Thread: New old boat

Thank you guys!
Shadow, Lake Charles you guys just had some really hard times. It hit really bad down towards Houma. I actually worked for an outfit down there that designed flood control structures when I lived across Ponchartrain twenty five years ago. I had family down in N.O. Brought my great aunt Oris (92) up here to stay with us in Vermont after Katrina, then went back down with her and worked on her house to repair damage. She lived in Jefferson. She's gone now.

In less important news here, I had the boat out today on the CT river. Motor worked flawlwss all day. I loaded up quite a bit of gear, toolboxes, trolling motor and 2 batts in case I got stuck out, oars, double paddle, couple anchors, fishing gear depth sounder (shot thru the hull, didn't have a mount yet.

She ran bow high at first so I dropped the motor mount pin a notch and shifted some of the gear forward. Ran much better then, more level and faster. Doing two runs in opposite directions to average out current and wind, I am running 15.5 mph according to GPS, which isn't bad for a 30 year old 8hp motor on a 63 year old boat.

I checked out a lot of different potentil new fishing spots, anchoring at least a dozen on both shores without too much luck over about a 4 mile stretch of river. I only fished 1/32 oz jig heads with soft plastic shad baits, and I did get a late (11:00) start, so not too surprising for a first try. Caught only 1 crappie, but a nice 11 incher. Some small bass both LG and smallie, and about half a dozen perch.

Called it quits at about 3:00, and hauled all the way back to the launch ramp against wind (gusting to probably 15) and current. About a 20 minute run at full throttle. 20 feet from the launch dock, I throttled down from maybe 5mph (no wake zone) and the motor quit. I tried to restart but no go. Couple tries with both choke out and in, bulb was firm, and then I just had to get forward and grab the dock corner and do the walk of shame around that corner to get right with the ramp. Luckily nobody was there or waiting to launch, since it was a weekday!

After towing home I immediately put motor barrel under the Mariner, filled it, and tried to start. No go. Pulled a plug, looked good, tan insulator, but no gas smell to the plug even though I had choked it and pulled half a dozen times. So clearly no gas getting to the engine. Since the fuel bulb was firm, I'm going to guess it's a stuck float valve, or a blockage in the fuel feed inside the engine cover, Could be the filter I guess. Can't be the fuel pump is bad because the fuel bulb being firm would bypass that problem. Ad I don't think the carb jets are blocked unless every one of the circuits were blocked, since I choked it, and SOME fuel would have got through. So tomorrow I'll pull the carb. If the carb fuel bowl is empty, that will mean the float valve needs attention. If it's full then somehow all jets are clogged. Anyway, we'll see what's up tomorrow.......

And I polished that float valve seat, too......! Well maybe not enough. Who knows..........

Got the carb off. There was fuel in the bowl. And some dirt particles. Which says to me it wasn't the float valve sticking, but the jets all clogged.

After checking carefully I think the dirt particles were probably coming from the fuel pump gaskets.

I do have have replacement diaphragms, so I'll rebuild the pump, and one of the two gaskets I need to replace, but I lack the second fuel pump gasket. So I sent for it.

The fuel filter is inline before the fuel pump, so it can't filter out anything that occurs inside the fuel pump, and I think that the gaskets there were the probable problem, based on the color of the particles in the fuel bowl. The gaskets were hard to peel off -- they just shredded like they were glued down, and I had to scrape the remainder off. It was a fiber reddish color under a black rubber coating -- and that matched the particle colors in the fuel bowl.

So we're dead in the water for about a week until that missing gasket arrives. I'm also going to replace the carb float bowl O ring with a new one, to make sure we've got all new gaskets, O-rings and diaphragms in the carb, after the fuel filter.

I'm also going to replace the fuel filter itself and the engine internal fuel line (though they both look good). But then I'll know that everything that could shed any particles, from the filter on in to the carb is brand new.

Of course I'll have to clean all jets again.