I'm very green with outboards. I've recently purchased a small 14' fishing boat for my retired dad and a '56 Evinrude 15hp Fastwin from a guy in town.
I only paid 120.00 for the motor, so I expected some problems possibly. Before trying to get it started my brother in law (much more experienced with mechanical things) and I drained the lower unit and put new lube (from the bottom hole) in. We did a quick inspection under the hood for water and didn't find any. The guy I purchased the motor from (an eBay auction listed by a local resident) said the motor ran nicely. With the new lube in lower unit, and an oil/gas mixture of 25:1 in tank, we took it out on the back waters (some current, but not a whole bunch).
The motor scooted us (2 adults and a 12 yr old) along quite nicely downstream (even kicking up some good wake). Upstream was quite a different matter though. We didn't hit anything (to our knowledge), we didn't run it through any sand or weeds. Pretty much kept it in 3' to 10' of water the entire maiden voyage. It started well each time we needed it to, it ran a bit rough, but that may have been the cowl (spelling?) rattling a little bit (we need a grommet for the pull string, but other than that everything looked tight). On the way upstream though, we couldn't 'open it up' much because it just didn't give us any thrust. You could hear the engine rpms increasing but the thing just never pushed us along any faster than at about 1/4 throttle. It ran steady at this speed, was always spitting a good stream of water out the back. It was smoking a bit, but I suspect that is quite normal on 2 cycle motor of that age.
I've been trying to find other posts on this sort of thing, but the closest I could find was in a thread about purchasing a motor:
"You can almost expect to reseal the lower unit on a motor that old. You can pull the rope a llittle and see if it turns the prop in all gears and check the l.u. oil for water. Without opening up the lower unit, one can't tell if the clutch dog/ gear ears are bad (slipping) without running it.
JBJ" <-- (We didn't find any water in the lower unit oil that we drained. I'm starting to wonder about the clutch dog/gear ears things. Are those explained in a good manual (if so any that are better than others)? I'd like to be able to look at them to see, but if it's too delicate of a repair job I'd rather take it to someone who knows and watch him/her do the job.)
We put the motor into neutral when we landed it. When we were 'taking a look at it' after the trip, I was able to spin the prop without the inside spinning. My brother-in-law that that was odd and shouldn't happen. I'm not so sure since the motor was in neutral.
Any ideas how we can go about checking things out a bit more on our own. We have a guy that is VERY good at fixing this make/model/year of outboard (many in this area recommend him first as the expert). He's only about 10miles from the boat and only charges about $30/hr for work. We're not opposed to paying an 'expert' to do it for us, but where's the fun in that? I'd rather learn how to diagnose the problems myself (repairing them would be nice too!).
Any ideas are greatly appreciated.
I only paid 120.00 for the motor, so I expected some problems possibly. Before trying to get it started my brother in law (much more experienced with mechanical things) and I drained the lower unit and put new lube (from the bottom hole) in. We did a quick inspection under the hood for water and didn't find any. The guy I purchased the motor from (an eBay auction listed by a local resident) said the motor ran nicely. With the new lube in lower unit, and an oil/gas mixture of 25:1 in tank, we took it out on the back waters (some current, but not a whole bunch).
The motor scooted us (2 adults and a 12 yr old) along quite nicely downstream (even kicking up some good wake). Upstream was quite a different matter though. We didn't hit anything (to our knowledge), we didn't run it through any sand or weeds. Pretty much kept it in 3' to 10' of water the entire maiden voyage. It started well each time we needed it to, it ran a bit rough, but that may have been the cowl (spelling?) rattling a little bit (we need a grommet for the pull string, but other than that everything looked tight). On the way upstream though, we couldn't 'open it up' much because it just didn't give us any thrust. You could hear the engine rpms increasing but the thing just never pushed us along any faster than at about 1/4 throttle. It ran steady at this speed, was always spitting a good stream of water out the back. It was smoking a bit, but I suspect that is quite normal on 2 cycle motor of that age.
I've been trying to find other posts on this sort of thing, but the closest I could find was in a thread about purchasing a motor:
"You can almost expect to reseal the lower unit on a motor that old. You can pull the rope a llittle and see if it turns the prop in all gears and check the l.u. oil for water. Without opening up the lower unit, one can't tell if the clutch dog/ gear ears are bad (slipping) without running it.
JBJ" <-- (We didn't find any water in the lower unit oil that we drained. I'm starting to wonder about the clutch dog/gear ears things. Are those explained in a good manual (if so any that are better than others)? I'd like to be able to look at them to see, but if it's too delicate of a repair job I'd rather take it to someone who knows and watch him/her do the job.)
We put the motor into neutral when we landed it. When we were 'taking a look at it' after the trip, I was able to spin the prop without the inside spinning. My brother-in-law that that was odd and shouldn't happen. I'm not so sure since the motor was in neutral.
Any ideas how we can go about checking things out a bit more on our own. We have a guy that is VERY good at fixing this make/model/year of outboard (many in this area recommend him first as the expert). He's only about 10miles from the boat and only charges about $30/hr for work. We're not opposed to paying an 'expert' to do it for us, but where's the fun in that? I'd rather learn how to diagnose the problems myself (repairing them would be nice too!).
Any ideas are greatly appreciated.
