Way2slow

Where are you talking about the scaring is at. If it's in a non wear area then no harm done. If it's where one of the bearings go and it's gouged it out so there in not a tight fit, then you may have a problem. If you scared the sides getting the snap ring out, as long as it not under where the O-rings seal, shouldn't have a problem there. If it's on a seal or wear surface, you may be able to clean it up and use some Marine-Tex or Devcon Plastic Steel Putty to fill them in and carefully sand them smooth after it dries. With all that said, you might be able to find a good, used LU cheaper than you can fix that one. Also, read ahead on the assembly and see if it tells you to use some special guages/jigs to set it up (shims and spacing) before you go back together with it. If so, there is no getting around using them, it won't live, so you will have to pay a dealer or shop that has them to set it up for you.

I'm assuming you have the lockring and all out. I generaly just get a stick of grade 8 all-thread and small piece of 1/2" thick flat metal, cold roll a couple of inches wide or similar. See what size you can get in there but I usually try 3/8" Bend a small hook on one end, drill two holes in the flat metal far enough apart to fit the width needed for the bearing carrier. Hook the all-thread behind the carrier and cut them off a couple of inches above the flat metal. Stick them through the holes and us nuts on the all-thread to jack the carrier out. Hopefully this is not a saltwater motor, if so, you've got a hellava job on your hands. Oh, you will need access to a tourch to heat the ends enough to get a good, sharp bend on them. Don't try a U-turn bend, there's usually not enough room to get them in there. You might even have to grind them some to get them behind the carrier. You might need to drill and hole in the center of the flat steel the size of the prop nut threads so it will slide on the shaft a little to get it to stay in place,

Does it have a three prong plug on it? If so, that means they probably have the case of the charger connected to the bonded ground. It's possible you may be getting several ohms loss between where your switch box is bonded ground is and where you're boat is. This has the possibility of developing a small voltage on the chassis of the charger and it's transfering it to the boat. You can measure just how much voltage is there if you have a metal water line outside thats buried in the ground. Park the boat next to it plug your charger up and measure the voltage between the hull of the boat and the water line. Check it in AC and DC. If it's very much, I would insulate the charger from the hull. 12VDC can sting your arm when touching soft skin. When hot and sweaty working on equipment, I have the batteries voltage sting me a lot, sometimes enough to feel like it's burning. I've had 48 volt batteries down right shock me when getting soft skin grounded.

In GA it's 100 feet, but a lot depends on the situation and how you go by them. For instance, in a small area or congested area, I will come completely off plane and idle with NO WAKE until I'm clear. If you have a 100 feet or more between any boat and can run a fairly straight line, not sig sagging through a gauntlet of boats, then maintain a safe speed that will keep you on full plane. The one thing I hate most of all is a boat that thinks they are being curtious and drops down off plane but is rolling a wake you could surf off of. I had much rather a boat come by me 50 feet away at 70 mph than have them come off plane and run slow with bow high and rolling a tidal wave behind them or makes a turn directly in front of me that rolls a big wake right in my path. Oh, and yes, I must prefer a boat come across in front of me than to cross over behind me, unless they are a couple of hundred feet behind. One other thing you have to watch watch out for in a congested area, even though their may not be any speed limits and you're allowing the state minimum distance, if you're hauling butt, they can still site you for operating your boat in an unsafe manner. A friend of mine learned that one the hard way. He in a tournament, when running between spots a WOT, had to make three big turns to give some boats a safe passing distance. When he got to his hole, the game warden pulled up behind him and gave him a citation for unsafe operation of his boat.

If that's the kind of rivers you run, rocks and rapids, kind of a no brainer, I would buy the jet boat in a heart beat. Hell, I would buy one just to go and raise hell on the river, to heck with fishing, but you gotta have the fishing to have an excuse to go run the river. Just make sure you put about an 85 lb thrust TM on it, something that will still give you some pulling power while working currents. You talk about drifting down. In the swift water that I want to fish, I turn the boat and let it drift backwards, using the TM to help hold it against the current. That way it gives you time to fish before you are 100 ft from where your lure hit the water. In my neck of the woods, when you talking rivers, you're normally talking trees across the river, tree tops sticking all out of the water, limbs, sandbars, trash and all that kind of stuff.

NO, you CAN NOT raise the motor enough that the skeg is level with or above the bottom of the boat and still keep running. If you have a hydraulic jack plate you can raise the motor up until there is only a few inches of the skegg below the hull while on plane. However, if you come off plane, you are still going to need 8 - 10" to get going again. Different hulls have different spec's so pick your hull carefully. If you are going to be shooting mild rapids with rocks and laydowns, you are going to want a heavy bottom boat and you will probably want to go to a jet drive then. Running a prop drive over the occassional rock or laydown you just time it right so you tilt the motor up some just as you start over it and bring it back down when clear. If there are lots of them close together, that's tough to do because the current kills you speed too fast. Also, if you're running a new boat/motor, and have never done this, you're nerves may not let you so you're back to looking at a jet drive. I just absolutely hate jets when trying to manuver in a small area, and that hatered compounds ten fold when trying to work it in a river current. I've had one and as long as you were hauling a** up the river it was great, but don't come off plane and try to work it around into the mouth of a creek with good water flow. Finally sold the jet drive unit and put the powerheads on a prop drive LU.

Today, both outboards are all extremely high tech. The more high tech and complicated they get, the more likely you will have a failure. Finding someone that can diagnose a fix the problem as well as the actual cause of the problem is also a challenge in itself. Yes, you will read about blown ETecs but if you do you homework on Opti-Max's (also know as Opti-Pops), you will see a huge number of them blowing also. I've seen more than one Opt- just about sawn into when stick a piston, break the rod and the rod start opening the block up. I'm partital to E-tecs and if I was going to buy a new motor, it would be an E-tec but I'm not as scared of an engine failure after the warrrenty runs out because I can fix it myself. For the average boater, the warrenty is going to be everything and should go with the one that's going to give the best and longest warrenty. When either of the motors break and they are out of warrenty, repair cost can be astronomical and because of the difficulty most have diagnosing the actual cause of the failure, it can repeat itself very easily. Running either of these motors without a warrenty can totally ruin your day if it breaks.

Only if you're smart. Those old late 80's thru early 90's oil injection system are just not that reliable. 8 out of 10 will say there's no problem, but I ask , do you want to be numbers 9 and 10? Ask Jenga how that feels. You've gotta hope it stuck a piston before it got the crank but about 90% of the time, running with no oil till it's locks up usually gets the crank.

Between the two, and was going to be fishing rivers where you have underwater mines and shallow water to worry about, I would go with a tunnel. What ever you do though, don't put a jet drive on a tunnel. You will have almost no slow speed manuverablity. Now, to take full benifit of a tunnel, you MUST install a hydaulic jack plate. Some tunnels can run on plane in 3 - 4" of water with the motor jacked up. About the only time a jet drive is better than a prop drive is when you're going to be hauling butt up a river with laydowns you are going to be have to slide over. If you work your trim right, the tunnel with a jack plate will do that just as well also. You also have to be care full doing this with a jet or you can hang it. The tunnel with a prop drive will acutually run in shallower water than a jet. If you get a jet in much less than a foot of water they start sucking sand and crap up off the bottom and through the screw. This causes significant wear to the screw and housing. Now, if you're "ripple runs" are from rocks near the surface, a jet might win out over a tunnel/prop drive. However, the jet drive has so many other negatives, I think I would just have to be careful about picking my path and still run a prop.

As for rebuilding your's, that may be not be worth it. Depends on how bad the internal damage is. If it screwed up the crank, unless he does a patch job, I don't think you can completely rebuid a Merc 200 for $2,500 having to replace the crank and bad rods. Now, if he does a half**S job, yea, you might be able to. If he goes ahead and bores all six holes and new pistons, replaces the crank, bearings etc, rebuilds the carbs and replaces the water pump. All the stuff one would usually do during a complete rebuild with a bad crank, I think you could easily be looking at another $1K more. The oil pump usually sets of an alarm if it quits, and the oil tank usually has one if it gets low. Your misfortune was it didn't know anything was wrong because it was pumping oil and thought everything was good, it just wasn't getting into the gas because it sounds like it broke a line after all the fail safe stuff. Now, don't you wish you had disconnected it and premixed like most of those that know how unreliable those older system can be do.

What actually makes a much better, all around boat is a tunnel hull with hydraulic jack plate. They will actually run in shallower water than a jet drive and you still get all the performance and low speed handling of the prop drive. They are not quite as fast as a similar jon but can't everything be perfect.

Are they jet boats or have outboards with jet drives, huge difference between the two. Huge difference in performance of a jet drive and prop drive. A 40 hp jet drive performs about the same as a 25 hp prop drive. Manuvering as idle and slow speed also sucks with most jet drives. If for just fishing lakes, I wouldn't have a jet drive. For the river trip, depends on the river. I've seen bunches of rivers I could run my 20 boat with 225, and others you have a hard time in a 14' jon with a 9.9

I have Renegade 20 DC with a Evinrude 225. It's fast and very nice fishing platform. Does not matter what make boat it is, when they get that old, you really need to check them out very closely. A bad transome or weak floor can really ruin your day when you find them after you buy it. I came close to buying a three year old 19' Sprint bass boat several years ago that didn't have a motor on it. The price was great, and I was looking for a boat without a motor because I had a motor needing a boat. I asked them about just hanging a motor on it so I could check the transome. They said no, that the boat was too new to have a bad transom and begged to differ with them. Anyway, I walked away from it because of that, mentioned it to a friend and he bought it. Guess what, the transome was totally junk, a 200 hp Johnson would rock it back and fourth with very little effort.

50:1 is only for your carburated and some EFI motors. DFI motor are controlled by the computer so their consumption can vary widely. Evinrudes actually use very little oil. I've never owned a Yamaha but I've heard they tend to use the most compared to the other DFI's but it's still less than the carb'd motors. At idle it can be as little as 150:1/200:1. As rpm increase the oil usage will also.

When it went into overheat mode, did the rpm just drop to 2,000 or 2,500 and hold at no more than that or did it surge between full throttle and 2,500 rpm? Usually the over heat mode cuts the motor back so it can't turn over 2,500 rpm and does not surge between WOT and 2,500 rpm. It will usually give you and overheat alarm also.

On that motor the rectifier and the regulator are one in the same, both are built into the same module and yes, it goes where you stated. They have a bridge rectifier and the unfilter pulses across the bridge is what tellls the tach how many rpms the motor is turning. I've just never seen one, or see how one can cause a surge. All it's doing is keeping the battery charged and supplying a signal for the tach. The motor runs off a CDC ignition that makes it's own ignition voltage and does not need an external voltage source to run. The only way you can shut the motor off once it's running is by grounding out the power pack. I've seen the igntion grounds break one or both of the connectors and people going nuts trying to figure out how to get the motor stopped. The only thing you can do then is start pulling off plug wires or pull the air box off and cover the carbs.

Was that a carburated or DFI motor? I'm not sure how a rectifier could cause it if it's a carburated motor, I've never seen that happen. Might be possible with DFI because if the battery gets weak in one of those, they can do strange things. It will cause the tach to quit or do wierd things because thats were the tach signal comes from but once a Johnson or Evinrude carburated motor is running, it does not need a battery. You can throw the battery away and it would never know the difference, just won't have any tilt/trim. On that FastStrike, my first check would be the fuel pressure, make sure it's at least 5 psi. Very good chance the fuel pump side of your VRO has started go bad. You could have a restriction but if your vacuum switch is working, it should give you a warning buzzer when you get enough restriction to cause loss of fuel. As mentioned it could be a suction leak from a bad/loose hose letting it suck some air. Suction leaks and be found by putting about five psi of pressure in the fuel tank vent and see if any leaks show up anywhere in the fuel line system. Make sure the vent is not blocked also. Do a fuel pressure check first, then you can work back from there if it's low. Don't think you will just run down and buy a new fuel pump and try it. Your jaw is going to hit floor when you find out what it cost. There are other options (much cheaper and better) over buying a new CRO pump but they all will require you to start premixing your fuel.

Are you keeping it fulling trimed in until it starts to lay over? You might be triming out too soon. Other things that can cause it. As mention, cavitation holes in prop too large. Motor set too high Something funky with prop, I've have brand new props do this before having them tuned for my setup. One cheap, sure cure, put a SE Sport 300 hydrofoil on it.

You could pull it apart and check it but if there are any hard parts that are bad and the labor cost of repairing it, you might be better off finding a used one. Take it to a shop and it's going to cost you $150 - $200 just for them to take it apart and give you a price. Most likely that's going to be a price a lot more than you're going to like. It's not hard to get apart, if you have a way of getting a big lock ring out of the bottom, but you will need special jig to check/set upper bearing spacing when you put it back together.

It's not needed if you don't mind abandoning your boat and going for a swim in the middle of the lake when the TM or the cables shorts out and sets it on fire. Personnaly, I would not put power to my TM without a circuit breaker in line.

What you are faced with one of the biggest pitfalls of series batteries, in a series configuration, all batteries have to be the same. This means they have to be the same Make, Size, and AGE. The only time you can replace just one battery in a series system is when all batteries are fairly new and have not been cycled over approx 25 times. After they have be cycled more than that, their charge and discharge capacity starts to change and this has to be fairly even among them. In series, all batteries see the same current load, if the batteries are not identical, one battery can see a much larger/smaller the current load than the others, this can either damage the one battery, or the other two. So, what this all boils down to, when you need to replace one battery, you have to replace all three. Now, the one battery should have lasted much longer than that unless you are fishing over 200 days a year. I know you get bad stuff all the time, but I would check my onboard charger and make sure it's functioning properly. Charging the batteries to a full charge and either coming back on when they drop to the preset voltage or maintaining the proper float voltage if it has a float mode. I am assuming you leave it on 24.7.

About the only complaint I've ever heard about the Tohatsu is they are very proud of their parts. Most seem to agree they are good motors but ***** everytime the they have to buy a part or have them worked on.

It should have eyelet connectors that go on the studs of your deep cycle battery (and make sure they are on tight). I guess what you're saying is it did not come with aligator clips to clip onto you battery post. DO NOT TRY TO USE THOSE. You TM pulls way too much current and you can melt the terminal on the battery and burn the leads up on your TM. Deep Cycle Trolling Motor batteries will have studs to mount them, If you're thinking about using an automotive battery that does not have the studs, you can buy post adapters and most auto parts stores that will clamp around the post and have a stud to attach your cables. However, you're going to destroy your auto battery fairly quickly.

The seats that came in my Javelin sat low and kinda held you place but there was not much foam to soften the bounce when you crossed a wake at 75 mph. You found yourself using your legs to raise your butt up just a little or sitting on the spare lifejackets for a little extra cushion. As for keeping your foot on the hotfoot, I've never noticed that as being an issue. I've always had total throttle control with mine. Mine are the thick, molded foam like in the picture, there is no suspension system under them.

That's an odd lenght. Is it built with a built in setback so the bottom of the hull is actually a few inches below the bottom of the transome? If so, then you need the 20" shaft (long shaft)