Evinrude problems running

[um0RION]

Hi, I took the boat out this weekend and the boat seemed to run ok, but I was only getting 31-32 mph (normal with 1 person is about 40) with my 120hp evinrude. Every now and then it would pick up, and run normal, then drop back. To me this seems like a coil not working right. 3 cylinders will run all the time, and 1 cuts in and out. At the end of the trip we made, I opened the cover, and wiggled all the spark cables thinking one was just making bad contact.

This morning, we got in, boat fired up, we took off slowly, and drove it for 5 or 10 minutes, ran fine. I got to the far side of the lake, and decided to kick it up, and run it full tilt. All 4 seemed to be working, then as I was trimming it to the highest point, the motor seemed to lose about half its power, and dropped the speed immediately, and I throttled back immediately also. After running a few minutes just above idle, I powered up to go back, going about 25 mph, and after maybe a minute, the engine did its power cut, but it actually died. I had to restart it to get it running. I then Idled it home, and it even lost power once when only idling.

I looked things over when I was back on shore, and some of the wires grounding or coming from the power pack on the coil itself look corroded. Could 1 or more corroded wires on a coil make an engine behave like that? When we were idling home it felt like it was only running on two cylinders, but I had no way to test that.

Any thoughts? Its at my camp, 200 miles from where I live (parents live 40 miles from it) and Im the only one with boat knowledge, they're clueless about it.

Im thinking ive either got a serious corrosion problem and things arent making good contact, or a broken coil or two. I KNOW Ive got a starter relay that needs replacing.

 

[Chris1956]

Re: Evinrude problems running

Gee, you see corroded ground cables, and are having spark issues. I would guess it is time to clean the ground wires reconnect them to clean contact points and retest.

 

[um0RION]

Re: Evinrude problems running

I checked all my connections, sanded everything off, made sure everything was making good contact - its not corrosion related.

I took it out today and was having the same issue, but ive narrowed it down a bit. When Idling, it works fine. If I throttle up, It'll go for a while, but then it'll cut out. When it cuts out, its like something is choking the engine, so much so that if you leave the throttle open, the engine will die. If you feel it cutting out and drop it to idle, it'll go back to idle, then you can power up again and go for a little more before it does the same thing. 95% of the time it happens when its going above idle.

Could this be a stator thing, or spark timing maybe? I cant always replicate it exactly, but it WILL happen within the first minute of running above idle. I cant get it to run normally for any extended period of time.

At this point, is this something I can troubleshoot without a mechanic, and could I even get a mech to troubleshoot it on land? Im going to be away for 3 weeks so I cant even take it out of the water now.... Big mess. Any thoughts?