I had my boat out on the river today and when I cut way back on the throtle i notice what I thought was steam coming out of the motor. I thought it was overheating so I decided to run it a little bit more to possibly cool it down. When I cut back on the throtle again steam which was actually smoke was coming out of the engine. I took the cover off and saw that behind and under the flywheel something was burning. I immediately put it out and thought everything was okay. I started the motor and took off again. Once more it caught on fire. I grabbed a bottle of water and poured on it and put it out again. Took off once more and again another fire. Put this one out and turned off the power switch which controls everything except the motor. Started back up again and just putted along at about 8-10 MPH. It never caught fire again but I had no tach depth finder and any instruments working since all of the are controlled by the power switch was off. I was about 20 mile up the river from where I launched so it took me quite a while to get back, but I made it without anymore fires. My question and, and I appoligise for the lenght of this post but I wanted to try and explain what had happened, is what caught on fire and was burning with a black pungent smell like a coil burning or wires burning? It didn't seem to have any effect on the motor running but I still took it easy the whole way back to the launch. If anybody has any idea what this was and what I need to check for to fix and remedy this problem I would greatly appreciate it. Again I'm sorry for the length of this post but I felt I had to explain what had happened.<br /><br />Thank you all.<br /><br />Mike 
