Re: Perplexing Power Loss....
My first outing with my current used 90 hp was just as Silver said. I did have an overtemp warning however. I had good telltale but the stat was stuck shut which I proved later at home on the kitchen stove. The pee stream shot 2-3 " into (under) the water at idle. Misleading piece of info as I was unfamiliar with the routing of coolant at the time.
I had a '75 70 hp Rude with a stat that was causing intermittent problems that I couldn't locate and finally failed completely....had no warning horn.....befoe OEM's added them I guess. In it's final stages it would get hot and die and after cooling do it again. The last time it failed was at WOT and that cost me an engine overhaul. I had no idea I had a bad stat and that was causing my funny operation over the time I had it.
Over the years I have had problems with ignition coils getting hot and quitting, then cooling, working properly, and repeating the process. Silicon can do that too in your ignition trigger circuit, but both of these problems shouldn't be your concern as your engine should be as my '02 90 and have separate firing circuits for each cylinder......but it only has one (common) stator (I'd bet) and that is liken to an ignition coil and could be the problem or something in the trigger module.....my service manual only goes down to 75 hp so I can't give you accurate info. Sorry.
The fact that you can squeeze the bulb and get no response doesn't indicate a defective fuel pump to me.
Another possibility is crud in the tank/fuel lines. If you used alcohol to collect water in your tank (via fuel additive), it collects water all right, and you get a gooey blob as a result. That blob could clog your fuel line, strainer in the tank. BTDT
Lastly would be tank venting but that should show up as a collapsed bulb. 20 minutes sounds about right to suck down a tank. If that's the case, you would have to prime the bulb when you restarted the engine.....that would be a clue.
Best I can do.
Mark
