I'm not sure what it is lately but I've had nothing but IL6's in the shop for the last three weeks. Week before last a gentleman called me and said "No one will even look at my motor, will you help me". He had a 85 IL6 90 Jet and he could only describe the problem as won't run and poor performance. I jumped in the truck and went to see him and the first thing I did was pull the fuel lines. Sand and grit ran out of the fuel pump so I flushed it, put it back together and pumped it up. Fuel ran out of #3 so o.k. we have dirt in the carb and the floats stuck. The flush was too late to help, (rarely works anyway).
I didn't have room to haul it back to the shop so I had him deliver it Saturday. I tore into it enough to pull the carbs and was just about to do that when I saw something odd in the throat of #2 carb. The needle nose plyers extracted a fairly large chunk of reed. Well, that's not good.
I stopped right there and ran a compression test. I was going to get the carbs off and into the tank and then do it because it tends to be more accurate with the carbs off. I get 132, 140, 110, 130, 132, 125. Obviously I'm concerned at the difference between #2 and #3 and mildly concerned about 6 so I start looking around the motor. Humm, no serial number on the welch plug, switch box #1 is a Mallory, the black liquid tape is gone from the coil wire connections, the coils are blue, merc did sell the blue ones at one time but these weren't Merc. I scratch the paint on the block and yep, it's been re-painted.
I called the owner and this is the advice I gave him. I told him there was a broken reed that would require removal of the front half and there was a 22% difference between cylinder #3 and #2. Removal and tear down of the power head would normally be the next step but this powerhead has already been rebuilt once. Not that it was a bad rebuild since it's lasted since at least 1990 when you bought it but because we don't know if it was bored or not. If the cylinder ingested the rest of the reed then there could be scoring on the cylinder walls that could will be deeper than .0075. If that's the case then a .030 over bore would be necessary. If it's already at .015 which is very likely then there's no fixing but you still have to pay me for my time. Finally I told him that even if I could get all the parts together I'm going to have to ship it out to get it bored because the only guy that will do it right around here is swamped this time of year with dirt bikes and ATV's. Besides all that, when you get done, you'll still have a 1985 motor that nobody around here but me will even offer to look at. I'm ready to retire and only decided to work on this one because I felt sorry and I've been in the same situation before.
In response he asked what I would do and I said by a new motor with a warranty and get back to enjoying worry free fishing again. When he asked me what he owed me I said zero, I didn't go anything but give you advice and 10 minutes of work of actual work. He insited on paying me for my time so I told him 5 cents an hour would be fine. He laughed and wrote me a check for 300.00. and said good honest advice is hard to come by these days, I got my money's worth today. While that made me feel good I didn't think I had done anything special and still don't. I was actually feeling bad that I had to tell him what I did.
I see a lot of folks on this site trying to patch up an old motor and get just one more season out of it. That I can understand because it sort of makes sense as long as you keep the parts throwing in check. If the motor is old and nobody will work on it but you still want to give it a try, that's fine just do the forensic's first and then do your research on parts cost vs. a rebuilt or even a new or newer motor. The hardest part is not admitting that you can't do the work, it's admitting that you shouldn't.
Hope this helps someone make a good decision in the future.
I didn't have room to haul it back to the shop so I had him deliver it Saturday. I tore into it enough to pull the carbs and was just about to do that when I saw something odd in the throat of #2 carb. The needle nose plyers extracted a fairly large chunk of reed. Well, that's not good.
I stopped right there and ran a compression test. I was going to get the carbs off and into the tank and then do it because it tends to be more accurate with the carbs off. I get 132, 140, 110, 130, 132, 125. Obviously I'm concerned at the difference between #2 and #3 and mildly concerned about 6 so I start looking around the motor. Humm, no serial number on the welch plug, switch box #1 is a Mallory, the black liquid tape is gone from the coil wire connections, the coils are blue, merc did sell the blue ones at one time but these weren't Merc. I scratch the paint on the block and yep, it's been re-painted.
I called the owner and this is the advice I gave him. I told him there was a broken reed that would require removal of the front half and there was a 22% difference between cylinder #3 and #2. Removal and tear down of the power head would normally be the next step but this powerhead has already been rebuilt once. Not that it was a bad rebuild since it's lasted since at least 1990 when you bought it but because we don't know if it was bored or not. If the cylinder ingested the rest of the reed then there could be scoring on the cylinder walls that could will be deeper than .0075. If that's the case then a .030 over bore would be necessary. If it's already at .015 which is very likely then there's no fixing but you still have to pay me for my time. Finally I told him that even if I could get all the parts together I'm going to have to ship it out to get it bored because the only guy that will do it right around here is swamped this time of year with dirt bikes and ATV's. Besides all that, when you get done, you'll still have a 1985 motor that nobody around here but me will even offer to look at. I'm ready to retire and only decided to work on this one because I felt sorry and I've been in the same situation before.
In response he asked what I would do and I said by a new motor with a warranty and get back to enjoying worry free fishing again. When he asked me what he owed me I said zero, I didn't go anything but give you advice and 10 minutes of work of actual work. He insited on paying me for my time so I told him 5 cents an hour would be fine. He laughed and wrote me a check for 300.00. and said good honest advice is hard to come by these days, I got my money's worth today. While that made me feel good I didn't think I had done anything special and still don't. I was actually feeling bad that I had to tell him what I did.
I see a lot of folks on this site trying to patch up an old motor and get just one more season out of it. That I can understand because it sort of makes sense as long as you keep the parts throwing in check. If the motor is old and nobody will work on it but you still want to give it a try, that's fine just do the forensic's first and then do your research on parts cost vs. a rebuilt or even a new or newer motor. The hardest part is not admitting that you can't do the work, it's admitting that you shouldn't.
Hope this helps someone make a good decision in the future.