Wellcraft 170 Classic - Social Distancing

I was ready to hit the water Sunday, but I needed to make sure the boat was firing and running consistently before I felt comfortable putting it in the water.  I'm glad I felt that way because Sunday morning when I went to go make sure it was good to go, I would put fuel in the carb, it would fire and run, and then die when it ran out of fuel in the bowl.  When I bought the boat, Facebook boat man had an EFI pump from a Harley-Davidson wired directly to the battery pushing fuel through the mechanical pump and into the carb.  I had removed it because that was stupid, but now that I was trying to run it properly, the pump wasn't pumping.  I took off the line from the pump to the carb, and it was dry, but the line from the tank to the pump was full.  Interesting...  So the pump was working and the diaphragm wasn't ruptured, which I was worried about since if it goes it can dump fuel into the crankcase.  These marine mechanical pumps have little water separators/filters in them that should be replaced, so at some point when the engine was upside down I think something must have been dislodged inside of it and blocking flow.  I took the pump off and ran over to the marine parts store... again... to buy the water separator.  When I got back, I pulled the pump off the block since I had a new gasket from my rebuild kit and it would be easier to work on outside of the boat.  I pulled the separator housing off and the original separator was still in there--you can tell because they're stones from the factory but have since been replaced with paper filters.

The spring keeping it flush with the gasket was broken too.

I noticed a little dangling piece of rubber inside the main pump housing, so I decided to pull the pump all the way apart to inspect the diaphragm and make sure it wasn't ruptured from facebook boat man's insane EFI pump setup.

It was actually in good shape, but there was more dried ethanol/gas scum inside it like there was in the carburetor.

I cleaned the pump out really well of all the corrosion and crud and put it back together with the new separator hoping for a miracle.

And finally a miracle happened. Excuse the vertical video, I was one handing it and putting it on Snapchat for my Wreck friends to see.

glad to see someone else is having a similar experience, i bought a 1988 Startcraft  and its been a string of headaches, most recently with the drive dog rounding off its ears due to a mal adjusted shift cable.

looks like you are getting close though!

This takes a very long time.

In reply to young_boomer :

I have only done a test spot on my boat, but i just basically just wiped it off and applied the floor wax. My boat is all white though. Not sure what it would do to the faded red, but it would probably do ya right once you get the color buffed up. 

Wow, I'm only realizing now that picture doesn't do it justice.  I'm not sure if it's compression on the forum or a bad picture, but the polished red is really bright and shiny.

I'm planning on getting it in the water on Friday, but I'm getting pretty nervous about having half the boat red and half of it pink.  I'm not the most patient person either, so I'm winding up with streaks of pink through my red too...  I'm in a hurry because I don't want to have an ugly boat when I first take it out, but by hurrying I'm also making it ugly. Catch-22.

I wish the floor polish was a catch-all for buffing and sanding but from what you said it seems more like a finisher...

In reply to young_boomer :

I could have explained that better.  My boat has faded gelcoat. I wanted it to look better and it needed a good buffing. I detailed for years and can tell you i have no patients or time/energy to buff and wax the boat. I heard about the floor cleaner trick so i grabbed a just of Zep brand stuff at lowes. Just to try it i wiped it off and did a real quick hit of the floor polish, just used it splashed on a towel, real informal application job but i was shocked at how well it shined. Went from quite dull to a very shiny nice finish with just a quick wipe on/wipe off. Because it does kinda soak on it fills imperfections and gives a wet look. I used it on faded plastic headlights too, it worked good. It may bring the red out. Wouldn't hurt to try i guess.  I'll do my whole boat with it at some point. 

In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :

OK, that makes sense.  I guess for the spots I don't hit right with the sander and buffer I'll hit it with some floor polish before and/or after the wax coat then.  That's good stuff, I bet it'll fix up the uneven spots.

After much anticipation, the boat made it to the lake. Evan informed us that we needed to fill the outdrive with oil, after we made it to the boat ramp parking lot. He was mildly concerned by the piece of metal that came out of the drain plug 

 After navigating down the boat ramp, using the trolling motor to get back to the dock, loading with tools, we were off!! No. Wait. Swap 3 spark plug wires around, squirt some starter fluid, and were off! 

We made it about, uh, 300 more feet before it overheated. But hey, we were on the water with the boys, beers in hand. Just ignore the water we were taking on and the lack of bilge pump. Pure bliss

No pictures to add here.  Yeah, the overheating wasn't really overheating, just me realizing that the temp was over 200.  I thought the impeller was sucking water since the place next to the intake was perfectly clean of rubbing compound from the paint while the rest was spotted, but I was told that I had the muffs on while I was doing that so no wonder

Two theories, both of which I believe are contributing:

1. Facebook Boat Man failed at changing the impeller (likely)
2. We hadn't put a timing light on it and it fell on its face when I got on the throttle.  Speculating heavily retarded timing.

Impeller should be coming tomorrow or Monday and after that's in I can set the timing without worrying as much about overheating.  I'm not worried about having done damage to the motor since I was watching the temp gauge like a hawk. That's why it looks like I'm about to cry in one of the pictures Foster posted.

I was thinking while I was shifting it (which it does perfectly by the way) that it shifted pretty smooth for a boat.  Then Foster said he thought it was clunky and made me feel bad.

Never did find out what that pin was that came out of the drive.  Hope it wasn't important.

Father's day is coming up, so I'm getting my dad a pair of waterskis to come out with me next weekend.

Final note.  I was worried about taking my Sierra on the highway and worried about it not being able to pull the boat back out of the water being a stick and 2wd with no locker.  Shouldn't have even spent a second thinking about it, the little ol V6 with 230k on it pulled like a champ.

Replaced the impeller today.  The old one didn't look bad, which is making me think that the problem is all in timing.  Now that I have this impeller in, I'm going to time it tomorrow or Thursday and be ready again for the lake this weekend.

Here's the drive split in half.  No gasket, which was kinda weird but there's an o-ring for oil flow between lower and upper.  Reassembling was terrible, there's two nuts under a buttress that you can't get on or off unless the lower is barely on the studs.  Putting the new impeller into its housing was also awful, my thumb still hurts.  Otherwise, everything went smoothly.  The oil was old, black, and smelly, so I'm again doubting Facebook boat man replacing the impeller.  I have new oil but it got dark by the time I was finishing up so I decided to hold off until tomorrow on refilling.

Filled the drive with oil today and tried to start working on timing, but it was just too finicky and my battery only had a couple cranks in it. Tomorrow after work I'm going to sit there and dial in timing and carb, then back on the lake Saturday.

The new impeller did its job, water comes out the exhaust for real now.

Hope you put the battery on the charger this time

Well, I'm stumped.

New impeller, new thermostat, overheating persists.  I dialed the timing in and it's dead on now.  (EDIT: the balancer had slipped so I found true TDC and made a new timing mark.)  Vacuum is normal, around 20 in.  Cooks right on up to 200 degrees on the hose.  Here's a flow diagram for brainstorming my issues with me if you're so inclined:

I have flow to the thermostat at 4 since I have flow from the exhaust at 1.

THEREFORE, I should have flow into the engine circulating pump at 5 since the thermostat shouldn't block the flow.  I will say, the hose from 4-5 seemed awfully empty when I squeezed it, but I couldn't tell for sure if it was full, since this isn't a pressurized system.  The circulating pump is a simple centrifugal pump, no parts touch except the bearings and shaft.  Usually when these go out, they spring a leak; this one has no leaks.  (Of course, it wouldn't leak if it didn't have water in it?) The thermostat is movable by hand, so it's not "stuck," but I haven't tested it in an actual pot to see if it reacts to temperature yet, and it is new.

So that leaves me with a blockage at 4, blockage at 5, and/or blockage at 6 as culprits.  Any idea, common problem you've seen, or mockery for buying a boat is welcome.

Where is the temp probe located?  Have you checked temps with an IR thermometer or something?  Find where the flow is going and where it isn't.

I would be suspect of the gauge at this point. It wouldn't exactly be surprising if it was off. Go to harbor freight on the way home from work and snag an ir thermometer. Then run it with no t stat in it 

Mr_Asa said:

Where is the temp probe located?  Have you checked temps with an IR thermometer or something?  Find where the flow is going and where it isn't.

It's in the thermostat housing. That's a good idea with the IR thermometer, I'll try to grab one when I can. I think if it isn't raining tonight I'm going to pull the hose off the pump and check for blockages while I'm shopping for one.

The gauges are known to read about 20° too hot, but with a 140° thermostat I shouldn't be seeing 180-200°.

TAC_Rx said:

I can't decide if these boat threads on here are making me want to get a boat more or less... 

My parents own a marina and several of their own boats, plus one that basically belongs to my brother and I. 

If my parents did not own a marina, there is no way in hell I'd own a powerboat (unless I was rich). At least not a saltwater boat. And I'm saying that as someone who loves being on the water, in any kind of boat. 

young_boomer said:

In reply to Mr_Asa :

I'm convinced the reason people think boats are expensive is because they don't do the work themselves.  All the parts are cheap as hell except the big ticket items and everything is rebuildable in a garage... So far...  My only complaint is that the parts stores aren't close to me, they're all by the lake, so 30-45+ minutes.  That's OK for a day trip to the lake, but a bit tough to swallow for a part.

Probably a lot of that is because you presumably have a freshwater boat. Boats operating in saltwater have a massively larger list of problem areas, and many things simply are not rebuildable because of corrosion so you end up replacing a lot of items that in a freshwater boat would last 10x as long. 

Oh baby, it's been a while since I updated.

SWMBO stole me for Independence Day weekend, and probably distracted me on others.  I had to take a bit of a breather from this thing, it was driving me nuts.  I knew I had a flow restriction somewhere, but where could it have been?

Well, I did a LOT of forum searching.  Here's what happened as a post-mortem, so you know my fix worked:

There is a copper tube that sits in a housing in the upper half of the outdrive.  This tube mates to the water pump in the lower half of the outdrive, and as you put them together, there is a guide tube that sits in the water pump housing in the bottom half that guides the upper tube into the water pump.  When I put the drive back together after replacing the impeller, I had misaligned the two tubes.  What happened when I ran the engine was that the impeller would pump water up, but since the pickup tube was not mated, it would squirt up and then fall back down out of the propeller.  It never even made it to the engine.

Somewhere along the way, my brand new impeller decided to commit die. 

I have no mechanical sympathy for this boat, so I shoved it back in and sent it.

And dang man, the thing worked.  I had been chasing my tail on this problem since I rebuilt the motor, and just like that it was all together.  Took it to the lake, and there's some tuning to be done and a bit more break in to be had, but the thing chooches.  The rest of this build thread is going to be upholstry, looks like

It is entirely possible that the impeller did that when you unbolted it and the shaft holding the impeller off-center was removed.

I spent some time out working on the timing and carb today.  Ran it on the hose for about an hour total, runs like a top.  Like I said last time, there were some unresolved issues on the lake when I took it out last week.  It would run fine for a bit, get up on plane, and then start to die and it backfired once.  I advanced the timing about 4 more degrees.  What I hope will make the difference though is that the propellor was really chewed up and one blade was bent.  I spent about half an hour filing the edges to sharp and re-bending the bent blade to normal.

Might not look great, but it's about a million times better than it was.

Got a present in the mail too. I always wanted to LS swap a mail truck and go 9's....

But it wasn't the mail truck that I got, even though I convinced my girlfriend it was.  I got a new cover for the boat, which I put on in time for the rain.  It filled up with about 300 lbs of water right away which I had to use a hose to suck-start a siphon to drain since I couldn't lift it out.

Again, not much progress.  I've been busy, it's been rainy... You know how it goes.  Sometimes it's better to take a breather then keep hitting the wall.

On a whim, I decided to check the fuel filter in the carb since my symptoms on the water are reading like the pump is going out, but I like cheap options instead of firing the parts cannon.

When I was cleaning out the pump and the carb, mgfoster told me "I can't wait for the fuel tank episode."

Well, it might be time for that episode.  Before I pull it out and clean it which I know is the right way to do it, I want to know if anyone has any ideas on an easy way to do it.  Fuel additives, etc.  My current plan is to run Facebook Boat Man's EFI pump through the biggest fuel filter I can find at the parts store back into the filler neck of the boat and just let it cycle the whole tank 2-3 times over a whole afternoon to get as much sludge as I can out of the tank.  Thoughts?

How difficult is it to remove the tank? It's not a bad idea for a season, but I always find people that do that but discover that there's far more sediment than filters- and casual use always breaks more gack loose.

Run it through a couple times, when the boating season is over pull the tank and do it properly.

unless you have some super sweet access panel, pulling the tank is going to be a real piece of work...