barely made it back from D. C. today

[nola mike]

Took my buddy's '04 240 Sundancer, 5.0L to DC yesterday (70 miles) to slip overnight and catch a Sox/nats game last night (me, him, 4 kids, 98', no wind). Good times. On the way back about 20 miles in, it starts slowly losing power, at first stumbling and losing power around 3400 rpm, worse with more throttle. Initially gets better after sitting down for a swim, then does it more often and more frequently, until it's stumbling over 2000 rpm. Made it back, but it was a long trip. He had no tools on the boat. Only thing I could think to check was fuel/water filter, but somebody had gorilla tightened it and I couldn't get it off. Felt fuel related, but I felt pretty helpless with a fuel injected computer controlled boat and no scan tool. Aside from water/bad gas/plugged injectors, low fuel pressure, knocking/computer going into safe mode/retarding timing, not sure what else the issue might be, it how to go about troubleshooting. He's going to have his mechanic look at it, but man, I had wanted a FI engine for a long while, but I'm learning to like a carb and no computers. If my engine fails and I can't get it going on the water, it's going to be because of a catastrophic failure.

 

[Rick Stephens]

I can hear you telling everyone"we'll make it, noproblem", while you're telling yourself a bunch of different stories every hiccup. Not fun!

 

[nola mike]

Every time we stopped "for a swim", the kids were like, "why are we going slow? Are we out of gas?". Umm,no...

 

[Bondo]

Only thing I could think to check was fuel/water filter,

Ayuh,..... It's probably 1/2 fulla water, 'n crap,....

 

[alldodge]

Good to hear it came out ok
The EFI motors have a lot of things going on, but if it was a carb motor and anything went bad in the ignition my guess is you wouldn't have a spare on hand

 

[thumpar]

I'm betting fuel. Having a carb wouldn't have helped.

 

[nola mike]

I think a carb would be easier to troubleshoot. Agreed that if I could have dumped that filter it would have given me a lot of info. AllDodge , I have my whole points ignition sitting in a bag on board. Ignition isn't going to keep me from getting home. Picked up a new filter for my boat on the way home. Guess you don't have a filter problem... Until you do. I'll update what the marina finds on his boat.

 

[TurtleTamer]

I love fuel injection...for cars. I've always been an F.I. guy, too, and thought it was strange that boats were still using them in this day and age, when I got into boating. But for a boat, carb is the way to go. Very simple and easy to troubleshoot. Much more reliable than fuel injection. There are simply more possible points of failure in fuel injection systems. That being said, if I had two engines onboard, I think I'd rather go F.I. for the advantages it offers but if one of the engines fails, there's the other to get home on.

I too keep an entire ignition system onboard in sealed bags, as well as spare parts for the other systems.