3.0 GS Carb or Fuel Issue

[tvogz]

Hey guys. Just got the boat back on the water today after replacing the gimble bearing, aligning the engine, and both bellows. After warming up the engine to temp I pushed the boat to WOT. Interestingly, I wasn't able to achieve the same 4600 RPM that I was able to a few weeks back. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 4200 now and this is at about 7/8 throttle. If I push the throttle all the way down, the RPMs actually drop a bit. This is a 2001 3.0 GS MEFS. The carb was overhauled last season, and I probably have less than 10 hours on it since then. The idle mix was set a few weeks back with an external tach. After that I would get hesitation when accelerating so I adjusted the power valve with feeler gages. This seemed to move the hesitation further up the RPM range. I attempted to adjust again today, this got rid of all hesitation, but the dropping of RPM at full throttle persists. Am I on the right track?

 

[alldodge]

Probably lack of fuel.
If you go WOT for a few minutes, then slow and shut the motor down. Pull a couple plugs and see if there showing a lean burn. Don't want to do much idling before checking

Would suggest installing a fuel pressure gauge to see if the pump is keeping up

 

[tvogz]

Just to close the loop on this one, I vaguely remember adjusting the throttle cable before reinstalling it after adjusting the accelerator pump. This was all just before I found the bad bellows so it slipped my mind. Anyway, a quick adjustment of the cable fixed the issue. It must have been adjusted to the point where the flappers went last vertical.