befu

Really, it isn't too bad driving a boat around on a beautiful day at only 20 mph. Just pretended it was a sailboat.......

Seriously though, thank you. It is one of the ways that my wife and I have been called to serve. Hence the boat name "Whispers in the dark" from 1 Samuel 3:4

Now I just need that carb to get here..... Ordered Friday and hasn't shipped yet....

Car Biz

Man alive Brian this thread is WAY better than my blow up thread you have some patience my friend!!!!!

befu

Yeah, I have been told I have patience before, never really took the time to listen to others about it though...... LOL! Looking back, I so should have just bought your boat or Jiffy's. Oh-well, this one will actually work really well for us locally and handle lake Michigan just fine.

Anyways, back to the boat. With the last run, we actually got to anchor for a bit. Decided I needed a real anchor so I built a new one. Posted details about it in the "do it yourself budget" section, but thought I would include it in my main thread also.

Basically it copies the small box anchor by slide anchor, just made out of aluminum and does not fold down. Box is 11" square and total weight is 7.9 lbs right now. Chain will add some but it should be very usable by my kids once I teach them how to bring it up and not hit the boat!

So this week we are pulling a starter to figure out what happened. Re-setting the valves and changing the carb on the starboard motor. Couple of other little things as usual on a boat, but looking forward to trying the boat again. Also need to make a mount for the little $90 action camera I bought, the SJ1000. That way I can post a pic of the thing actually being used! At least now the boat does not seem to be afraid of the water. Big improvement!

National carburetor is not very fast, that I will claim. Ordered my carb on 7-12 and it finally shipped out this morning at 7am, 7-23! Should arrive Thursday around lunch time.

I think I have now owned this boat about 21 months! Gotta be getting close to working. Of course I will start a whole slew of new projects this winter, so no end in sight for this build thread!

[ATTACH=CONFIG]504918[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]504919[/ATTACH]

7-24 update: Changed out the carb to my other old one. Wondered if we put the wrong carb back on the other motor. Will try that and then change to the 2nd new carb. Checked a few plugs also. The new carb looks perfect, the old carb looks rich. The old carb has a slightly richer set of secondary metering rods in it also. Either way, with the second new carb, should be good.

Worked on the shift interrupts again and went through them per the mercruiser manual. starboard one looks correct, the port one was not set correctly, so reset everything and it is ready to test. Also worked on a couple of connections to see if I am getting poor signal/lost signal on a couple of gauges.

Put a new starter on the port motor also so that issue should be fixed. I am slowly learning my lesson on cheap Chinese aftermarket parts. Some things work, some just don't. If the other starter makes it through the summer, we will change it this winter. Not chancing it after opening up the one that broke and finding plastic gears in it! Yeah, plastic around the planetary gears. Some things I just have to learn the hard way, sometimes multiple times.

Valves are checked and good. Also had to adjust the choke on the new national carb, it was not opening up like it should once heated. We will see if it works better.

Boat is ready again, may go run it tomorrow.

Brian

befu

Took boat out yesterday, some good and some bad.

Shift interrupts are definitely better. sometimes they die, but usually work out ok. Not having them die around the docks helps. Well, sometimes it helps. I just really stink at putting it on the trailer. Pull in and I stop it within 6" of the dock to hop off and get the trailer. Try to pull into the trailer and I fall apart! Gotta practice this.

Anchor, may be too light! Not sure, bottom may be too soft also. I will add some weight to it as discussed and try it again. Water was just over 4' deep so cleat was about 7+ feet from bottom, had 25' of line out to anchor (about 3:1 scope) I need to make a sand spike anchor next also.

Camera did so so. OK, camera did fine but I think my mount will not work. I made a camera mount that puts the camera about 3' off the boat swim platform (see pics) The stills look good, but once running the whole assembly vibrates. From cameras point of view this makes the boat rapidly move up and down and it has a hard time processing that. Sitting still it looks great and gives a good over view of the boat. I think I need to work on making it more rigid as I like the location off the corner of the transom.

New carb. New carb from national finally came in last night. Put it on this morning, applied fuel and it leaks from between the base plate and the middle section. Leaks bad, so not sure how long their quality issue is going to hold me up. Might have another carb I can try, will see next week.

OH, and gauges all work now. Port motor seems to run cold, but the gauge is reading. Might replace the sending unit to see if that was it.

Brian
[ATTACH=CONFIG]505068[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]505069[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]505070[/ATTACH]

Crude Intentions

very cool brian. just pulled mine out of the water. gonna yank motors and do a transom. have 2 soft spots so im not taking chances. since we don't have a "season" down here doesn't matter what time of year I do it. lol. gonna go through motors and transom assemblies while its apart.

sprink58

Isn't this fun?

befu

Oh-joy on the transom, be careful how far you dig into it. I stopped digging into mine when I hit gelcoat! Actually, that is not to far from the truth. About 1/2" off.

Anyways, I ran it earlier this week and had some fun.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]505420[/ATTACH]

Shift interrupts work better still. One motor will stall about 15% of the time right now, but it is progress from the 50% rate or so.

She runs. Ran it for 7/10 of an hour at 2000 to 3500 rpm. Speedo said around 35 mph top above 3000 rpm. It felt good. Took the tabs all the way up and trimmed the drives out and she started to get the bow loose on the lake. It was calm with just a few boat wakes out there, mainly mine! Got some good video of it, but I tried editing the video in windows movie maker and the finished version is terrible! Grabbed the screen shot from my camera above

So, running she comes up to about 1900 rpm very well. After that, the port motor keeps accelerating but the starboard lags behind. I mean we are talking 3100 to 2600 on port to starboard. I kept advancing the starboard throttle and then all of a sudden the rpm jumps and above 3100 or so they even out. I was worried I had the carb linkage way off or somehow got the wrong drive rations again. Well, afterwards, the drives checked out to be 1.47:1 on both of them. Props are the same. The starboard carb actually opens up more! Exact opposite of what I thought.

Carbs. So I checked out the carbs next. These are the two that I bought from National Carbs about 2 months apart from each other. The linkage is different and the vacuum pickup and actuator is different on both carbs. So I sent a message to national today and heard back that it appears they sent me one mercruiser carb and one OMC carb. So maybe the midrange is messed up when the secondaries first start to open up. We will see how long this takes to get straightened out.

Also had a bit of water oil on top of the intake again, that is posted in the "budget do it yourself" section. Wondering what is wrong or if I have a cracked head. It runs good, oil looks fine.

Also have to fix the power steering line, the high pressure side has developed a leak. In 42 minutes, I ran the pump all the way down and sprayed the underside of the hatch on that side. It is always something. We will inspect it tomorrow and see if we run it again.

Oh here is a shot running at 30 or just a bit more when I had the camera mounted up front. Gotta figure out how to trim HD video.[ATTACH=CONFIG]505421[/ATTACH]

Brian

sprink58

Looks like you have come a long way!! It takes running and tuning to get it right. I would be blasting National for screwing that order up. I never had a bit of trouble from them. You deserve some comp for that...ask for it.

befu

Yeah, not real happy there. First carb is the wrong one, says mercruiser on the invoice and they sent me an OMC.

Second carb leaked. The service tech when I called was like, "huh, they must not have torqued the bottom bolts. Pull the carb and try tightening them up." Well, I did and it stopped leaking, hope it is all working well though. We will see what they say about the OMC carb tomorrow. Not real impressed right now, we will see how they handle it.

Brian

befu

Update: OK, heard back from National. Yeah, they sent me an OMC carb the first time, second carb must have a leak inside of it. What will they do for me? Yep, box them back up, pay to ship them back, include a copy of receipt and description of what is wrong and they will work on fixing it, repair it, change out linkage and then send them back. Wow, how about that?!?!?! I would rather have my $500+ back and buy them somewhere else at this point.

So at this point we have replaced the steering line from the transom up to the heat exchanger. We put in a new thermostat on the cold motor. Checked fluids again and got ready to run. Well, took it out today and ran it again. 16 miles to the lake and when I got there, I could hear the noise. Get out and sure enough, lost a wheel bearing! Oh-well, we are here, we will deal with that later.

So we put it in, goes smooth. Engines start up fine and we idle out. Even remembered to take the fenders in right away instead of having them bounce all over the place until noticed! What a noob I am, but I am learning. Idle out, push up the throttles and they both climb nicely to about 2200 rpm. Tuck in the drives, lower the tabs and keep pushing up. The boat comes up on plane, the port motor revs higher first just like before, but I keep going and eventually the starboard motor kicks in and just jumps to 3,000 rpm. I mean like now! Cruising around, the motors will turn 3200 or so, but the port one wants to run faster. Try to go more than that and the starboard one will just not spin over 3200. sometimes it would jump up to 3500 when I played with the throttles, but it would jump up, sound real strong for about 2 seconds and then fall off again. Definitely not good.

So we pull into the sand bar, and I have my old carb with me. Earlier this week I took it apart, cleaned it and put in new gaskets. So we swapped out the national carb and tried it again. Oh, the port motor did not have anything on top of it now. No oil or water mixture, so that was good news. But one of the guys noticed that the flame arrestor was not on the same and there was a 1/2" gap between the pcv hose end and the flame arrestor. Last time, the little tube was basically touching the flame arrestor side. So we relocate it and off we go.

This time the boat runs strong, but we still have an issue with the starboard motor wanting to run over 3400 rpm. Just doesn't want to rev. We ran it for about an hour today all over the lake. Cruising along, trim out the drives just a bit, raise tabs and the boat would "fly" along at 36 indicated rpm at 3400 rpm. sounded fine, no problems. Anchored again, went for a dip. We raise the hatch again and this time there is that familiar puddle of oil on the port side of the intake on the port motor. But this time, it is all oil, no water at all. Not tan. So I figure I am sucking oil out of the valve cover somehow, not sure. Next time we run it we will keep the hose a 1/2" away. But with the engine temp up, no issues with condensation.
So we pack up and then headed back to put the boat on the wounded trailer. So we are making progress. Nothing broke today except the trailer. We ran for about an hour and burned some fuel! Boat sounded well, didn't spray steering fluid all over the place either. We will get there.

Now to pack up the one carb and send it back, see if they get one out of three right on national carbs!

Brian