Re: 60hp johnson wont idle
I have a 1971 Johnson 60 hp electric shift that had not been run in 8 years or so. I finally have it running pretty good after threatning it with a sledge hammer and blow torch. <br />I had pretty much the same trouble you are having so I will briefly describe what measures I think got it working right. <br />First, just because it sounds good running on the water hose does not mean it will run at all in the water. The carbs on my motor only have a low speed idle adjustment and no way to hook up an gauges so you adjust primarily by ear. <br />First, make sure your carbs are clean. The are pretty easy to take apart. clean all the jets with carb cleaner. Set the floats so that they are level with the housing and reasemble. The fuel hoses are very important. I have replaced every fuel hose and the gas tank before I got good fuel flow. Once you have the fuel lines in order, make sure none are leaking. The bulb should pump up and feel firm. If you have any leaks anywhere fix them before continueing.<br /><br />Check your points and plugs. The points are a pain to get to. The are under the flywheel and there are two sets. I cleaned mine with very fine sand paper and re-gaped them. This helped tremendously.<br /><br />The engine seems a bit picky about gas. Mine seems to run best with 89 octane, 50 to 1 oil mix.<br /><br />To adjust the carbs, put the motor in the water. You are wasting your time to try and adjust it in the front yard with a water hose. <br /><br />Carefully and gently turn the idle adjustment screws all the way down till they seat, then back them up 3/4 of a turn. If everything else is good, the motor should run reasonbly well at that point.<br />Run the motor for about 10 minutes to warm it up then adjust the second and third cyl. 1/8 of a turn at a time waiting 15 seconds between adjustments. You should adjust them till you get the smoothes and highest rpm from the motor. Once done with 2 and 3, adjust the number one carb in the same manner. finally adjust the idle adjustment skew on the side of the motor at the throttle linkage to set the idle rpm. The idle rmp should be about 800 rpm maybe a bit less. Be carefull that your idle rpm is not to high. It is very hard on the lower unit if the engine is running to fast when you engage forward/reverse<br /><br />My motor still tends to bog down abit if I run at idle for extended periods. I adjusted mine and would then go take it for a little run at wide open throttle so as not to be trying to adjust a flooded cylinder.<br /><br />Other things to look for. The butterflies on my carbs were not synched. Check them and make sure they all look like they are moving together and are in the same position. The butterfly on my center carb was not quite all the way open causing me to flood and loose about 400 rpm's.<br /><br />Compression check on my motor was 115 on all cylinders cold. I have not checked them warm, they should read higher with a warm motor. From <br />other posts I have read, anything over 100 psi is ok so long as all three are not more than 10% apart.<br /><br />On another subject, I would change the lower unit oil just to be carefull. The electric shift lower unit requires special lower unit oil. I bought some at Boaters World. I beleive it is a thinner oil than what is used in most lower units. The label on the oil will specifically say that it is for a johnson/evinrude electric shift. Do not use normal lower unit oil!<br /><br />My biggest problem was with fuel lines! Make sure that they are all good or you will never get the motor running right.<br /><br />You should also consider getting a manual. You can find them on ebay, amazon.com and iboats can probably get you one as well. Hope this helps. Good luck and talk nice to it, they like that.
