Bob La Londe
Petty Officer 2nd Class
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2004
- Messages
- 196
My new 225 Optimax broke on Saturday morning<br /><br />Well, its not that bad, but it cost me about an hour of fishing time first thing in the morning during ym topwater bite. Since my biggest fish that day was on topwater it had me shook up and probably threw off ym fishing for longer.<br /><br />I ran to my first spot and got two or three short strikes, and my partner caught a couple small fish right off the bat. We decided to run to my second spot, but as soon as I touched the throttle I got a low fuel warning. I had filled the tank we were running on, and it was correctly switched to that tank. It left me seriously perplexed. I cheched the tanks witch three times, and then proceeded to follow the fuel lines from tank to engine. Everything looked like new. (as it should) <br /><br />Finally I pulled the cowling to see if there was a broken line somewhere. Everything looked good. With the cowling off I fired up the motor, and it started scream and make clunking noises. Oh, ****. I put it all back together and proceeded to try and fish on the trollign motor and ignore it. No such luck. I was so upset I put ten out of ten casts into the weeds. Not a good thing to do with a big towpater bait. <br /><br />Finally I pulled the cowling back off and fired up the motor to see if I could find something less than horrible. It sounded like the noise was coming from the flywheel. I pulled the plastic cover over the flywheel and discovered the idler pulley that is supposed to keep tension on the belt was flopping loose. Interesting setup. Its got a belt driven off the flywheel that drives an alternator, and what I assumed from all the plumbing coming off of it was the fuel injector pump. <br /><br />I went ahead and pulled the idler pulley to dicover the spring which keeps tension on it was broken. I only have about 13 hours on this motor. Wow! That would really suck to have happen 20 miles upriver. Especially if you were not inclined to take a look yourself. <br /><br />Leaving the spring out I reinstalled the pulley. Then I pulled a piece of nylon cord out of my storage locker and slipped it through the tension hole in the pulley. Carefully slipping the other end around the starter solenoid (It was on the side of the starter and looked like a solenoid) I tied a haulers hitch and cinched it down pulling the pulley into the belt as hard as I could. I had to adjust my cord once during the day, but it ran fine the rest of the day, and all day Sunday.<br /><br />It seems I recall somebody mentioning breaking this spring once before on another Optimax. Vaguely I recall that he said he had two of them break. I don't remember if I read that here or at Bass Boat Central, but I am pretty sure I have heard of this happening before. Anybody know anything about that? Is it a known problem? Should I carry a spare idler pulley spring? Is there likely another problem that caused this? When I looked at the spring I noticed that it seemed to break at a smal indent, and there was a second indent in the body of the spring about an 1/8th inch from the break. Could it have been a damaged or improperly installed spring to begin with? <br /><br />We didn't win any money Saturday, but on Sunday my partner managed to put a 4.46 in the boat that got us a small 2nd place big fish check.