Learning can be fun, but it can also be frustrating.
My boat motor has had some issues over the years and each time something happens I try to learn about what happened, how to fix it and if there was something I could have done differently to prevent the issue from happening.
Last year, I bought a new fuel tank and hose. I also replaced the fuel filter which I try to do every year. My new fuel tank and hose seemed to fix my power issues I was having. We noticed a cut in the fuel line and also suspected “bad” fuel. What is bad fuel? I have come to learn that bad fuel in this case was water in the fuel. Now, I’ll never know how it got there, because I buy the top Premium fuel I can get. I also add seafoam to every tank (which lately through discussion might not be great for the motor depending on who you talk to). After I bought my new fuel tank, I held onto the old one with the fuel in it. I decided to try and run the fuel through my lawn mower. Everything seemed normal until a couple weeks ago when my lawn mower would not stay running. After checking everything I thought to check, I asked a friend what he thought and he said right away, “there’s water in the carb.” I was instructed to empty the carb bowl and I also drained all the old fuel out of the lawn mower tank. After putting everything back together and using fresh fuel, my lawn mower started and kept running like nothing ever happened.
Recently, my motor had white smoke coming out of the exhaust (only when the motor was first started) and there was excess water spraying out of the exhaust. When I inspected my motor it appeared the fuel line going into the carb was leaking. We cut a section of fuel line off and replaced the line, but the leak came back after tonight. I also had the shifter cable replaced because my motor was popping out of reverse. The new cable seemed to do the trick.
So, while I have learned a lot, I have more to learn. What is making the white smoke come out of the exhaust on my boat motor? Anyone have any guesses?
On the flip side of my test run tonight, I may have brought a jigging rod and jigged up a couple kokanee late in the evening. I also missed many more bites, but was too slow on the hook set. Kokanee slammers were the ticket, although I did get many bites on the Big Nasty trout and pout spoon. Gibbs garlic bloody tuna gel and mealworms did the trick for bait.
What a relaxing, but frustrating evening on the lake. While buying a new motor seems like the easier thing to do to alleviate my problems, I am glad to be able to learn on an older boat motor. My first boat motor, ever.