Today was the day to water test the boat and I decided to take her out to Lake Sammamish to make sure the systems were working. Good thing it wasn’t the salt water as my kicker decided to not fire up. Even after having it running for a good 40 minutes at home.
My ez steer connection so failed and the port side downrigger wasn’t working. I guess with a new boat, things are bound to go wrong. At least I’d rather have it go wrong on a freshwater lake than in the open ocean. Once I got back home I torn down the carb and noticed much varnishing of the insides along with the jets. A good scraping, cleaning, and high pressures air bath helped. I also noticed the auto choke connection was disconnected and the rubber retaining clip was missing. I somehow located this part on the bottom of the engine case and re-assembled everything. Upon the first crank, the outboard fired right up and she idled down nicely and hopefully is the last of the issues. I still need to replace the impeller and change the lower case gear oil, but will wait to do so once I have it working and running well. Since we were forced to troll with the main motor the speed was too fast, running at 2.0-2.1 mpg while the optimum troll speed is between 1.5-1.7 mph. We were able to hook 1 nice cutt but it popped off once it saw the boat and the net. Oh well… I guess it’s better than being skunked.
I hope the service turnaround for the downriggers warranty isn’t too long as I hope to get out for a day on the salt in hopes of finding a blackmouth or two.