Help me buy a hole in the water (or not?)

What are those L shaped pieces at the end of the cross bows?  
 

I just build a quick 2x4 frame for under the tarp I use to cover the boat in the winter, same one for years now. 

In reply to mtn :

Considering I got the idea from my dad, that would make a nice little circle.

The one for the Herter's takes into account the motor on the back which this one doesn't have yet, so its got a kind of a doghouse shape on the back to hold the cover off the outboard.

Sonic said:

What are those L shaped pieces at the end of the cross bows?  
 

I just build a quick 2x4 frame for under the tarp I use to cover the boat in the winter, same one for years now. 

3D printed nonsense.  Completely not needed.  The tension on the PVC keeps it all in place.

^ that's a great idea.  Our boat cover is useless with moderate to heavy rain, so we've resorted to somewhat precariously stacking skis, tubes, and boards inside the boat to dome the cover out a bit.  

I'm gonna have to make one of those contraptions soon though, that's perfect. 

Wednesday I got the trailer registration done, then Friday I got the boat title transferred and got the supplies needed to change the lower unit oil and got a set of outboard muffs. I did not manage to get the boat registration transferred as their computers were down.

Today is testing day! I fired up the motor with the water connected and am having trouble figuring something out. I saw telltales on other boats that are up high; this motor does not appear to have that. Down below the water line there's a hole that had water coming out of it when the motor was running. It probably wouldn't be visible with the boat in the water. Is that the telltale on this motor? Or does the motor not have a telltale or is mine not working?

Also, I hooked up a volt meter to the battery and measure 12.5v with the motor off, and it didn't change at all when I started the motor. I assume it should go up with the motor running. I watched one YouTube video that seemed to say it takes a while for the voltage to rise as the charging system on an outboard isn't very strong. If that's the case I wouldn't see it in my testing as I'm not comfortable running it for long with the telltale question in my head.

I'm going to get a jump pack anyway, so may drop it in the water and see what happens.

How long did you run it before shutting it down?

It is definitely above the waterline, probably right at the bottom or slightly below the powerhead. 
 

EDIT: also, how high was the hose on with the muffs? If it's too much water pressure, it can start coming out of a bunch of nooks and crannies (not going to damage anything). 

In reply to mtn :

OK, it's definitely got a telltale,  and I found it. In case the water muffs were not working right with this motor I put the motor in a plastic tub filled with water and still no water from the telltale. I tried running trimmer string through it to make sure it isn't plugged, and I could get the string in and past the first couple elbows but that didn't help. I'm probably going to call off putting the boat in the water today and instead pull the water pump and check it out. I'd hate to blow the motor on our first outing.

I let it run maybe 10 seconds at a go, letting it rest between runnings. Once while checking things over I probably let it run for maybe one minute. Based on what I see online water should come out of the telltale pretty quickly, right?

I had the hose on about half pressure with the muffs. We have what can accurately be described as ridonkulous water pressure so I wouldn't be surprised if it causes water to come out of random places at half pressure.

Yeah, I wouldn't necessarily expect to see it in 10 seconds, but by 1 minute you definitely should have seen it. 
 

You may want to give it 30-45 seconds in the tub rather than the muffs, or turn the hose way down. 

In reply to mtn :

Thanks; I let it run for a minute and still no joy. We're going to take the canoe out so the kids aren't too bummed, and then I'll open the motor up to pull and check the water pump tonight after the kid's bedtime.

Know that creature from the Amazon that likes to climb up your pee hole and lodge itself there?  Same thing happens with outboard coolant passages.  Alternatively, one of the fins of the pump impeller can break off and lodge in there.  All sorts of issues with the passageways getting clogged.  The later they get, the more common a thermostat is, and that could be the issue here (might be real easy to pull that off and check out some coolant passageways.)

An easy tell, after its been running for 30-45 seconds, flick water on the cylinder head.  If it sizzles off immediately, there's a problem with the coolant system.

As for the output to the battery, does it actually have a generator on it?  Most of the smaller ones don't, from my experience, but my experience is with older motors.

Mr_Asa said:

Know that creature from the Amazon that likes to climb up your pee hole and lodge itself there?

Yeah, thanks for the mental image! I've actually been in and fished in the Amazon, and it's an amazing place, even with urethra and ass biting fish.

After the motor ran for close to a minute, I was able to hold my fingers on the cylinder head and it was hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold them there for more thna 20 seconds or so but definitely not hot enough to sizzle water. So I bet the water pump is working just the telltale passageways are clogged. Hmm. Maybe I'll have to try blowing it out with compressed air? Or might that knock too much crud back into the motor?

I'll look at the parts diagrams and see if there's a thermostat and if there's a charging system. I didn't even think of it not having one. So in that case you just make sure to charge the battery fully, often? Weird.

We canoed on the reservoir over to the boater swim area. It's never fun canoeing with power boats around, but the swimming was awesome and the kids had a blast. No fishing today, but I promised we could go early tomorrow and do some dock fishing. I have worms waiting in the refrigerator.

Leeroy's Ramblings are a great source of info, broken down to a very understandable level.  I linked to the water circulation page for your motor.  Anything I would suggest and more is covered there.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

PERFECT. Thank you for that link. This excerpt stood out to me:

"DO NOT run the motor even for a few seconds without water to the water pump.  [..]  Other than it being loud, it will also ruin the water pump impeller."

Well, guess what the seller did when I checked it out, and guess what I did for a little bit when I got it home? Yeah, well so here we are:

Yep, that's wiped out. Time to order parts. I would say this was an inauspicious beginning to boat ownership, but it was (a) self inflicted mostly, and (b) caught before it was really a problem. On the plus side, the plugs in the motor look new and the lower unit oil was only dirty and had no water in it. I changed that oil earlier before discovering the water flow problem. One oddity - whoever installed the controls made them work backwards. You pull toward the stern to shift into "forward," and the throttle opens as you pull the throttle lever toward the stern. It's just a quirk for now, and it's also very good I discovered that before going out on the water!

This is probably a trait shared with a lot of us on here, but I bond with a machine by working on it. So I'm getting some quality time with the machine. It's a bummer it came  at the cost of a fun testing afternoon on the water with the kids but that'll come soon enough.

Good find there.  With the fins missing you definitely need to verify the lines are clear; take care of that however you want, water pressure, air pressure, whatever. 

There's a reason I pull the power head and the lower unit off, all it costs is a gasket on the top end and some time.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

OK, I put together the hose adapter that Leeroy describes (connects garden hose directly to water feed line for motor) and used my ridonkulous water pressure (seriously measured at 90psi at the fixtures) and if there was something blocking the passages it is not now. The telltale flowed solidly and water flowed through the motor just fine. I'll spend some more time investigating that, but it's time to go to bed. Strange thing about kids is they don't care what time you go to sleep they still wake up first thing bright and early.

I lost a seawater impeller in our boat a month or so ago. You need to find all of the pieces. They may be out of the stream and not causing issues now but the pieces you don't get WILL cause you issues later. It's happened on a lot of the boats I've owned and I've owned a lot of boats.

I'm glad you got that one figured out early and still have time to get it fixed and go boating this season.

And I'm with you.  Often, it's not until I fix a thing or two that I really get to know and grow attached to a project.

On my list of things to do this winter is the seawater impeller/pump on my lower unit.  I'm pushing my luck as I bought the boat a few years back and have no idea when the last time it was changed.

67LS1 said:

I lost a seawater impeller in our boat a month or so ago. You need to find all of the pieces. They may be out of the stream and not causing issues now but the pieces you don't get WILL cause you issues later. It's happened on a lot of the boats I've owned and I've owned a lot of boats.

I'm not certain that it shed much of anything, the teeth are there they're just melted and bent over. I'm sure some chunks came off but they might be very small. I'll think on this advice and do some more poking and prodding to see what I decide. I don't have much of an appetite for pulling the power head, but I also don't have much of an appetite for clogged cooling passages and a siezed motor while out on the water.

dculberson (Forum Supporter) said:

Mr_Asa said:

Know that creature from the Amazon that likes to climb up your pee hole and lodge itself there?

Yeah, thanks for the mental image! I've actually been in and fished in the Amazon, and it's an amazing place, even with urethra and ass biting fish.

After the motor ran for close to a minute, I was able to hold my fingers on the cylinder head and it was hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold them there for more thna 20 seconds or so but definitely not hot enough to sizzle water. So I bet the water pump is working just the telltale passageways are clogged. Hmm. Maybe I'll have to try blowing it out with compressed air? Or might that knock too much crud back into the motor?

I'll look at the parts diagrams and see if there's a thermostat and if there's a charging system. I didn't even think of it not having one. So in that case you just make sure to charge the battery fully, often? Weird.

We canoed on the reservoir over to the boater swim area. It's never fun canoeing with power boats around, but the swimming was awesome and the kids had a blast. No fishing today, but I promised we could go early tomorrow and do some dock fishing. I have worms waiting in the refrigerator.

Spiky Candiru.  

Before tearing off the lower unit (which isn't bad on those), try the normaler things.  Follow the tell-tale hose back up to the head and pull it off.  See if you get water then.  Around here it's little bees that go up there and make their little mud nests.

The pump itself is just above the cavitation plate.  Was the lower unit deep enough in the bucket?

Those charge from the coil/stator under the flywheel.  Stators go bad sometimes and they stop charging.  They are remarkably wimpy charging circuits, like 10A or so, but the amount of bulk juice it takes to start one of those is also small, so proportionally speaking you're usually fine.  Just don't expect it to charge a dead battery on the way back to the dock.

For the flywheel, you rarely need a puller.  Just a couple big screwdrivers between the block and the flywheel and some gentle side-side rocking it should pop off.

For the lower unit/water pump, those have a handy "window" on the side of the shaft housing that gives you access to the shift shaft coupler.  Take that window off and you can loosen the set screw.  Then you can unbolt the lower unit and slide it out with the lower part of the shift shaft.  It's so much nicer than the previous generation where you had to put the selector in reverse and try to fish the rod into it's home in the lower unit with only about an inch of space.

Edit... oh, and take a snapshot with your phone of the old impeller.  I can't remember how many times I take one apart and say to myself "ok, impeller to the right."  Then I put the new one in and say, "wait, was that bent to the right, or pointing to the right?"  I also like to install with a little soapy water, or even just rub the vane tips with a bar of Dial.  Easier to install, quickly dissolves away, doesn't hurt the rubber, and makes me feel warm and fuzzy like I used assembly lube.

So... edit again because I just saw your photos.  Holy E36 M3.  no need for a photo to help you install the new impeller because the old one doesn't tell you anything.

When I'm checking out an outboard to buy, I will pull the cord over two compression "humps" to make sure it has connecting rods and the pistons aren't in pieces, but no more than that.  A dry impeller is not a happy impeller.

My neighbor at the lake doesn't listen to that.  He fires up his I/O every spring for about 10 seconds dry just to make sure it runs before putting it in.  I asked him how often he replaces impellers, and he said "never did."  The boat has been at the lake for easily 25 years. 

Sometimes you get lucky.  Sometimes you don't.

Here are some of the impeller blades I fished out of my oil cooler.

In reply to 67LS1 :

Well there's definitely no pieces that big in my motor because there's no pieces that big on the impeller!

@Curtis: Thanks again for all the input!!

I ordered the water pump kit from Amazon, knowing it was aftermarket. I got it today, and it is terrible. The impeller housing doesn't fit right into the pump housing so it sits proud of the bottom of the pump housing. It wouldn't seal right, of course. I debated just installing it, but decided that was really dumb and ordered the right thing from the Evinrude/Johnson dealer like I should have in the first place. That'll be here Wednesday. Then I'll reassemble and test on the muffs again. I'll also poke around for possible impeller contamination but not tonight, I'm wiped out after a rough kid night last night. (3am is a terrible time for me to be woken up, I almost never get back to sleep if that happens..)

dculberson said:

and a siezed motor while out on the water.

Now, this one might be pure hooey.  I'm talking medical grade bullE36 M3... but its what I've heard.

More than one of the old guys that collect old motors claim to run 20:1 instead of 24:1, or 12:1 instead of 16:1 fuel:oil mix in their old motors.  The reason for this is that "that way if it runs hot, the extra oil in the system helps prevent it from seizing"

Again, may be complete poppycock, but its a thing I've heard and I'd actually like to hear some opinions on it here.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

I have to look into this, but it does have merit.  Halfway through production of OMC's run of the exact same motor, they changed the recommendation from 50:1 t o 100:1.

Hmmm.

But I will say that excessive oil does cause carbon buildup in critical areas.  I think if you have a 50:1 engine and run it at 40:1, it's no big deal, but running a 50:1 on 32:1 is a bit excessive.

My nephew has an OMC 9.9 that calls for 100:1, but he runs it 50:1 because he found no changes in parts between the earlier and later engines, so it may not help, but it can't hurt.