Thread: 75 HP Mercury

Sliderman - Ding, Ding, Ding!! I took fuel line apart from tank to motor, and it was perfect - you could see all the way through the short hose, and air flowed freely through both hoses. Bulb was working as expected. Both end connectors also allowed free air movement. Okay, now go ahead and change plugs. Old ones did not look too bad at all, but heck $10 is easy PM. With that, the motor did seem to start easier, but still did not want to idle, and while it did gain a bit more RPM, it was still not right. Well, let's run it for a few minutes. And then, I see smoke where smoke should not be. As you can see below, one of the wires from voltage regulator had a bad connector, and had melted it's protective cover and others close to it causing a short and low voltage. There was not much left of this one connector! I cut off the old connectors, put on new ones, soldered all the new wires to the connectors, added some dielectric grease, cleaned everything up, and she is running like a champ (with muffs)!!

I'll take her to the lake at lunch for a true test under load, and report back. I truly appreciate all the thoughts and suggestions. I'm just glad it was something "simple" like this.

Be sure to separate those wires and NOT zip tie them together. They need the separation for cooling purposes. The factory always zip tied them, which resulted in over heating of the bundle. As a side note, if you are running a bad battery, the voltage regulator will call for full output continually. Which over heats the circuit and usually ends with the voltage regulator burning up internally.

Yep - they were zip tied together. They are now separate! I appreciate the advice!