WoodenBoat75
Recruit
- Joined
- May 4, 2014
- Messages
- 2
Hi there (experts?) 
This is my first post here, so go easy on me, lol.
While I've wrenched on many a Jeep and motorcycle motor, outboards are fairly new to me. A family member recently acquired a 20-something foot sailboat from the 1970's with a 6hp outboard that the previous owner said was original to the boat.
The outboard says Chrysler Sailor on it and there's a large 6 at one end. I assume this means it's a 6hp motor. It's a small motor with 2 cylinders and I'd be impressed if it was much more than 6hp. The patina, fiberglass housing, design, etc appear to be mid 70's - which would match the boat's age and previous owner's statements.
The situation: Being the only one with a truck in the family, I had the honor of picking the boat up from a marina 3 hours away! I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on as it wasn't becoming my boat, but my brother tells me the previous owner DC'd the fuel line and ran the motor until it died (standard procedure to empty the carb of fuel). However, he said he did this after I had pulled the boat from the lake! (Doh!) Like I said, I wasn't paying attention. It was raining, so I sat in the truck and read a book. Anyway, the motor wouldn't start, so I immediately thought perhaps the carb was gummed up even though the fuel had been burned out of it. Later, my brother would confirm that prior to this previous winter, someone had started the motor at the boat's new dock and admitted to not running the carb dry. So, I figured old gas had turned to varnish and gummed up jets and other aspects of the carb. Stripped the carb down, cleaned it out, installed new gaskets, re-mounted it and voila! it works. The motor runs great - except that I didn't see much water coming from the tell-tail exit ports. It was more of a dribble. Then, I recalled the previous owner had ran the motor until it died to get the fuel out of the carb with the motor out of the water and figured the impeller was shot.
I removed the gear case from the top section (4 bolts), the 2 halves separated by an inch or so, but were held together by the shifting rods. I removed the allen wrench screw holding them together and the two halves came apart.
Once apart, I removed the 4 bolts holding the water pump body in place - one of which, the head twisted off and it took some thread penetrating spray, heating the casing with a blow torch and cooling the bolt stud with ice to get it out. Once off, the impeller actually looked impressive. I was expecting to see a melted mess, but it was obviously replaced within a few years and did not succumb to over heating as I thought it might have.
My current two issues for which I need some advice: When I mounted the two outboard halves back together - connecting the shifting rods with the same screw and everything just how it was, I noticed something - the shift lever is off. Before I took it apart, neutral was neutral, reverse was reverse, forward was forward. Now the prop spins in neutral and reverse, and the shift lever won't move to the forward position. :-/ ...obviously something happened while the two halves were apart, or I didn't do something right when I put them back together. I noticed the prop spun as I slowly pulled the rope while in neutral, so I didn't try and start it. Obviously the prop spinning in neutral isn't helpful and only having one direction available doesn't help much either.
My other issue, when the motor was running before I split the two halves to inspect the impeller, the tell-tale exit ports pretty much just dribbled water. While the outboard was split, I connected a small hose to the intake water tube (beneath the engine on the upper half) that seats inside the water pump housing and turned on the water. Within seconds, it exited the tell-tale ports clear and without debris. I suspect that from the impeller up, there is no cooling system blockage or issue. I didn't try and force water in the bottom section inlets as I ran out of time, but I'll look into that next time I'm able to work on the motor. To test the motor the day I remounted the carb, I had the intake inlets connected to a garden hose via that suction-cup looking clamp thing that covers both sides of the inlets and had the water on enough that it was leaking out around the suction cup things. When I separated the gear case from the motor, there was definitely water in the cooling system. I'm just not sure why the pressure would seemingly be so low (dribbles from the tell-tale ports).
My number one priority is to fix the gear linkage. Any advice as to what happened and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated. Any ideas about the possible cooling system issue would be "cool" too.
Thanks!
If anyone needs more info, or pictures, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Like I said, outboards are new to me, but I'm pretty mechanically inclined, so I understand how things work pretty well and have no issues taking things apart and putting them back together (unless 30+ years of corrosion gets in the way).
This is my first post here, so go easy on me, lol.
While I've wrenched on many a Jeep and motorcycle motor, outboards are fairly new to me. A family member recently acquired a 20-something foot sailboat from the 1970's with a 6hp outboard that the previous owner said was original to the boat.
The outboard says Chrysler Sailor on it and there's a large 6 at one end. I assume this means it's a 6hp motor. It's a small motor with 2 cylinders and I'd be impressed if it was much more than 6hp. The patina, fiberglass housing, design, etc appear to be mid 70's - which would match the boat's age and previous owner's statements.
The situation: Being the only one with a truck in the family, I had the honor of picking the boat up from a marina 3 hours away! I wasn't paying much attention to what was going on as it wasn't becoming my boat, but my brother tells me the previous owner DC'd the fuel line and ran the motor until it died (standard procedure to empty the carb of fuel). However, he said he did this after I had pulled the boat from the lake! (Doh!) Like I said, I wasn't paying attention. It was raining, so I sat in the truck and read a book. Anyway, the motor wouldn't start, so I immediately thought perhaps the carb was gummed up even though the fuel had been burned out of it. Later, my brother would confirm that prior to this previous winter, someone had started the motor at the boat's new dock and admitted to not running the carb dry. So, I figured old gas had turned to varnish and gummed up jets and other aspects of the carb. Stripped the carb down, cleaned it out, installed new gaskets, re-mounted it and voila! it works. The motor runs great - except that I didn't see much water coming from the tell-tail exit ports. It was more of a dribble. Then, I recalled the previous owner had ran the motor until it died to get the fuel out of the carb with the motor out of the water and figured the impeller was shot.
I removed the gear case from the top section (4 bolts), the 2 halves separated by an inch or so, but were held together by the shifting rods. I removed the allen wrench screw holding them together and the two halves came apart.
Once apart, I removed the 4 bolts holding the water pump body in place - one of which, the head twisted off and it took some thread penetrating spray, heating the casing with a blow torch and cooling the bolt stud with ice to get it out. Once off, the impeller actually looked impressive. I was expecting to see a melted mess, but it was obviously replaced within a few years and did not succumb to over heating as I thought it might have.
My current two issues for which I need some advice: When I mounted the two outboard halves back together - connecting the shifting rods with the same screw and everything just how it was, I noticed something - the shift lever is off. Before I took it apart, neutral was neutral, reverse was reverse, forward was forward. Now the prop spins in neutral and reverse, and the shift lever won't move to the forward position. :-/ ...obviously something happened while the two halves were apart, or I didn't do something right when I put them back together. I noticed the prop spun as I slowly pulled the rope while in neutral, so I didn't try and start it. Obviously the prop spinning in neutral isn't helpful and only having one direction available doesn't help much either.
My other issue, when the motor was running before I split the two halves to inspect the impeller, the tell-tale exit ports pretty much just dribbled water. While the outboard was split, I connected a small hose to the intake water tube (beneath the engine on the upper half) that seats inside the water pump housing and turned on the water. Within seconds, it exited the tell-tale ports clear and without debris. I suspect that from the impeller up, there is no cooling system blockage or issue. I didn't try and force water in the bottom section inlets as I ran out of time, but I'll look into that next time I'm able to work on the motor. To test the motor the day I remounted the carb, I had the intake inlets connected to a garden hose via that suction-cup looking clamp thing that covers both sides of the inlets and had the water on enough that it was leaking out around the suction cup things. When I separated the gear case from the motor, there was definitely water in the cooling system. I'm just not sure why the pressure would seemingly be so low (dribbles from the tell-tale ports).
My number one priority is to fix the gear linkage. Any advice as to what happened and how to fix it would be greatly appreciated. Any ideas about the possible cooling system issue would be "cool" too.
Thanks!
If anyone needs more info, or pictures, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Like I said, outboards are new to me, but I'm pretty mechanically inclined, so I understand how things work pretty well and have no issues taking things apart and putting them back together (unless 30+ years of corrosion gets in the way).
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