Running really bad
 

This summer I put in a low hour 454 that I bought from another OSO member. Since then I have been fixing a lot of issues with the boat including some running problems. I went with pertoronix ignition because of misfiring. I just put batteries in because the alt. was taking 5-6 minutes to get up to 14 volts. The fuel filter from last season had water and was seriously rusted. It has a new NAPA fuel filter on it. In August we went out with it and even with a miss it got right to 50. Last week after I put in the batteries everything seemed fine. We went out yesterday and it was bad. The only thing changed since then was I added 5 gal. of Hess 93 and on start-up at the dock the electric fuel pump had a loose connection(from the battery change) and the carb. ran out of fuel on warm-up. I got the pump working and it started, but I had to turn up idle at the carb. for it to stay running. The boat had no power and back-fired. It would not go much above idle in gear. We only did 9 mph. Back @the dock I checked for fuel, plenty, it is a double pumper. Then I checked float level, just a hair under the sights. Then I checked spark@ coil wire, looks OK. Then I messed with the timing a bit, and for a minute it sounded strong, put the flame arrestor back on and it was running weak again. Re-starts were really hard and we wound up turning the idle up to 3000 and it still stalled going into gear, I cranked up the idle because when we went to test it, it stalled and would not run in gear and the wind was sending the boat into the ramp.
This thing runs like it has a massive vacuum leak. A guy @the dock said look for water in the gas. Home we spun off the filter and we could not really see water, but the gas has a weak smell. This season only about 20-25 gals. of fuel have been put in, there is still some from last season in there. We did use the blue stabil. It was not a full tank when it was stored.

I just emptied the fuel filter into an empty poland spring bottle and did not see any water.

I don't know who installed the motor weather it was you or a shop, but it sounds like before you even put it in the water you better go over everything again. All battery connections tight, timing set before you ping to death, fuel system completely gone over etc. I know its exciting and you want to get it going as soon as possible but you need spend a little more time and make sure everything as close to perfect before you take it out for some fine tuning.

It had running problems, I spent two months after the motor went in chasing them and probably replacing parts that did not need changing. The timing was set, the double pumper rebuilt, new distributor, and I have replaced a lot of the wiring that was messed-up, so believe me i did not just drop this in the water and hope for the best, it has been two months of messing with it after the engine went in. Also the pump is a mallory 110.

Check and clean flame arrester.

try check the filter in the carb as well and while your there you could take a peek in the bowls just to make sure every is good. Do you have access to a timing advance light? Check the base timing then rev it up and check total timing. Make sure the timing light doesnt look erratic as this could point to arcing or distributer problems. Take a look at the spark plugs to see how it was running last time. If you do all this you should be close or at least in the right direction.

tms1155- Can the flame arrestor just be cleaned with soap and water? Can I use something stronger like carb. cleaner on it?
Outlaw man- I have a couple lights. I know what your talking about with the erraticness on a timing light. I had that problem and got rid of it with new distributor and batteries. Maybe it came back, when it had that it was misfiring, now it is not even a miss, just no power. I had the timing @21 @idle and put in 12 degree limiters to stop the advance @33 degrees. I also two or three weeks ago double checked where I put the distributor, I will check again to make sure it is @top dead. The reason I am going to check it is to see if the timing chain jumped.
I also had what looked like steam out the exhaust yesterday but the headers were not hot. It has lightnings. It was cold out and drizzling so it might not be real steam.

mrfixxall
 

set the motor on tdc,pull the distributor cap and with a breaker bar and a socket turn the crank shaft clock wise and counter clock wise and watch the rotor to see if theirs any play in it..if your moving the timing around and nothing seems to affect the performance then it probably jumped a tooth.

also do a compression check,all the cylinders will be low if the timing chain jumped..

still OK,pull the fuel line and see how long it takes to fill a 2 gallon jug.if its a 110 fuel pump it should pump 1.8 gallons per minute

Outlawman- My double pumper does not have it's own filter, I just have the spin on on the way to the carb.

mrfixxall- Tom. the weather is suppossed to be good here and I will try. Last time I diagnosed a car with a jumped chain it was a buick 231 and I found the cylinders progressively had less compression as I moved toward the back of the engine.

Here is what I did and found-
- Checked plugs, a bit wet w/fuel
- Cleaned arrestor
- Checked dist. @TDC, moved crank back and fouth, no play at all, rules out chain
- Checked volts at coil, good
- Checked volts at fuel pump, good
-Ran motor and it did steam, today was not a damp day, when I reved-up the engine there was a lot of steam.
-Covered primaries to see if there was vacuum leak, no rpm change.
-Heres where it gets interesting - I went to Sunoco and got 5 gal. of 93 and rigged up the pump to run from the can after dumping the filter and running the carb out of gas.
Running on the gas can it ran noticably better and the headers cooled down. I timed it @33 deg. full advance. The timing light was not skipping like it had done in the past, but the timing was varying by a degree or two @idle. I ran it awhile and there was no steam out the exhaust, just steam from the water after hitting the ground. There was still a bit of a miss, but it probably needs plugs. It also re-started easy.
Then I hooked back up to the gas tank and the steam came back after running 5-10 minutes, the header temp. went up, and on decel. it wanted to stall and it took a lot of throttling to keep it running after decel. At this point it seems fuel is the or one of the problems.
I am in NY and we are on E10, like I said before, last season it was stored with half a tank and blue stabil. This season I have put in about 20-25 gallons. As it sits now it has half a tank. What do you think happened to the fuel? Is there a additive like Methanol (dry gas) or do I need to make this gas dissapear? I also want to winterize before halloween.