Merc 110 carb. clean or rebuild

[dajohnson53]

How hard is this project?<br /><br />Just acquired a '73 or '74 Merc 110 (9.8 hp). It runs pretty well - I spent 3 fairly long days trolling with it with a couple of periods of WOT just to see how it goes. It starts reasonably well and after warm up, idles fine. The idle is a tiny bit rough compared to a friends' late 60s 110, but does the job. The only maintenance history I know is that it has a brand new water pump impellor and that the lower unit (from the appearance of the old oil and shifting) is sound. The cowling is a little beat up (like most small kickers, it probably spent a lot of time in the back of a pickup truck), but looking at the condition of the leg and prop, it has very few actual hours of running. The leg looks like new and the prop sbows very little use.<br /><br />I'm thinking of doing carb maintenance this winter for two reasons - first, because I want to do what I can to make it start and idle a little better. But mostly, I just want to take the plunge into a carb. for the fun of it. I have the factory service manual as well as a Seloc manual (which I bought when I borrowed the above friend's 110 and wanted to change the impellor).<br /><br />As a reference, the kind of things I've done on my friend's 110 are:<br />checked compression<br />changed lower unit oil <br />removed and cleaned the tiny fuel filter near the carb.<br />changed water pump impellor<br /><br /><br />None of the stuff I did was technically difficult. The impellor was by far the worst, and for that it was really just getting the key to line up on the shaft and impellor bushing that was kind of frustrating.<br /><br />I know what floats and needles are from messing around with lawn mower and go-kart engines as a youth, but haven't really done much other than look at them and maybe wiggle things to loosen them up if it wasn't working.<br /><br />The advice I ask of you is, on a scale of 1 to 10, with, say the impellor being a 5, how difficult is cleaning and/or rebuilding a carb?<br /><br />Will this experience transfer to doing something similar with the big old carbs on my V-6 Johnson?<br />Thanks.

 

[jheron]

Re: Merc 110 carb. clean or rebuild

Well I have one of those motors and I rebuilt the carb on the tailgate of my truck when I first got it as I was out of town doing a job. If I remember rite the carb kit was 15.00 canadian and I think I only needed a 7/16" wrench a flat head screw driver and a can of gunk! all said and done probly took about 1/2 an hour <br />Scale from 1 to 10 Id give it a 3. By the way a little bit of axle grease helps with that key on the impeller and some electrical tape to hold the vanes in when you stick the impeller in the cup helps alot (you puul the tape out after its in the cup ) <br />Hope that helps <br />regards Jon

 

[dajohnson53]

Re: Merc 110 carb. clean or rebuild

Originally posted by jheron:<br /> Well I have one of those motors and I rebuilt the carb on the tailgate of my truck when I first got it as I was out of town doing a job. If I remember rite the carb kit was 15.00 canadian and I think I only needed a 7/16" wrench a flat head screw driver and a can of gunk! all said and done probly took about 1/2 an hour <br />Scale from 1 to 10 Id give it a 3.

Thanks - I'll give it a try, for sure.<br /><br />

Originally posted by jheron:<br /> ... By the way a little bit of axle grease helps with that key on the impeller and some electrical tape to hold the vanes in when you stick the impeller in the cup helps alot (you puul the tape out after its in the cup ) <br />Hope that helps <br />regards Jon

I figured out the grease part on my own, but the tape the vanes part - DOH!! I'll have to print off this hint and put it in the manual for that section. Thanks much!