and if we were allowed to just go 25 mph, there would be much less wake, but that's another topic entirely.
So if I'm going day 5 to 10 miles per hour and not planed out, for an extended period of time, then when I get off the throttle to go through locks, the engine really starts to run poorly. It starts smoking again and sometimes it can conk out. The other day it started to happen but I was alone, so I put it back in gear and did very slow donuts until it died down and started running normally.
If you drive at near idle long enough, it does seem to eventually clear out. But normal driving speed is more of a high idle, pushing lots of water, not planed out.
Also if the seas are choppy, I have this same problem but much worse. After bouncing around for a while, the engine will really start smoking and it will often stall and I'll have to restart it. But once it finally restarts, it will mostly run normally.
The easy answer is that I have the wrong kind of boat and the wrong kind of engine for the kind of boating I'm doing these days. But I have what I have and that's probably never going to change.
So given that I'm driving around in an over 30 year old, 3 cylinder, triple-carbeurated, 2-cycle engine, is this normal behavior? Or is this a problem? It's been behaving like this for years and it does not seem to be getting worse.
I do fog the engine every fall and it's a 2 cycle so there's no engine oil to change. I put in good gas and I often mix in some Seafoam into the fuel. But no matter what, it seems to run the same, which is pretty good overall but with some hiccups.
The boat starts up and idles pretty well, though it's usually very smokey. Smokier than most old boats. But it clears up once it idles for a while.
The boat goes at headway speed just fine on calm waters. And of course this motor always runs great when you're planed out. It wants to scream. . .
But in-between is where the trouble is. Almost everywhere I boat now is no-wake zone but much of it is industrial and/or just huge area where small boats like mine won't literally go headway speed. Ironically the speeds we do go make the biggest wakes, and if we were allowed to just go 25 mph, there would be much less wake, but that's another topic entirely.
So if I'm going day 5 to 10 miles per hour and not planed out, for an extended period of time, then when I get off the throttle to go through locks, the engine really starts to run poorly. It starts smoking again and sometimes it can conk out. The other day it started to happen but I was alone, so I put it back in gear and did very slow donuts until it died down and started running normally.
If you drive at near idle long enough, it does seem to eventually clear out. But normal driving speed is more of a high idle, pushing lots of water, not planed out.
Also if the seas are choppy, I have this same problem but much worse. After bouncing around for a while, the engine will really start smoking and it will often stall and I'll have to restart it. But once it finally restarts, it will mostly run normally.
The easy answer is that I have the wrong kind of boat and the wrong kind of engine for the kind of boating I'm doing these days. But I have what I have and that's probably never going to change.
So given that I'm driving around in an over 30 year old, 3 cylinder, triple-carbeurated, 2-cycle engine, is this normal behavior? Or is this a problem? It's been behaving like this for years and it does not seem to be getting worse.
I do fog the engine every fall and it's a 2 cycle so there's no engine oil to change. I put in good gas and I often mix in some Seafoam into the fuel. But no matter what, it seems to run the same, which is pretty good overall but with some hiccups.
