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

One potential thing to consider as a cause for them surviving seizing is the very reason that most of those old motors have survived so long in the first place.  Anything before (probably, maybe) the mid-60s has tolerances that are a joke to today's machines, and the further back you go the worse they were.

I'm sure you could blueprint and build an epic screamer if you had enough parts to choose from, but I'd bet that most of them off the line were built for abuse just by the manufacturing standards of the time.

Sorry for the derailment, dculberson.  Just an interesting tangent.  Might be worth a thread on its own.

In reply to Mr_Asa :

No, I don't mind the derailment. It's always good to read two informed people discuss something interesting.

I read about the 100:1 fuel ratio controversy and have mixed mine 50:1.

The factory water pump came last night and I was excited to get the boat back together but I had an engine to prep for shipment so that took my evening. I'm hopeful that I'll get the water pump installed tonight.

Just remember to give the motor a quick pull to verify which way it spins when running so you pack it in the housing properly. Its no fun when you get it backwards, ask me how I know. 

Holy E36 M3! We just took the boat out on the water for the first time and had a totally drama free enjoyable afternoon. I worried over the engine's cooling system, fueling system, the launching and retrieving of the boat, and whether or not it would even float. But it all went completely smoothly and a grand time was had by all.

I made sure the battery was fully charged, packed my hefty Lithium jump pack and starting fluid, tested and greased the manual winch, made sure we had an extra gallon of gas, and flipped my hitch over so it was rise instead of drop. (Towed much better like that!) I chose the most remote boat ramp - the Howard St boat ramp - this one is deep into the "no wake" zone of the reservoir, at least two or three miles of all no-wake which kind of selects out the most impatient folks. It also has a nice gentle ramp but unfortunately only one ramp really. (There's two, but the second one has no dock so nobody uses it. Plus it would be really crowded if people tried to use both.) I essentially launched it by myself because my wife had to keep an eye on the little ones. They did hold onto the lines for me after I got it floating and free of the trailer, that was a big help. The van did great with no traction problems and no difficulties at all. We tied the boat to the courtesy side of the dock and checked things over to make sure it was actually floating.

It floats!

All good there, and then instead of me tooling around by myself we just took off into the great beyond. I figured, they've got their life jackets on and we've all swam quite a bit in this lake, so worst case the four of us would head back to the dock cross-country style.

We didn't give it much of a work-out - we stayed in the no-wake area. Like I said, it's miles long and has plenty of coves and beautiful things to see.

I do kind of look like a Shriner driving one of their little cars. The seat is set way too close to the console. I'll need to do something about that. In the background you can see the ramp we used. One thing that surprised me is how low it rides in the water. I guess I should have expected it; it is a small boat! But you can reach out and just run your hand in the water as you tool along. It's a far cry from the pontoon boat we rented. It's definitely a low slung cruiser boat. The engine restarted hot or cold easily, though I did find myself tweaking the "lean/rich" knob to get it to idle for a minute after a restart. I like the engine, but I'm not sold on the 2-smoke nature of it, it's a bit stinky for being out in nature. It'll do for now.

Lots of fishing, lots of catching. My 6-year-old has not quite mastered "patience" yet, but she's also got the knack for catching fish. So it's this odd situation where after about 4 minutes she's about to cry from frustration for not having caught anything, yet she's reeling in fish after fish compared to me.

Her trophy moment came after we got out of the boat, we tied up as far up the courtesy dock as we could and I had her put a hook in the water there (I know the sunfish love hanging out under docks, and there's little other structure to fish under in the area.) Sure enough:

Scale is hard to get but it's about a pound, it's a hefty guy. A more experienced boater was taking out right before us and we got to talking. He was impressed by how well the boat ran, and asked if I needed help since I told him it was my first time. I asked for another set of eyes, and he watched as I did a slow but perfect take out. No problems at all! The boat is so light that it wasn't quite centered on the keel rollers so I just picked it up in the water a bit and centered it, drug it forward and latched it to the winch. Crank up, safety chain, and away we go to the parking lot to finish securing. The van didn't slip even a tiny bit taking it out.

The verdict on the boat is probably best summed up by the 6 year old's reaction:

That's her hugging it and saying "I love the boat!" direct quote and no I didn't put her up to it or feed her the line. That was before the trip, but still she loved it after the trip too.

Good night boat.

Awesome! Glad to hear it went smoothly! 

Personally, it doesn't feel like boating to me if there isn't a nice blue haze over the water when you start her up. 

Smell of burnt 24:1 two stroke mix with lake water is one of those that takes me to my happy place

That's how we keep the mosquitos away!

I slowly switched to all 4 strokes (and 2 of 3 are efi), which are quiet and efficient but more difficult to troubleshoot and the parts are expensive. 

In reply to dculberson :

That's awesome! Congrats!  

Also good to read a GC can launch and retrieve a reasonably sized boat. 

I forgot to ask: is there some kind of neutral rev limiter in these motors? I ask because I was fighting it to no end trying to test revving it up and then shifted into gear and then it suddenly let me rev it up no problem.

On the older ones there is a physical stop that prevents it from going above a certain RPM in neutral.  Would imagine there is similar in yours.

Been told that 2-strokes can runaway if revved too high in neutral, which is the reason for the limiter. 

dculberson said:

I forgot to ask: is there some kind of neutral rev limiter in these motors? I ask because I was fighting it to no end trying to test revving it up and then shifted into gear and then it suddenly let me rev it up no problem.

On mercs and Yamaha, there is usually a second throttle for neutral. Any chance there is one for yours? Curtis?

Mr_Asa has it! It's a mechanical stop, sorry I wasn't clear in my post. The throttle lever wouldn't move and I was pushing pretty hard (fortunately not hard enough to break anything, that I could see...) and then once I went into gear the throttle readily moved further and the engine revved up. I was pretty mystified at first but Mr_Asa's point about the 2 stroke run-away problem makes total sense!

This is fantastic!

The memories made that day alone are worth the cost of entry ;)

Everything else is just gravy.

Over the weekend I finally took possession of another old Starcraft SuperSport 16' (Outboard, this time).  This one is junk and doesn't have many good parts left but on the off chance you need something that it might have, hit me up.  I'm going to keep it around for a bit to see if I can use any parts off of it for mine.  I'm now the third GRMer to own this tub.

And you're right...

It's funny how a boat always looks surprisingly small in the water compared to how it looks on a trailer.  (This is especially true of sailboats in my experience.)

In reply to ClemSparks :

Agreed, and thanks for the parts offer! I haven't come up with anything off the top of my head that it might have, but I'll look over my boat and see if anything jumps out at me. I kind of want a trolling motor but that's not worth shipping it looks like. Are the windows always plastic on these? Mine are, and it seems like safety glass would be a nice upgrade, but maybe that's not done? (or are yours glass?)

I'm pretty sure my windshield are all glass.

Used trolling motors seem to be a fairly local commodity ;).  The one on this junk boat is definitely junk.

Trolling motor: There are basically two brands, Minn Kota and Motor Guide. I don't know anybody who has used Motor Guide for more than one season. Even the Brunswick brands use Minn Kota - and Motor Guide is owned by Brunswick. That tells me that either Minn Kota has such a loyal following that Brunswick has to, or else Minn Kota is just that much better. On the pro bass and walleye tours, they have to have a 90% market share (or they did, until Lowrance came into the game, but those are $$$)

Tiller motor will be the easiest and cheapest.

Bow Mount is better though if you can give up the space up there. I think it was Forrest Wood, though I could be mistaken, who said "It is easier to pull a log through the water than push it", and he was right. With that, you have 3 options: foot pedal, remote (Co-Pilot), and GPS where you kind of have a set it and forget it (I-Pilot). I personally despise our foot pedal, but I think that is due the the 1990's design. I have to use it barefoot, otherwise I accidentally shut it off when turning it to the right. From what I can tell, they've gotten much better.

If you go with a used Minn Kota bow mount, make sure that you get one with the round plug (Powerdrive V2 or later), unless you get a smoking good deal on a flat plug version. Why? The pedals wear out, and are now unobtanium. We could sell our pedal, temperamental as it is, for about $150. 

For your boat, you'll want 55lbs or more. 12v will be fine, and easier, but 24v will get you more time out on the water (although you can just get 2 batteries wired in parallel, as well). We typically get about 2 to 3 hours with our 12v 55lb on a similar boat as yours. Get a good charger, make sure you plug it in when you get home and the night before you go out. 

In reply to ClemSparks :

If it's possible to economically remove the windshields and the frames and then ship them, I would be interested in buying them from you. I would need the whole shebang (frames, hardware, etc) though as my side windows are different (also plexiglass) so if it's not possible for you to ship them I understand.

@mtn: Thanks, that's great and helpful advice. We'll see if we end up wanting a trolling motor, but if we do it'll be Minn-Kota.

If you ever try to actually go on plane with this, I suggest you trim the motor down some.  The angle between the motor and transom is too obtuse right now in the pics, which pushes the bow up and will make it really hard to plane with such little power. Bring the lower unit close to the transom by moving the pin in the bracket. 

In reply to Sonic :

Thank you! I'll be sure to do that. Right now I move it to the top position for hauling then the middle position when on the water. I'll move it to the bottom (closest) position and see how that affects the boat.

mtn said:

dculberson said:

I forgot to ask: is there some kind of neutral rev limiter in these motors? I ask because I was fighting it to no end trying to test revving it up and then shifted into gear and then it suddenly let me rev it up no problem.

On mercs and Yamaha, there is usually a second throttle for neutral. Any chance there is one for yours? Curtis?

Yes, there should be unless it has broken or the plastic bushing has come off.  As I recall, it sits under the throttle lever.

It's a bit hard to describe, but twisting the throttle on those doesn't actually open the throttle, it spins the plate under the flywheel to provide advance.  Then a "ramp" on that plate pushes a bell crank to open the throttle.  The first quarter or so of twisting actually just advances timing without opening the throttle.

I haven't tinkered with one in a couple years so I'm not picturing it, but the throttle limiter I think slides under the bell crank for the throttle and it should engage about the time the "ramp" encounters the bell crank.

We took the boat out Saturday and the boat itself was drama free, but unforecasted rain rolled in shortly after we hit the water. We were swimming when it started, and it was pretty neat to see the rain drops hitting the water all around us. But the clouds made it cold and then thunder started, so we wet back to the dock. We did a little more fishing from the courtesy dock - nobody was around to need it - and I caught a new world record green sunfish.

I didn't know you could catch fish that small on a hook.

After we took the boat out of the water, this was dripping on the pavement below the motor:

is that just emulsified 2 stroke oil from the exhaust? There's no coolant to turn into milkshake, so I'm going to assume that's what it is unless I hear otherwise.

Oh, and launching and taking out went super smoothly. The van does great at it. The boat's light enough that pulling it onto the trailer with the rope or the hand winch is super easy. It's also amazing how many cranky and difficult mechanisms and attachments can be rectified with a few squirts of oil or a few dabs of grease. People don't lubricate mechanisms enough, in general.

When I saw that drip/spot I immediately thought "lower unit seals" (looks like it could be milky/watery gear oil) but don't get too excited about my initial doom thoughts.  It's definitely a possibility to investigate, though.

And yeah...lubrication is a marvelous thing.  I, myself, often neglect to lubricate moving things and am then blown away at how good things can work after a squirt of oil (or whateveritneeds).

In reply to ClemSparks :

I thought of that, I've got plenty of lower unit oil, I might go ahead and change the fluid again and see if it's clean.

I'd at least loosen the lower drain plug enough to see what comes out.  If it looks like the clean oil you just put in, you're in good shape there.  No harm and not much hassle in checking.

My '55 drips like that after I run it, its very likely the emulsified two stroke oil.

I usually keep mine up till I get home, then put a pan under it.  Up so it doesn't scrape while bouncing around on the drive home, pan so it doesn't stain my driveway.