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Went crabbing sunday. No real hard running at all, idling around pulling pots between raft ups with friends. During a short ride at about 1/2 throttle got a steady alarm. Water was coming from the stream, but I did notice it wasn't a steady stream, more like a spray. Trottled down, alarm went off...idle speed a few min, then wide open about 1 min and the alarm again. There is a psi gauge on the dash, that would peg at 150 when the alarm went on. New to mercs, no mention of the gauge in the manual the prev owner gave me. What gives? Maybe some debris in the cooling lines or pick up?
PSI gage at 150??? I've never seen one go up that high. There's no way your building up to 150 psi on a water gage unless there was some crazy blockage and a steam pocket build up. It sounds like a simple blockage or impeller issue. On some Mercs there is a screen type fitting that goes into the head that can clog, I saw this one on a brand new 60hp the other day. How long's it been since you've changed the impeller and thermostat? Besides a blockage, that's where I'd start.
I just bought the boat in June, have not had any work performed on the engine yet. Is this something I can check myself? I haven't have time to look at it since the trip, I may hook it up and flush it tonight. Where is the screen you mentioned, does that take a mechanic to find, remove, and clean?
I want to have the engine gone over and carbs rebuilt, but local dealer has a 1 month backlog so I was going to wait till the end of the season. If it's not a simple fix. I will just take it over to them and git 'er done. Have another 2 weeks of vaca before end of summer and wanted to get a couple more trips out of her though.
Seems to me the stream exit tube is semi clogged. Try putting a peice of wire into the end of where the water exits and try to clear away any debris that may be in there.
Cliff
1966 13' Sport with a 1993 40hp Yamaha 2 Smoker
Gacto: Don't overlook the possibility of a cylinder head gasket leak. High cylinder pressures can blow into the cooling passages and displace the water. Age, hours, use in salt water, etc can contribute to head gasket deterioration. This happened to me a number of years ago. Water pump was fine as was entire cooling system. Good luck and let us know cause...because we are all still learning!
PROBLEM SOLVED! This am I woke the neighborhood running the engine in the yard. I put some wire up the pisser, idled as high as I could and let her run for about 30 min fishing wire in the hole. The stream seemed a little better, less spraying. Just got back from a test run...after an hour of running different speeds from idle to wide open all seems back to normal! In my previous post i listed the psi as 150...actually it pegged at 15. today at wide open it never touched 15, no alarms. only time it came close was idle to full throttle, but it back right down.
At the end of the season I will take it in for a carb rebuild or replacement, power trim leak repair, and complete engine overhaul! Just glass I will have a few more trips befoe the end of the season.
