Low power until on plane???

[BigBassin78]

When I first bought this boat two weeks ago, it had issues with not getting on plane(1978 115 evinrude, model#115899C), Service guy said rebuild carbs. So I did and that did the trick, very powerful, gets on plane quickly and flies on the water. Compression on the cylinders ran 121-125 between all four.

Now, today, me and my buddy are on the water and the it starts doing the same thing. Once I got the boat on plane with my buddy at the bow it would slowly pick up and then would max out at about 40 when the tilt was tuned to the right angle. Before it would do about 50 with 4 people in it and tilted further in.

So, I look the motor over and I find that the advance timing linkage is hanging unconnected. The little plastic ball socket that retains the linkage rod was broken and could not be fixed at that moment. I suppose this could be the issue, right? Could it still run with this linkage disconnected? At a fraction of the power? Giving the importance of the timing advance I was surprised that it even ran, let alone 40mph.

 

[fireman57]

Re: Low power until on plane???

you really need to hook this back up as it helps your timing at idle too. If you are bogging your engine instead of it running at the proper rpms you are asking for trouble spelled $$$$$$.

 

[emdsapmgr]

Re: Low power until on plane???

If the spark advance rod gets disconnected, the timer base will not advance/retard the ignition timing in sync with the throttle. The engine won't run well-as you have noted. The ball and sockets get old and brittle with age. It's a cheap fix to replace it: ball and socket-313703 which is probably superceded to another number like 395448, about $ 5.