Putting it back together

I rebuilt the carburetors, now to get them back on the boat.

It has been a few months since I took the three carburetors off the boat. I figured it would just take a week or so to get them rebuilt and back on. It ended up taking 3 months, due to other more important things taking up the time. That’s life for you.

The rebuilds themselves took about a half day. If I was in the boat mechanic business, I’m guessing I could have taken them off, rebuilt them, and had them back on in 4 hours. That’s not including soak time on the carbs. Since I’m a hobbyist, it took longer.

A downside of it being months between when I took them off, and when I put them back on is that I forget how I took them off. How were the linkages and hoses hooked up originally? I knew this might happen, so I took a lot of photos as I took stuff apart.

These are reference shots as I took things apart.

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It really didn’t take long to get it back together. I started with the bottom “C” carburetor. It is the worst one to get in an out, since normal wrenches and sockets don’t fit into the space very well. I have not purchased “stubby” tools at this point since I wouldn’t use them very often.

Let’s just say a mechanic would not be happy with me using pliers and other wrong tools to get it back together. However, it got back in and the nuts holding it on got some torque put on them to keep them there.

After that, I got the fuel line hooked up and zip-tied back into place. Yeah, zip ties. That’s what it had before and it didn’t leak, so that’s what I used to put it back together. It’s not like there is a whole lot of fuel pressure on this thing.

Carb “B” went in next. I had to line up the linkage connector while getting it into position on the mounting studs. An extra set of hands would have been helpful. I’m happy I didn’t break anything. That linkage connector was the one I had to purchase new and I would have hated to break it. The nuts went on a bit easier here, since I could easily reach everything with my hands. Fuel lines were connected and then on to the next carb.

Carb “A” went it about the same as “B”. There are some extra fuel hoses to connect for the choke and for the main supply to the stack. Fuel lines were also zip-tied as they were before.

The nex step was to reinstall the little catchbasin under the bottom carb. This one collects the various drips and leaks from the carbs and directs them to a hose that leads down. Were it goes, I’m not sure. Perhaps its in the manual someplace.

Finally, the front brace got put back into place again. Four bolts with split washers and some torque got it back into position. I lost one of the original split washers, but I had a replacement in the parts drawer.

I took a moment to reset the idle mixture screws. I put them to 1 1/2 turns out from being bottomed out. I had originally set them to 2 turns out, but according to several forums and videos, this was a better starting point.

Ok, time to see if all this effort actually worked out. I attached the flush “ears” to the water hose and put it over the water intakes. I connected the main fuel hose and gave the fuel bulb enough squeezes to get the fuel up into the bowls. I turned the water on and and went over to the controls. I put the key in, raised the throttle a little and gave it a turn…

I’m happy about two things. One, it lives again! Two, I got the start in one take.

There is also a third thing I’m happy about. It idles a whole lot smoother. Here is from last year to compare:

Yeah, it’s better. And that’s running on year old gas that has Seafoam, Marine Sta-bil, and Enzyme fuel treatment in it. It smokes quite a bit, but it is blue smoke, not white. White smoke means things are getting too hot. Blue is normal, a lot of blue means it is running rich.

I should have charged the starter battery before the test, but I was able to get it started anyway. I let it run for about 10 minutes, then cut it off. It started again without going through a full revolution.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to go put it on the water right away and test and tune. Again, life has other priorities. It looked like it would be a few weeks before I’d be able to do that, so I wanted to see if I could do some of the tuning at home.

The next day, I did this. I present to you the OHTF engine test tub:

This had mixed results. I wanted to be able run the engine with the prop submerged, which changes the flow of exhaust in the motor. This was mostly a success. The upper exhaust port was left uncovered.

I also wanted to be able to put the motor into forward gear to get the carbs tuned right. Funny thing, the moment I put it into forward it promptly emptied the tub of water. I mean right now!

That’s kind of a good thing, since it means it can go into gear at idle without the motor quitting on me. A test on the lake should be less embarrassing and go a bit smoother. There is nothing a bad as backing down the boat ramp and the boat doesn’t start or keeps quitting on you.

I just left it in idle and out of gear for a half hour to allow the Seafoam some time to work. One nice thing about using the tub is that the exhaust is a whole lot quieter. It did make a lot of smoke, though. There was an oily carbon film left in the bottom of the tub. Hopefully some of that was carbon from the cylinders and not just two-cycle oil.

The next step for the boat is to put it in the lake and give the carbs a final test and tune.