gahunter706
Petty Officer 3rd Class
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2013
- Messages
- 82
I have a 1998 Mercury 40hp that isn't running right. I took it out last night and it started easily and seemed to be idling good, but when I gave it WOT it only seemed to run about half the rpms it normally does (I don't have a tach so I'm not sure what it was running at), and it wouldn't plane out. I let it warm up some more and it did the same thing. I looked under the cowling and saw some wires laying on the block that were melted, so I took it back to the ramp and loaded up. The two melted wires were both yellow without any stripes on them, so I connected them back together, put the boat back in the water, and the motor did the same thing. This morning I started it up on muffs and it wasn't idling too bad, but it didn't seem right. I checked to see if it was getting spark, and when I pulled the bottom plug wire, it didn't drop rpms. When I pulled the middle plug wire, it shocked the **** out of me and the motor cut off. I got a pair of insulated pliers to pull the top plug wire, and it still shocked me, and rpms dropped a little. I haven't messed with outboards much so I'm not sure if I should have done something different to avoid getting shocked, but the motor seemed like it wasn't firing on the bottom cylinder and had weak spark on the top cylinder.
Any suggestions as to what the problem might be would be greatly appreciated.
Any suggestions as to what the problem might be would be greatly appreciated.