Back again, looking for my friends to help again

[stourm]

I am sure you guys will remember me from my avatar but just as a recap, I bought a fairly nice boat with a very corroded motor and cracking around the prop. I have been talking to a guy that listed some parts, including a decent looking lower unit, out on Ebay. He's about 4 hours drive from here and he had offered to sell the lower to me for $150. I am not entirely certain it will fit, but its the best shot I have and it looks as if it will so I am going to drive down there and get it on Saturday. He told me on the phone yesterday that he would give me everything he had from his old engine (listed in the pictures below) for $150 since he really didn't need it. He said the power head was bad but everything else had been working fine when he parted it out. There may actually be more than what the pictures show, I don't know. That's just all he had pictures of on the ebay page. Do you guys think it is a good buy for this stuff?

Also, I took the boat out onto the water last week and here is what happened. The motor starts and runs fine, but when I put it in gear and gave it throttle it took a lot of throttle to really get up to sounding normal...like it didn't have much power. I throttled it all the way down and at full throttle it sounded good, but really didn't move the boat very quickly. It seemed like it went slower than my father-in-laws 40 horse and this is a 140. I have already ordered a compression tester and it should be here either this week or beginning of next but here are the questions. I had tilted as far down as it would go. Is it possible that at that tilt, it was at the wrong angle? The front of the boat was reeeeeally up in the air when I was driving full throttle so I wondered if maybe I should have worked the tilt a little more. It's electric tilt/trim. Also, could the throttle cable linkage need adjusting? If you have poor compression or blown cylinders, would it really hinder the power or would it do something else? Remember, I am just learning so any help would be appreciated.

By the way, it was like 34 degrees outside, windy, and the water was a bit choppy so I didn't spend just a whole lot of time out there with it. I basically wanted to see if it would run before I spent anymore money and time, and it did crank and run just not as well as it should have. I had dumped a can of seafoam into the gas/oil mix also before heading out there. About half the gas in it is new gas and half of it old gas from when the old man had it last year. He had also dumped some kind of penzoil gas treatment into it also that I didn't know about before I put in the seafoam (called him up and asked him just before we left out, but didn't think it would hurt because it has probably 14 or so gallons in it so it was decently diluted I think.)

I kept doing something stupid first time out. Trying to crank it with the engine still tilted up out of the water. *sigh* I'll get the hang of it yet. Oh, and one more thing. My tach apparently doesn't work and I have been trying to figure that out also. Sure would help to see what RPMs I am getting... I also wondered if the power problem might have been caused by some cavitation from the exhaust leaking around that poor, cracked prop. I did was Ezeke said and eased the throttle forward so it didn't run away.

 

[jbjennings]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

Your bow defiinitely should not be pointing up like that. Trim it down until the cavitation plate (the flat horizontal plate above the prop) is parallel with the bottom of your boat. That is wehre you want it starting off, then after you get on plane, you might trim it up a little bit.
You need to do a compression test and make sure you have fairly equal compression on all 4 cylinders before you drop any dough on a lower unit.
After you check the compession and hopefully get good results (all cylinders within 10% of each other) you should replace all hoses and clean the carbs. It would be wise to replace the impeller but if you see it pumping plenty of water and the powerhead isn't getting hot, then you might just get it running good and then put a new impeller in the lower unit you wind up getting.
Just my opinion......you're getting way ahead of yourself thinking of a lower unit before you get the powerhead running right. The FIRST thing to do on a new-to-you motor is check the compression. If you've got a bad cylinder or two, you don't want to invest a 4 hour drive and $150 on a used lower unit that may or may not be any good.
Once again, just my opinion....I hate to see you put any money on an unknown powerhead.
GOod luck,
JBJ

 

[steelespike]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

Could be any number of things.We will assume the lower unit is working right for now.If it is running a little lean it would lack power.If hitting the choke/primer helps then you may need a carb rebuild.If one or more plugs are not firing it would lack power.If the throttle isn't opening all the way it would lack power.Trim in(down) all the way when starting out. If the foam is wet it could be difficult to plane.If severe it could add hundreds of lbs to the boat.A compression test will give you an idea of the condition.100 psi is considered the minimum and within 10% between cylinders.If the motor is in gear it won't run away.If you had cavitation(ventilation) the motor would seem to be running away with no change of speed.Very obvious,may actually slow down as the motor revs.

 

[stourm]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I am supposed to be picking up that lower unit and other equipment on Saturday. I ordered the compression tester, and it didn't ship out until yesterday. The depot that it shipped from is only about 5 hours away (driving distance) and so I am hoping that it arrives today or tomorrow. If not, then I won't be able to test the compression by the time that I go to get that lower unit and misc. pieces. I guess I am going to just have to take a chance and if for whatever reason it doesn't work out (lower doesn't fit because of shaft length or it turns out the motor has some problems with the compression) then maybe I can just try to resell the lower on Craigslist or Ebay. I am hoping that it turns out that I have good compression and the lower unit will fit just perfectly and I will have a good motor. Here's to hoping...

 

[jonesg]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

You can get a compression tester at any autopart store for less than $30.
Get a spark gap tester too.

 

[stourm]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

You know, thats really funny. I never thought to check an automotive store because I had this mindset that the compression tester was an "outboard motor tool" at first. Once I started looking around online though I found that compression testers were pretty much common to all gasoline engines and so there was no difference between them. At this point though I was already searching around online and looking at prices and it never occurred to me to just call up the automotive stores to check for availability and pricing. I found one on Amazon.com that seemed like it was a good kit. It was on sale. It had free shipping. I ordered that one and it took a little while longer to ship than what I thought it would so timewise, it was going to cut pretty close.

Here's the funny part. Jones responded that I could find them at pretty much any automotive store for under $30 so I figured I would call up to Advance Auto and see what they had. The only compression tester that they had in stock is the exact same one that I ordered, and they have it for the exact same price that Amazon.com had it on sale for, which was $25.99. What are the odds, out of like 20 testers that I looked at on Amazon.com, that I would order the exact same one that they sell across town from me and the sale price on Amazon would be the same as Advance's price. Well anyway, my wife is going to pick one up on her way to get pizza and I am going to test the compression either later on tonight or tomorrow. A BIG thanks to Jones for his post.

 

[stourm]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

This is the point where I ask for some good tips on the best, and proper, way to do a compression test on my 1977 140hp motor. I probably can do some google searches and find some instructions but to be honest, I trust you guys a whole lot more than some random site so I would feel much better hearing from the iboat forums if anyone is willing to give me the steps. Thanks.

 

[Fishr23]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

Ok,

I am just trying to help I am no means a expert. But I have done a compression check on many cars. Your gonna wanna pull all plugs out so the motor can crank real good. Also gonna wanna disconnect your coil.. Because the spark has to go some where and can cause problems so make sure to disconnect your coil there is otherways I am told by grounding them but that to me is the simplest. Good luck

 

[Fishr23]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

Alright,

I didnt like how I put the above post so I went and found some one who says it much better then I did.


I take no credit


SB220
"Take all your plugs out( no spark plugs in the engine ), ground wires and/or flip your safety cutoff switch, install gauge into a cylinder and turn over (try to count to 5 or so with the rhythm of the motor turning over.

And you should get higher readings if the engine is warmed up before hand"

 

[stourm]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

So I can ground the four spark plug wires to the block and that should keep me from damaging the coil? That sounds easier than disconnecting the coil pack (and I am not sure how to do that at this point anyway) so basically I need to get some decent gauge wire, strip both ends of the wire, put one end of the wire into the spark plug wire where it connects to the plug, and attach it in some fashion to the metal part of the engine? I don't know if my 1977 evenrude motor has a safety cutoff switch or where it would be if it did.

 

[stourm]

Re: Back again, looking for my friends to help again

So check this out. Last night I was going to test the compression on my motor. The last time I pulled the boat back into the yard, I didn't pull it all the way up to where I could hook up the motor flusher to it. I wanted to run the motor a bit before testing it so I was going to pull the boat up far enough (about 20 feet or so) to where I could stretch the water hose over and run it. Once I pulled my Jeep into place I noticed the ground was still a little soft from the rain and snow we had last week and not wanting to tear the yard up I decided against trying to pull the boat uphill further into the yard. Also, I had to pull around the boat on the right hand side to get in front of it, and had to drive just a bit in my neighbors yard to do that and decided instead of driving back through her yard I would go around the back of my house and out the other side into the street. As I was coming around the other side of the house I had to stop because a tree limb had fallen in the path I needed to drive. I didn't know it, but the ground on that side of the house was VERY soft and the Jeep got stuck fast right there in my yard. The only time we ever even go to that side of the house is when we are mowing the yard so we pretty much never walk over there and I didn't know how soft it was. Everything I did to get out was futile and I ended up having to call my brother in law who lives about 30 minutes away to help pull me out. We had to use his tow cable and my 25 foot dock line together in order for him to find a dry enough place to pull. He got me out but by this time it was way too late to do my compression test. I'm really starting to hate boats...