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We took our "New" out for her first voyage with us Saturday. I have a few rigging changes I want to make, but the significant problem we had was the motor (wow, I was shocked). I started it at home and it started up like a champ and ran well, water coming out the pee hole and everything. When I got to the lake it ran well for about 5 minutes, then started missing really bad, especially at higher RPMs. When I tilted the motor up I’m pretty sure fuel (and not just water) ran out the front. Now I’m no professional mechanic but I’m pretty sure it is not supposed to do that. When I got it home I found that the pivot bolt for the choke lever had come out (I found the bolt and both washers and the bushing in the engine compartment if you can believe that). I’m hoping this just means the choke was coming on due to the vacuum of the engine (especially at higher RPMs), but I’m not sure that would cause the fuel to pour out when I tipped it up – however of course it would make it run rich. That reminded me to put an extinguisher back by the fuel tanks. With the motor at idle you can’t even hear it running which is nice.

I guess my question to the group is if the engine is allowed to choke itself would you expect to see that much fuel or do I have a stuck float or two or three?

Fix the choke linkage, and run the Honda 50 in your driveway at idle to 3000 RPM to see if that was the problem. Keep the cover off while doing so and observe closely. A choked engine would put a lot of gas into the cylinders and flood the engine cutting it off pretty quickly. If gas came out of the housing when you tilted it, I think you should look at all fittings and connections while doing the test above. Make sure the float bowl bleed screws are snug.

This is rather embarassing but since it may help someone else I'll fess up. The person I bought the boat from evidently left the carburator bowl drain plugs (or bleed screws as referred to above) open after winterization. I don't know if this is common practice but I sure didn't think of it. I'm lucky the engine isn't a crispy mass of metal and plastic. I guess it isn't because I stopped using the engine when I had problems.

The choke bolt being gone was a red herring - the way the choke works it wouldn't matter if it was in there or not once the engine was started. Without it the manual choke would not work but other than that it wouldn't matter.

Alan

Alan - thats nothing of which to be ashamed. Leaving bleed screws open like that is a really poor practice and not one easily detected, either. Kudos to shutting down the minute you realised you had a fuel issue.

There is no such animal as a 'small fuel leak' on a boat, of course.

Alan,
Be sure to lube all the 3 carb linkage on a yearly basis. Those throttle controls are very delicate on movements.
Dave

alanmoor wrote:This is rather embarassing but since it may help someone else I'll fess up. The person I bought the boat from evidently left the carburator bowl drain plugs (or bleed screws as referred to above) open after winterization. I don't know if this is common practice but I sure didn't think of it. I'm lucky the engine isn't a crispy mass of metal and plastic. I guess it isn't because I stopped using the engine when I had problems.

The choke bolt being gone was a red herring - the way the choke works it wouldn't matter if it was in there or not once the engine was started. Without it the manual choke would not work but other than that it wouldn't matter.

Alan