avoncalling
Recruit
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2003
- Messages
- 4
Boater newbie here. I had bought a brand new Tohatsu 9.8 hp portable outboard last March 2002, and when the season ended I don't think I completely winterized my portable 2 stroke as I have been reading people are doing on this board are doing to theirs.<br /><br />I believe I did allow most of the gasoline to be run off at the end of the season ( running the motor without the fuel line to the gas tank) but I don't think I burned off all of it. I let it run until it sputtered quite a bit and then I manually shut the engine off worried that I might destroy the engine running the motor without fuel.<br /><br />I have yet to change the lower unit oil, but I stored the portable engine in a room temperature environment so I'm not so worried about freezing temperatures causing problems. The motor is mounted on a vertical stand and I ALWAYS flush the motor with cool hose water through earmuffs after each trip and at the end of the season.<br /><br />I'm worried that I did not properly winterize the engine. I had no idea what de-fogging the engine was until now nor about putting fuel stabilizers in my plastic gas tank which still contained about 2 gallons of fuel in it.<br /><br />My question is, what should I do now? Summer is just around the corner in the northeast and I want to get my engine ready. Could any of you kindly direct me on what I should do with the following:<br /><br />1) the engine- how do I make sure I didn't foul up the engine's carbs with varnished fuel deposits- is there any way I can clean up the engine if there is any varnish on the carbs before I start up the engine. Should I add anything to the fuel to clean up any leftover residue from the last season? If so, what should I add? Should I still defog the engine? I'm no mechanic so I don't know if I can do even that!<br /><br />2) What do I do with the gasoline in my plastic gas tank. I don't think I want to use the fuel left in it, it might be contaminated or whatever because I didn't add any fuel stabilizer to the fuel tank. Once emptied how can I clean up the fuel tank and nozzles if they too had varnish?<br /><br />3) Should I take it to a mechanic for a pre-season lookover? Will my carbs have to be manually cleaned?<br /><br />I'm promising myself this won't happen again this year, hopefully I'll be wiser.
