Hello all, my first posting here. I have a 93 Evinrude 40HP engine that has less than 50 hours on it and has been well taken care of over the years. I'm the original owner as well. It doesn't get used often, and this season I decided to sell it instead of letting it sit at the dock most of the time. First start of the year took much longer than normal.. was beginning to think it had failed a coil over winter storage about the time it fired to life. Ran it for a bit at high idle to burn off the storage fogging oil, then took it out for a shakedown cruise. It planed off normally and ran at WOT like it always had for about 10 minutes or so. Then, it suddenly just died off.. sounded like it lost fuel. I hit the key and it immediately restarted. I punched the throttle back up to plane and it went for about 200 yards and did the same thing. I suspected water in the fuel, so I putted it in and drained/cleaned the tank out and drained the carbs. Didn't find any water, but it was last years remaining fuel so I disposed of it and bought some fresh stuff. Started it up and let it idle for about half an hour with no problems.. nice and smooth. Climbed in and took it out for another spin.. went good for about 2 minutes then just died again! This time it took a bit to get it restarted.. I think because I choked it first thinking it ran out of fuel. Once I got it started again it ran fine for about 5 minutes, then once again just died off while at about 3/4 throttle. I was beginning to suspect the fuel pump, so I restarted it (no choke) and it immediately started up again. It really worked to get on plane this time, but did achieve it. When I felt it start to die again I tried squeezing the primer bulb.. no help and it did feel firm. Restarted it again (another immediate restart) and brought it back to plane again. The next time it tried to die (within a minute or so) I hit the choke.. didn't make a difference either. I thought maybe the tank vent was bad (although I did check it when I drained the tank and was working fine) so I cracked the gas cap a little to allow it to vent through the threads and again bought it up on plane. As soon as plane was achieved it died out again. Now I was getting frustrated.. it has run absolutely perfect every year. I tied it off at the dock, installed some short pieces of rubber vacuum hose between the plugs and ignition wires, started it up and used a grounded test light against the vacuum hoses to "kill" each cylinder individually to see if I had a bad coil or fouled plug. Both cylinders produced the same RPM change when grounded. Then I noticed something else.. the battery (which was fully charged when the boat was put in) was almost dead. Apparently it's not getting recharged when running either.. there hasn't been enough cranking time to have drained it yet. Does anyone have any ideas on this?? It will idle until the cows come home, but won't stay running at planing RPM for long. I'm still suspicious of that fuel pump, but even squeezing the bulb or applying the choke had no effect on the die out once it started. Thanks for the help!!
