Stalled and never started again

Hello
I am not a mechanic or a boat guru by any means but I do have the ability to learn quickly by doing and learning from failures. I am however plain and simple stuck. I received my first boat from a friend. It is a 1987 Bayliner with an OMC Cobra 3.0L engine. They said they didn't use it anymore and gave it to us. They also didn't know much about boats, just that it ran in the water but hadn't been in the water for several years. We started the boat up this spring and made the poor decision of putting it on the water without cleaning out the tank or doing any of the things I have now learned I should have done. It obviously died on the water and we had to be towed back to shore. We then took it home and gave it some of the TLC it so badly needed. We drained the fuel that had been sitting in it for however many years it was.... It was gross... I've never seen gasoline look this color. We added fresh ethanol free gasoline and some sea foam. We tried it again on the water and it ran a little better but it was clear the carb needed redone. I bought a rebuild kit and did that and cleaned the fuel pump and changed the fuel filter and changed the anti siphon valve And added an electric choke. Once we put it all back together, she fired up and we were excited all seemed to be well, we would just need to tune the idle screws and whatnot. The next day I started her up and she idled rough and before I could make any adjustments because I was working alone that day, she stalled.... Well she hasn't fired since. We have determined there is no spark going to the plug but we are lost....we changed the coil, distributor cap, points, rotor, wires, spark plugs and nothing we have done has fixed anything... The battery is fully charged, the kill switch is active and in good working order, we checked every fuse we could find and nothing has helped. We even took off the electric choke since that was the primary thing that changed the most. Please help me... Give me something to look at that maybe I'm missing. Thanks.

May want to ask a mod to move to the omc forum.


And welcome to the forum.

first, welcome aboard

second, its nearly never the coil

third. explain how you set the points. most likely the initial issue was the points needed adjustment. did you file the points? did you set the rough gap? what was the dwell? what did you set the timing to?

Thank you for the kind welcome

After I learned how to see if the coil was ok (YouTube lol) I learned that all four that had been stored on the boat were all fine. Glad I didn't pay for those.

Here is where I have to apologize... do you mean it didn't run well because the points had never properly been set? Also I didn't know dwell was a term until today. May father in law set the points and I know he didn't file them. He set the gap to manufacturer specs. Or that's what he said. As far as the timing I don't know what you mean. We followed the book to set number 1 at TDC and went from there

even new points in a package need the contacts filed. a film of corrosion will cover the points from non-use and they simply wont fire.

being a 3.0, rough gap at 0.016", set dwell to 32 degrees, set timing to 4 BTDC. if the dwell meter doesnt show a reading while cranking, go back to the points.

Scott Danforth said:

even new points in a package need the contacts filed. a film of corrosion will cover the points from non-use and they simply wont fire.

being a 3.0, rough gap at 0.016", set dwell to 32 degrees, set timing to 4 BTDC. if the dwell meter doesnt show a reading while cranking, go back to the points.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I will try that and go from there!