Is my motor toast?

[rp3703]

So I bought a 14' Lowe that came with a 1983 outboard Mariner 25HP. Long story short, I put the boat in the water, Took off and after about a minute the motor started to loose power. I quickly realized something was wrong and shut it down. Then I took the cowling off and splashed water directly onto the power head to cool it down. I sat there for about 15 minutes and then cranked the motor over again just to see if I had seized it up and it started up again. I then shut it down.




Obvious the water pump was not working and upon further inspection, the motor had no thermostat. My question is whether or not I should try to fix the motor or if the overheating completely ruined it?

 

[Scott Danforth]

with any new to you used boat, you need to do all the maintenance.

do a compression test on the motor to determine the health. if the compression is good, then buy a complete impeller pump kit (with housing, etc.) pull the leg, get the raw water flowing

 

[roscoe]

welcome to iboats.

Scott is right about the maintenance, but...


Just because it lost power, does not mean it overheated.
What makes you think it overheated?

It usually takes longer than a minute to overheat a motor, more like 5+.

I have overheated a motor a couple times.
It was intentional. 7.5 hp Merc, was a parts motor and of little value.
Ran it till it seized and stopped. Let it cool. ran it till it seized 3 more times.

Tore the motor down and inspected, yes, some scoring of the cylinder walls but no death sentence.
In the end, the motor was ok to run, and compression was sufficient.

Your motor will probably be fine, but you need to id the source of your issue.

 

[rp3703]

Well, it could have been like 2 or 3 minutes it ran for but good to know I probably have not completely ruined it. Thanks

 

[444]

Could be a fuel delivery problem and nothing to do with overheating. Vacuum in the tank, bad pump diaphragm, clogged filter, etc.