So I recently bought a used boat and have been working on the motor trying to get it to run right. I was told the boat sat for about a year prior to me buying it. I'm looking for some help pointing me in the right direction to check some basic things out here on my own before I haul it to a mechanic. The motor starts fine and will idle fine, revs up fine all while using the fast idle. Once I idle the motor down and try to put it in gear it immediately dies. No coughing, sputtering, or anything like that it just dies. I can go in the back with the cover off and manually idle the motor up while someone else at the console puts it in gear and it goes into gear just fine. So my first thought was that I just need to adjust the idle up. I can also put it into and out of gear no problem while on the hose in the driveway with no load on the prop. Now once in gear the motor idles around the lake fine with no noticeable problems, once I try to give it gas to get up and go it just bogs down and lugs around (it never really opens up). It probably doesn't go over 8-10 mph i'm guessing. It will however open up and rev high when in neutral. I let the motor idle for about a half hour last night while on the lake to see if it got any better.
In talking with a friend he thinks the carbs just need to be rebuilt. When I first opened up the motor cover after I bought this boat there was quite a bit of dust and sand inside of the motor cover. I could even see where it had been sucked in towards the air box by the carbs. I bought the rebuild kits for the carbs and we are planning on doing that this Saturday. I can also grab the prop with the motor off and can rotate the engine through a compression stroke. I don't know how hard that should be but it requires a little bit of effort but not overly hard. I thought I might also find someone with an engine compression gauge and see what that tells me. I put a can of seafoam in about 8 gallons of gas that is in the boat. I think about 3/4 of the tank of gas is new gas according to the guy I bought the boat from.
The spark plugs are ql77jc4 and I took them out and looked at them and they looked mostly black. All of the fuel lines, fuel bulb etc... look relatively new. The fuel bulb stays relatively tight when running and what i believe is the fuel pump on the motor has a small tag that says alcohol resistant. I'm guessing the entire fuel system has fairly recently been replaced.
Is there anything else that I can check relatively easily. I'm fairly handy when pointed in the right direction, i just don't always know where to start.
In talking with a friend he thinks the carbs just need to be rebuilt. When I first opened up the motor cover after I bought this boat there was quite a bit of dust and sand inside of the motor cover. I could even see where it had been sucked in towards the air box by the carbs. I bought the rebuild kits for the carbs and we are planning on doing that this Saturday. I can also grab the prop with the motor off and can rotate the engine through a compression stroke. I don't know how hard that should be but it requires a little bit of effort but not overly hard. I thought I might also find someone with an engine compression gauge and see what that tells me. I put a can of seafoam in about 8 gallons of gas that is in the boat. I think about 3/4 of the tank of gas is new gas according to the guy I bought the boat from.
The spark plugs are ql77jc4 and I took them out and looked at them and they looked mostly black. All of the fuel lines, fuel bulb etc... look relatively new. The fuel bulb stays relatively tight when running and what i believe is the fuel pump on the motor has a small tag that says alcohol resistant. I'm guessing the entire fuel system has fairly recently been replaced.
Is there anything else that I can check relatively easily. I'm fairly handy when pointed in the right direction, i just don't always know where to start.
