Last year I bought a used 1973 18 hp Evinrude for my 12 ft Achilles inflatable. I did the following to the motor right away:
- Replaced points, spark plugs and set timing.
- Checked compression - good.
- Sealed gearcase.
- Decarb.
- Checked carb - already cleaned and rebuilt.
- Set idle mixture.
- Checked impeller - already new.
- Performed link & synch.
- Replaced thermostat.
- Paint touch up.
At this point I had about $600 into the engine and it was looking good but it would be hard starting when cold, hesitate upon acceleration and get smoky and miss at prolonged idle but it would sneeze if I leaned out idle mixture too much. I found later that I did the link and synch wrong (used wrong 2 marks on flywheel) so after fixing that the hesitation was much less and it started cold easier. This winter I rebuilt the fuel pump. I've been using the motor alot this summer and found the motor flooded easily when starting cold. I would use little or no choke to start it and I found it would start easily. It still hesitated upon acceleration if it was idling more than 20 seconds, it appeared to be running too rich after idling for a minute. So it finally dawned on me to adjust the idle mixture again (after doing the link and synch correctly last Fall) and what do you know? Starts very easily, idles down to nothing now, accelerates great, much less smoky idling and no lean sneeze. Seems I finally got the order of adjusting things right and I am very happy with the motor and enjoyed the learning experience getting to this point. I found this summer I can pull 2 kids on tubes with 2 adults in the boat with ease. I can pull a skier but it is a little slow pulling them up. It's a fun boat and motor.
Thanks to everyone on this forum that responded to my posts about my motor in the last year.
- Replaced points, spark plugs and set timing.
- Checked compression - good.
- Sealed gearcase.
- Decarb.
- Checked carb - already cleaned and rebuilt.
- Set idle mixture.
- Checked impeller - already new.
- Performed link & synch.
- Replaced thermostat.
- Paint touch up.
At this point I had about $600 into the engine and it was looking good but it would be hard starting when cold, hesitate upon acceleration and get smoky and miss at prolonged idle but it would sneeze if I leaned out idle mixture too much. I found later that I did the link and synch wrong (used wrong 2 marks on flywheel) so after fixing that the hesitation was much less and it started cold easier. This winter I rebuilt the fuel pump. I've been using the motor alot this summer and found the motor flooded easily when starting cold. I would use little or no choke to start it and I found it would start easily. It still hesitated upon acceleration if it was idling more than 20 seconds, it appeared to be running too rich after idling for a minute. So it finally dawned on me to adjust the idle mixture again (after doing the link and synch correctly last Fall) and what do you know? Starts very easily, idles down to nothing now, accelerates great, much less smoky idling and no lean sneeze. Seems I finally got the order of adjusting things right and I am very happy with the motor and enjoyed the learning experience getting to this point. I found this summer I can pull 2 kids on tubes with 2 adults in the boat with ease. I can pull a skier but it is a little slow pulling them up. It's a fun boat and motor.
Thanks to everyone on this forum that responded to my posts about my motor in the last year.