bugelingkayaker
Seaman Apprentice
- Joined
- Nov 13, 2019
- Messages
- 49
So I got a 1973 motor and boat for free last week (awesome!) but it was free because it wasn’t running (not awesome!) and as someone who doesn’t have much mechanical skills but with a basic understanding of how it works I set forth to YouTube to learn as much as I could to see if I could fix this thing. I successfully fixed my lawnmower the other week so how hard could a boat motor be? LOL well Hours and hours of videos later I felt confident enough to start taking it apart. Got everything off and opened up the carburetors to start cleaning them.
All going well until I’m putting the carbs back on. Tightening down a bolt, and tightening, and tightening.... and then suddenly it’s getting looser. Oh no. Oh nononononono please tell me I didn’t just do what I thought I did. Figure ok maybe if it’s just the bolt that broke I can get it out and find a replacement... got it back off and realized nope... I broke the top of the carburetors float cover off.
After spending a few moments contemplating which cliff I should throw myself off of I decided to look closer at the damage and saw some promising news: 1 the break was well above the first inlet so it’s only the part the bolt goes into that broke. 2: it was a clean break. So maayyybeee all is not lost. Checked online to confirm my fears that the part is not available anymore. So fixing it was my only hope. Tried roughing up the sides and then carefully applying some jbweld around the break and letting it sit. And while it seems to be holding I don’t want to take the chance of it popping free from the force of all 85 stallions in full gallop 5 miles out to sea. So I hit the workbench and cut out a couple pieces of steel, some pieces of gasket material and created this little bracket assembly. The part that had initially broke was to hold the little bell thing down against the rest of the carb, so to avoid stressing that too much, my bracket just goes around the whole side of the carb gently but firmly pressing it together.
anyways, as a non mechanic, how do y’all think I did here, am I a genius for finding a workaround? Or a moron for breaking it in the first place (I agree
) and then for thinking this might work?
anyways, words of praise, criticism, advice, all welcome. Thanks y’all
All going well until I’m putting the carbs back on. Tightening down a bolt, and tightening, and tightening.... and then suddenly it’s getting looser. Oh no. Oh nononononono please tell me I didn’t just do what I thought I did. Figure ok maybe if it’s just the bolt that broke I can get it out and find a replacement... got it back off and realized nope... I broke the top of the carburetors float cover off.
After spending a few moments contemplating which cliff I should throw myself off of I decided to look closer at the damage and saw some promising news: 1 the break was well above the first inlet so it’s only the part the bolt goes into that broke. 2: it was a clean break. So maayyybeee all is not lost. Checked online to confirm my fears that the part is not available anymore. So fixing it was my only hope. Tried roughing up the sides and then carefully applying some jbweld around the break and letting it sit. And while it seems to be holding I don’t want to take the chance of it popping free from the force of all 85 stallions in full gallop 5 miles out to sea. So I hit the workbench and cut out a couple pieces of steel, some pieces of gasket material and created this little bracket assembly. The part that had initially broke was to hold the little bell thing down against the rest of the carb, so to avoid stressing that too much, my bracket just goes around the whole side of the carb gently but firmly pressing it together.
anyways, as a non mechanic, how do y’all think I did here, am I a genius for finding a workaround? Or a moron for breaking it in the first place (I agree
) and then for thinking this might work?anyways, words of praise, criticism, advice, all welcome. Thanks y’all
