Hello everyone!
Every time I need some boating advice my google searches bering me to an iboats forum thread most of the time, but this time I think I need to reach out to you directly. Hopefully I can get a little help with a project boat I picked up last week.
Backstory: I bought a 14 foot aluminum modified V to use on a local small river for catfishing. The hull itself is in good shape, no leaks, etc. The motor is a mid 80's Honde BF75 7.5 hp tiller short shaft outboard. I bought the setup from a friend. He told me 2 seasons ago he went to take the boat out and it started and idled, but would bog when throttled and die. He ran seafoam through the fuel, which did not help, and then he stored the motor untouched until I bought it from him.
I'm generally handy, but I know very little of small engines. I'm not afraid to tear things apart, but I generally need someone over my shoulder telling me what to do. I have a friend that is a snowmobile enthusiast so he helped me take the carbeurator apart and clean it. The jet was clogged, as well as one of the intakes for the float/pan thing.
I'. still waiting for new spark plugs, but the old ones "weren't that bad" and they were sparking so I left them in the motor for now. I changed the oil on the upper and lower units, and moment of truth, I finally got it to fire up! I got it to a nice smooth idle and it would rev up consistently, so we did a "hot soak" with seafoam. After the soak, when i was doing the burnoff, the motor stopped peeing water and overheated and died. I thought at the time I didnt have the water level in the tub high enough. After the motor cooled it started right back up and had a strong stream of water peeing out of it again so I wrote it off as "my mistake" and continued with the burn off, which was uneventful past the one overheat.
Tonight I decided it to take it for a road test so I mounted the motor and put it in the river. Initially the motor started and idled fine. It died when I shifted it into reverse, but it started right back up so i didn't think too much of it. I ran the boat about a mile upstream. The motor was slower than I expected but I just assumed my expectations were too high. I turned the boat around, ran it a couple hundred yards, and put the boat into neutral to see how it idled after running and it died after a couple of minutes idling. I tied off on a tree and tried starting it but to no avail. I went at that thing for an easy 30 minutes, and it never even thought about starting again.
Quick note: I realized after about 10 minutes of trying to start the motor that I never vented my gas tank, which in my eyes would explain why the motor died and also maybe why the motor felt underpowered. I pulled the plugs out and the had a white residue on them, again assuming they were running lean. I still couldn't figure out why it wouldn't start back up though.
When I got back to my house I tested the spark the best I could with the resources I had available, and I don't "think" the plugs were sparking, but it was bright out and I wasn't gonna touch them to find out.
My next step is to change the spark plugs, but That's about the extent of my abilities. What do I do next if the motor won't fire with new plugs?
Every time I need some boating advice my google searches bering me to an iboats forum thread most of the time, but this time I think I need to reach out to you directly. Hopefully I can get a little help with a project boat I picked up last week.
Backstory: I bought a 14 foot aluminum modified V to use on a local small river for catfishing. The hull itself is in good shape, no leaks, etc. The motor is a mid 80's Honde BF75 7.5 hp tiller short shaft outboard. I bought the setup from a friend. He told me 2 seasons ago he went to take the boat out and it started and idled, but would bog when throttled and die. He ran seafoam through the fuel, which did not help, and then he stored the motor untouched until I bought it from him.
I'm generally handy, but I know very little of small engines. I'm not afraid to tear things apart, but I generally need someone over my shoulder telling me what to do. I have a friend that is a snowmobile enthusiast so he helped me take the carbeurator apart and clean it. The jet was clogged, as well as one of the intakes for the float/pan thing.
I'. still waiting for new spark plugs, but the old ones "weren't that bad" and they were sparking so I left them in the motor for now. I changed the oil on the upper and lower units, and moment of truth, I finally got it to fire up! I got it to a nice smooth idle and it would rev up consistently, so we did a "hot soak" with seafoam. After the soak, when i was doing the burnoff, the motor stopped peeing water and overheated and died. I thought at the time I didnt have the water level in the tub high enough. After the motor cooled it started right back up and had a strong stream of water peeing out of it again so I wrote it off as "my mistake" and continued with the burn off, which was uneventful past the one overheat.
Tonight I decided it to take it for a road test so I mounted the motor and put it in the river. Initially the motor started and idled fine. It died when I shifted it into reverse, but it started right back up so i didn't think too much of it. I ran the boat about a mile upstream. The motor was slower than I expected but I just assumed my expectations were too high. I turned the boat around, ran it a couple hundred yards, and put the boat into neutral to see how it idled after running and it died after a couple of minutes idling. I tied off on a tree and tried starting it but to no avail. I went at that thing for an easy 30 minutes, and it never even thought about starting again.
Quick note: I realized after about 10 minutes of trying to start the motor that I never vented my gas tank, which in my eyes would explain why the motor died and also maybe why the motor felt underpowered. I pulled the plugs out and the had a white residue on them, again assuming they were running lean. I still couldn't figure out why it wouldn't start back up though.
When I got back to my house I tested the spark the best I could with the resources I had available, and I don't "think" the plugs were sparking, but it was bright out and I wasn't gonna touch them to find out.
My next step is to change the spark plugs, but That's about the extent of my abilities. What do I do next if the motor won't fire with new plugs?