96 Scarab fuel tank problems?
 

My boat has been a 99.99999% dependable until this weekend. Yesterday as soon as we got on plane and hit some 2' rollers she coughed sputtered and died. It started right up and off we went again. During the day the boat must have died at least 6 times but always started back up. Today I put in enough HEET and Injector cleaner for the 60 gal of fuel in it. I also changed the fuel filter. The engine started just fine, idles great and runs good at fast idle and up to 2K RPM. As soon as I opened it up it coughed out of the flame arrestor, sputtered and died. Again it starts right up. I bring it up on plane slowly but as I run over some small wakes I notice the engine stalled then started running fine. I decided to limp it back to the marina at 2K RPM with no problems. I Checked all of the electrical connections in the engine compartment but could find nothing loose. Checked all the grounds and everything is tight. A marina mechanic said it was possible that I have trash in the fuel tank. I emptied the old fuel filter for water and found none but a lot of black specks appeared in the clean bucket I dumped the fuel in. After that I am beginning to think this is trash in the fuel tank.

Now for the question, how can I fix this ? Does anyone know anything about the 96 Scarab 260 fuel tanks?

Thanks

Could be the ethanol giving your tank a good cleaning. I changed my filters 3 times last season to try to avoid this . There is access in my floor for the sender and fuel lines. Don't know if that will get you very far though.

I bought a car one time with a plastic sandwich bag in the tank. When the engine was off a while the bag would float away from the pickup tube and it would run perfect for about an hour. That was a tough one to figure out.
I'm saving that trick for when somebody really pisses me off.:evilb:

Thats a good one. I think I got my problem fixed. It turned out to be a bad Ignition control module. Checked fuel pressure and it was okay and found code 42 in the ECM. $46 dollars and it ran much better. I think it was breaking down after running a short time.