1959 johnson seahorse after rebuild

[razor49]

After the carb rebuild and coils. (no plug wires) I ran it in a bucket of water idling. Started on 2nd pull and purred lilke a kitten. So far so good. I took it out on the lake today and this is what I have. runs pretty rough. I pulled the choke out when runnning and it wanted to die. So i know it must be running rich. This is where I am a little lost right now. It idles great but is rough running. When I adjusted high and low it no longer wanted to idle. What should I do?
thank you for helping me out.

 

[HighTrim]

Re: 1959 johnson seahorse after rebuild

Did you follow Joe Reeves technique for setting the needles? It is posted in the FAQs.

 

[1946Zephyr]

Re: 1959 johnson seahorse after rebuild

I think you should have trimmed off about 3/8" of an inch off of each end of your splark plug leads, when you install new coils. This way, you will have a fresh new connection on your new coils. Also, trim off right where the spring connector attaches, in the spark plug boot. Since it ran fine in the yard and crappy out on the lake, that tells me the humidity level on the water gave you problems. It's a pretty common thing. Unfortunately, you'll need to take the mag plate off in order to do this and you'll need to loosen up all the spark plug lead hold downs and scoot the leads toward the coils, the amount of distance you trimmed off. If you don't, then they will work out in a short time, spoiling another afternoon on the lake.

Good Luck. I hope this helps.