Re: Newbie looking for advice
Nice looking little boat.
The little guy in the boat thinks it IS flying, and its still on the trailer.
Ok, you have a long shaft motor, 20" long, see arrow in photo.
But your transom is only 15" tall.
Creates a bit of a mismatch.
To try to fix that, they added a jack plate to the transom, to raise the motor up. see photo.
It is hard to tell for sure, but the motor still looks too low to me.
This will cause planing and handling issues.
The motor should be lowered (tilted) all the way down, as close to vertical as possible.
This will give you the quickest planing.
Now, with the boat on the trailer, lower the motor down.
The large flat horizontal plate, just above the propeller, (anti-ventilation plate), should line up with the bottom of the hull, or be an inch above the bottom of the hull. Take a photo from the side, with the motor lowered down. Post it here so we can get a proper look at it.
See the lower red line in the diagram below.
The 3/4 throttle vs full throttle issue, sounds like a throttle cable / carb adjustment. It should not be done unless you have a repair manual in your hand, as you can easily adjust the fuel mixture too lean, or throw the timing off, if you adjust the wrong thing.
One thing you can check: With the motor off, push the throttle handle forward half way. Now remove the motor top cowl. and look at the carb butterfly, have someone continue pushing throttle forward as you watch the butterfly. The butterfly should move to straight horizontal at full throttle. If it is not going horizontal, or goes past horizontal, you have a problem.
Your motor may also only be firing on 2 or the 3 cylinders. A spark check should be performed.
And a compression check too while you are at it.
That looks like an awful lot of motor for that boat, be careful.