Does Trolling cause carbon buildup?

Montauk17

Recruit
Joined
Aug 7, 2004
Messages
4
I have a 60 hp Johnson (1985)just had carbs cleaned at shop, went fishing for an hour of slow trolling, and beat it back to the harbor. The engine stalled in nuetral twice while docking. I thought the cleaning would have fixed this. Do I have to worry about build up again?
 

petrolhead

Chief Petty Officer
Joined
Oct 16, 2003
Messages
614
Re: Does Trolling cause carbon buildup?

Did you just have the carburettors cleaned, or were the cylinders "de-carbed" too? Cleaning the carburettors doesn't get rid of carbon buildup, because you don't get carbon buildup in the carburettors, just gunk and dirt. <br />You need to take the spark plugs out and inspect them, if they are all black and sooty, and especially if it's a sort of crusty black deposit then that's the carbon you need to remove, do this with a propritary de-carb product (not carburettor cleaner). The instructions on the pack will tell you exactly how to do this.<br />If they are black and wet the engine may just be running rich, in which case the slow idle needle needs leaning out, there's a good description somewhere on this site of how to set it correctly.
 

BillP

Captain
Joined
Aug 10, 2002
Messages
3,290
Re: Does Trolling cause carbon buildup?

Trolling will also plug up the exhaust system. Not commonly heard of but a friend of mine had it happen to a pair of 130 yamaha saltwaters at 650 hrs. He typically trolls 6 hrs for every 1 hr of running fast. His mechanic said both engine exhausts were plugged to about 1/2" diameter. They weren't making full power. They run too cold at idle and stuff builds up instead of burning off.
 

alcan

Commander
Joined
Dec 14, 2001
Messages
2,505
Re: Does Trolling cause carbon buildup?

The question here is does trolling cause carbon build-up. The correct answer is NO! Trolling causes one to catch fish, hopefully. All these carbon,gunking,choking and fouling type problems stem from things like improper adjustments, improper operation or something is just broken. If a rig is set up correctly, it will troll for many seasons. The deal is, hours are hours, the more hours you have on your motor the more often you need service. You see 13ft rigs with a 300GT trying to troll dead slow, draging a sea anchor with a happytroller and a couple o 5 gal buckets. This is an improper set-up, not the right tool for the job. Often times this motor stalling,jerking not ideling smooth, espeicaly right after a servicing is caused by the low speed being dialed too lean. We often read where a person is having carbon build-up problems from idling through a no-wake zone between their slip and the play ground. This is non-sence, it has nothing to do with the no-wake zone, there is a problem some where that needs attention. Then there are the cronic de-carb juice users (tune-up in a can). Sure I use this stuff,once in a while, from what I've seen it works. If used as directed. But it is just a PART of a total maintenace procedure, not a magic bullet, not a repair. If you need to use this stuff once a week, you've got other problems.
 
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